Using It Feels Like Showing Off

The table seats twelve and it has never had more than four at it.

She did not choose it. It came with the house, which came the way houses come, through a death and a will and a set of circumstances she had no say in and would undo tomorrow if undoing it brought anybody back.

But it is a lovely kitchen. That is simply true. It is warm and it is big and the light comes in from two sides in the afternoon, and there is a long table in the middle of it made of something heavy.

Twelve places. Four people, at most, ever.

Here is what she has never said out loud to a single person.

Every time she thinks about asking people round, the thought that arrives about a second and a half later is: it would look like something.

Like an invitation to come and see the kitchen. Like the woman with the big table having people over to sit at the big table. She can hear exactly how it would be described afterwards by somebody who did not mean any harm, and she has been hearing it for four years, and so nobody has been asked.

Four years of protecting people from a room.

And the two women she thinks about most when this comes up are the two who would be least likely to think a single thing about it, and she knows that, and it has changed nothing at all.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging

Sit down at that table a minute, because Peter gives one instruction about hospitality and attaches exactly one condition to it, and it is not the condition anybody expects.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging.1 Peter 4:9

Use hospitality.

Use it. That is the verb, and it is a plain one, and it assumes you have something and tells you to put it to work. That is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept two names in front of you for four years.

And the condition is without grudging. Not without a good kitchen. Not without anybody noticing what your house is like. The one thing Peter guards against is the inward complaint of the host, the sighing, the resentment, the counting of the cost while you serve.

There is nothing in that sentence about how the room looks or about what anybody might say afterwards.

Hear this at your own table. There is nothing here you need to apologize for, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture attaches exactly one condition to hospitality and it is entirely about the heart of the one serving, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept two women in your mind for four years.

Now let me name what the second and a half is doing, because it is not vanity and vanity would be a false word for a woman who has kept a room empty for four years to spare other people.

It is a rehearsed sentence in somebody else's voice.

You are not worried about what you think of the kitchen. You are hearing a remark that has not been made, by a person who has not been asked, and you are managing the whole thing in advance by never letting the situation exist. The written word guards only the grudging, and the Spirit of God has never asked you to manage anybody's impression of a kitchen.

That is a considerable amount of work, and you have been doing it silently, and it has cost you four years of a table you were given.

Hear this too, and let it land in the light. You are not showing off by using what you have, and Scripture is what says so. What is written says use it and guards only the grudging, and the Spirit of God has never once asked anybody to keep a good room empty in order to prove something about themselves.

And let me be plain about what this article is not. Nothing here says a table is more real than a Sunday gathering, and nothing here is aimed at somebody who has no room to open. If you are in a small flat or a rented room or a situation you cannot invite anybody into, you are not behind and this is not for you. It is for the woman with twelve places and four years.