The Ten Minutes Before the Shift

For two men whose whole gathering is ten minutes in a car park before nights.

You get there early on purpose, and you've never once admitted to anybody that you get there early on purpose.

Ten past nine. The far corner of the car park, past the trolley bay, under the light that flickers. You lean on the back of his car and he leans on the front of yours, and the two of you face each other across about four feet of tarmac.

He brings a flask because he's that sort of man. You bring nothing, because you aren't, and he's never once mentioned it in three years of Tuesdays.

You talk for about six minutes, mostly rubbish about the week. Then one of you says something real and the register changes. Then you pray for four: his mother, your marriage, and the lad on your team who's drinking again and doesn't know that either of you knows.

The doors go at half past, and the two of you are inside under the strip lights before either has finished the flask. That's your week. That's the whole of it, ten minutes on tarmac, once, before nights.

Ten minutes on tarmac is the oldest shape His church has ever had. Scripture down that the first believers broke bread from house to house with gladness, and the Spirit gives that same gladness in a car park at ten past nine.

You Think You Are Doing the Reduced Version

There's a picture in your head of the full version, and the car park gets measured against it every week without your ever deciding to run the comparison.

The full version has a building in it, an hour set aside, a person up front teaching, other families in rows, and a rota with your name somewhere on it. You were in something like that once, or you watched it from outside, and it settled in your mind as the shape a church is supposed to have.

Set ten minutes on tarmac against that and it's obviously a fragment. A tenth of a thing. What a man does when he can't get the real one.

I want to put a different order in front of you, and I'm not being clever about it. The house came first. The hall arrived later. What you're doing isn't the reduced version of the church, it's closer to the original, and the large arrangement is the newer invention by several centuries.

None of that is an opinion about church order. It is a matter of sequence, and the sequence runs one way only. Houses first, halls afterwards.

Bread, Houses, and Gladness

Here's the verse, and what matters is how ordinary every word in it is.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Acts 2:46, the whole verse, though the sentence runs on into the next one (KJV)

Two settings sit in that sentence side by side, and neither is ranked above the other. The temple, which was the large public place. Then house to house, which was somebody's kitchen with whoever happened to be there that evening.

Then look at the description of how they ate. Gladness, and singleness of heart, which means undivided, with nothing running underneath. That's a description of six minutes of rubbish and four minutes of prayer beside a flask, far more than it's a description of anybody's performance.

Luke wrote that first about believers in Jerusalem in the earliest weeks, when the temple was still standing and still open to them. Eating in a house was never the poor relation of meeting in the temple, not then and not since.

You're meeting in a shape Scripture describes rather than in an exception to it. Scripture's account sets house to house beside the temple without ranking them, and the Spirit gives the same gladness on tarmac.

Singleness of Heart in a Car Park

Stay with that phrase, because it's the most demanding part of the verse and you're meeting it without noticing.

Singleness of heart means nothing doubled underneath. No second agenda, no managing of impressions, no version of yourself being maintained for an audience that might be watching.

Ask yourself honestly where in your week you're least divided. It isn't at work, where you're managing about four demands at once. It very likely isn't at home on a bad evening either, when half of you is still in the van.

It's a man leaning on a car in the dark, four feet from somebody who knows the actual state of his marriage. That's rarer than a full building and a great deal harder to manufacture on purpose. You have it every week without ever having tried to build it.

Most people go years without one conversation of that kind. A good many go a whole life without one, and would tell you they were well connected.

You're gathering with singleness of heart, which is the part nobody can arrange. Scripture names that as the mark of the earliest believers, and the Spirit works it into two men standing under a flickering light.

What the Flask Actually Is

Say something about the flask, because you've never thought about it and he has never explained it.

He fills it at home before he leaves. That takes him four minutes, a kettle, and the decision to do it, made afresh every Tuesday for three years, for a man who brings nothing and has never apologized for bringing nothing.

You've read that as him being organized. It's closer to the truth to say he's been serving you a hot drink in a cold car park every week for three years, and that neither of you has ever used a word like serving about it.

That's what the letters describe when they talk about believers supplying one another. Not a rota, not an office. A flask, filled at home, carried out, poured for somebody who didn't ask.

You've been served every week by a man who has never once named it. The written Word's letters as written describe believers supplying each other in exactly that ordinary way, and the Spirit has been at work through a kettle in his kitchen.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Amir This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.