The Two Mugs on County Road Nine

For a husband and wife who pray at a scarred table and wonder whether it counts.

Say there's a house eleven miles out on a county road, with a kitchen table that came from his mother and carries a burn mark near one corner from 1991.

Two mugs. Hers has a chip on the handle and she won't replace it. His is a promotional mug from a feed company that went out of business years ago, which he finds funny and she doesn't.

They sit down at about a quarter to seven most mornings. He reads whatever page the ribbon is on. She says the names, which is her job by long habit: the daughter in the city, the neighbor with the bad hip, the grandson nobody has heard from since spring.

Then he says something short to close it and they both get up, because the day starts at seven whatever else is true out there.

Twenty three years of that. Ask either of them whether they go to church and both would say no, and neither would think twice about the answer.

A condition was given rather than a destination, and that table has met it. Scripture's promise stands recorded at the number two, and the Spirit has been in that kitchen at a quarter to seven for twenty three years.

The Answer They Give at the Feed Store

Both of them answer no, neither of them is lying, and both of them are giving the wrong answer.

They're answering the question as it was asked, which is a question about a building and an attendance, and by that measure the answer really is no. Nobody has done anything dishonest at any point.

What's happened is subtler and worth pulling into the light. A question that only has room for one kind of answer teaches you, over years, that only one kind of thing exists. Ask a man the same question two thousand times and he'll stop noticing what the question leaves out.

Twenty three years of no, said kindly, at feed stores and school gates and funerals. It isn't a lie. It has also been quietly instructing both of them about their own kitchen the whole time.

You aren't lying when you answer the question, and you aren't describing your life either. The Word says that Christ among two gathered in His name with no building in the sentence, and the Spirit keeps that true through every no you have given.

The Promise at the Smallest Number

Here's the verse, and He picked the number Himself rather than settling for it.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.Matthew 18:20 (KJV)

Two. Not a crowd, not a quorum, not a household with children still in it. Two, which is the number at a kitchen table on a county road at a quarter to seven in the morning.

Then there am I in the midst of them. In the midst is a place rather than a mood. It means among, between, in the middle of, and it's the same word you'd use about somebody standing in a room with you.

Those words went first to disciples being taught how to handle each other, and they arrive at a farmhouse table without narrowing on the way. He isn't watching that kitchen from a distance. He's in the middle of it, between the two mugs.

Christ stands in the midst of two at a table, and the midst is a place rather than a feeling. Scripture says so. He named the number in words that were written down, and the Spirit makes His presence a fact at a quarter to seven.

Twenty Three Years Is Not a Small Thing

Stay with the length of it, because nobody has ever said this to either of them.

Twenty three years of showing up at the same table at the same hour is roughly eight thousand mornings. Through two deaths, one bad winter, a year when they were barely speaking to each other, and the stretch when the daughter in the city wouldn't take a call.

They didn't keep that going on enthusiasm. Nobody keeps anything going for twenty three years on enthusiasm. They kept it because they decided something once and then stopped renegotiating it every morning afterwards.

There are congregations that haven't held a rhythm that long. It isn't a competition and I'm not making it one. What looks unremarkable from the road is, by any honest measure, a serious and unbroken work.

You are holding something long and unbroken, and its ordinariness isn't a verdict on it. Scripture never measures faithfulness by how impressive it looks from outside, and the Spirit has been present through every one of those mornings.

The Burn Mark From 1991

Say something about the table itself, because it's been under all of this the whole time.

It came from his mother, which means it was old when they got it. The burn is from a pan somebody set down in a hurry in 1991, and there was a row about it at the time, and now it's the thing their grandchildren run a thumb over without asking.

A table like that isn't furniture in the ordinary sense. It's a record. Every mark on it is a morning somebody had, and the marks accumulate whether or not anybody decides they should.

Twenty three years of prayer have left no mark at all on that surface. That's the part worth sitting with. The burn is visible and the eight thousand mornings aren't, and you have been letting the visible one do all the testifying.

Nothing about those mornings leaves a mark, and nothing about them is less real for that. Most of what holds a life together leaves no mark at all, which is why people are so often surprised by what turns out to have been load bearing.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

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