Two Chairs and a Kettle

For the couple who read a psalm on a Sunday and never say the question out loud.

Which of you was going to ask it first, and how long were you both prepared to wait?

The kettle clicks off at about twenty past nine and neither of you moves, because moving means starting and starting means admitting that this is what you do now on a Sunday.

She pours. He turns the book round so it faces the middle of the table, a small thing he's done every week for two years, and neither of you has ever commented on it. There's toast going cold because nobody's hungry at the start, only at the end.

Outside a car goes past with the radio on. Four streets over the bells are doing what bells do at half nine on a Sunday, and you both hear them and neither of you mentions them.

He reads. She attends with her hands round the mug. When he stops, she says the thing she's been thinking for two years, which is, do you think this counts.

The pause before he answers is the whole of it, because he's been wondering too, in the same chair, with the same mug, every week of those two years.

He ruled on that kitchen before either of you sat down in it. Scripture's verdict is written into Matthew's account at the number two, and the Spirit has been in the room every Sunday you wondered about it.

The Question Neither of You Asked

Two years is a long time to sit across from somebody holding the same question and never putting it down on the table between you.

You were both protecting something. She didn't ask because asking might have taken it away from him. He didn't answer for years because he wasn't sure and didn't want her to see that he wasn't.

So the question sat in the room every Sunday like a third chair nobody used, and the not asking gradually became part of the ritual, which is a strange and heavy thing to build into a morning without meaning to.

Now it's out. Somebody said it. The right response isn't reassurance, and it isn't a clever line either. The right response is to go and read what the Lord actually said about the number two.

Bringing it into the open costs less than two years of holding it did. A question asked over cold toast is still a question asked, and it can finally be answered out of something other than the two of you guessing.

He Named the Number Out Loud

Here's the sentence. It's the Lord's own, and it's short enough to carry around all week.

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

Two. He said it first, before three, before any larger number at all. In a world full of temple courts and festival crowds He set the floor at the smallest gathering a person can have.

Then He promised His own presence in the present tense. There am I, rather than I will be, rather than I might send something along. In the midst of them, which describes a position in the middle of a room.

Those words went first to disciples being taught how to handle a dispute between believers, which is the least comfortable version of two there is. Two people and His name is the whole condition, and the pair of you have met it every Sunday for two years.

Christ is in the midst of your kitchen, promised at the number He named first. The written Word's sentence gives it in the present tense with one condition, and the Spirit makes it a fact at twenty past nine.

Beauty Was Never the Proof

Say something that will matter more in February than it does today.

Some Sundays that kitchen is lovely. The light comes in a particular way, the toast is right, one of you says something that lands, and the whole morning feels like proof of something.

Other Sundays it's flat. One of you is distracted, the reading does nothing at all, somebody is short with the other about something left over from Saturday. If loveliness is your proof, those mornings turn into evidence against you.

So don't hang it on the light. The promise isn't attached to how the room feels. It's attached to two people and a name, and both of those are just as present on a flat February morning as on a golden one.

You have His presence on the flat mornings as fully as on the lovely ones, because the promise was never hung on the light. Scripture ties it to His name alone, and the Spirit makes it true when the morning gives you nothing back.

The Bells Four Streets Over

Come to the bells, because you both hear them every week and neither of you has ever said anything about them.

They start at half nine and they last about forty seconds. You have timed them without meaning to. For two years they've arrived in the middle of a reading and been treated by both of you as weather.

Here's what I think they actually are for you. Not an accusation, though that's how they land. They're a reminder that somewhere four streets away a thing is happening that you used to be part of, and that nobody there has noticed you aren't.

That's a real ache and I won't tidy it away. What I'd take out of it is the verdict. The bells are a sound made by metal on a timer. They aren't a ruling about your kitchen, and they were never issued as one.

You can test that quickly enough. Nobody in that building has your kitchen in mind at half nine, and nobody there is withholding anything from you. The accusation is arriving from inside the house rather than from four streets away.

A sound four streets away is not a verdict on your table. Scripture's promise as written fixes His presence on two in His name, and the Spirit holds that steady for the whole forty seconds and afterwards.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

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