It is in the drawer with the batteries and the string and a spare key to a house Nell no longer owns.
A card. Not a printed one. A plain postcard with a bird on it, and on the back, in blue biro, in handwriting that goes slightly uphill:
Nell love, we do a thing on Thursdays now, half ten, nothing formal. There is always too much cake. Come whenever you like and do not ring first. B.
Four years ago in October.
Nell did not go. She meant to. She put the card on the fridge under a magnet and it stayed there about seven months, and every Wednesday she thought about it and every Thursday something was on, and after a while the Thursdays did not have anything on and she still did not go.
Then it came off the fridge, in a tidy, and went in the drawer.
Bea died the following spring. Quite quickly, in the end.
Nell went to the funeral and sat near the back and cried more than she expected to, and a woman she did not know said afterward that Bea had talked about her, and Nell said something and got to the car.
She is sixty-eight.
And she cannot throw the card away. She has had it out of the drawer perhaps eleven times, and once she got as far as standing over the bin with it, and she put it back.
And what she has not said to anybody, and would not, is that the card is the last thing anybody asked her to come to.
Nobody has asked since. Not because anybody decided anything, but because the woman who was in the habit of asking people is dead, and the habit went with her, which is a thing that happens when the person who does a thing stops.
And Nell has been treating that as the end of the matter.
And you may have a card in a drawer. Or a text you never answered from somebody who is not around to send another.
The message sent out is that it is ready now
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it four years and it was never yours.
You have not missed it. You never did, and a missed Thursday is not a shut door. Scripture has a man sending word out at the hour itself, and the message is about the present state of the table rather than about anybody's record of replies, and it is the Holy Spirit, not somebody with a habit of asking, who calls a person. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it has been in a drawer with the batteries.
Now hear it, and hear the tense.
At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, Come, for everything is now ready.Luke 14:17
Everything is now ready.
Now. Not it was ready. Not it will be ready if you sort something out first. The message is a description of the current condition of the table, and it is sent out to people while the food is on it.
And notice that this is a second message. They had been invited already, and this is somebody being sent out again, at the hour, to say the thing once more to people who already knew.
That is how He does it. He sends again. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who calls a person, and He has never once let a table go cold because somebody missed the first word.
Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.
Nothing here says you did wrong by Bea. You did not. She wrote you a card with a bird on it because she wanted you there and not because she was keeping score, and Scripture has nothing to say against a woman who had a hard year and let a Thursday go past.
And nothing here promises you a specific Thursday somewhere with cake on it. I do not know what is running near you or who would be at it, and I am not going to invent a welcome from people I have never met.
The point is narrower and it is about your treating the end of one woman's habit as the end of the matter, and Scripture has the word sent out again at the hour, and His Spirit is the one carrying it.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. You cannot throw the card away and you have never let yourself ask why.
It is not guilt. You keep it because it is proof that somebody wanted you there, and you have not had another piece of proof since, and you are not going to destroy the only one you have. His Spirit knows exactly what that card is doing in that drawer and He has never once thought it foolish.
So here is the turn, and it does not require the card.
Go, or eat, or pray, without waiting to be asked and without announcing it to anybody.
Take the middle one this week. Eat something at half past ten on a Thursday, on purpose, alone, and be aware the whole time of what it is.
That is the whole of it. Not finding out whether the Thursday thing still runs, which you could do and which may be a good idea. Not a decision about the card, which stays exactly where it is.
One thing eaten on purpose at the hour, without waiting to be asked.
The word goes out at the hour and it says everything is ready now. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who carries it, and neither of them ever stopped because a woman with a biro died.
I am not going to tell you what you will find if you go looking, or that there is cake anywhere near you. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is a message in the present tense sent out a second time.
Go without waiting to be asked.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours on every one of those Thursdays. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Card in the drawer with the batteries, you are the last thing anybody asked me to and you are not the end of the matter. In the name of Jesus I set you down on this table, because the invitation still stands, and nobody withdrew it and I do not need a new one to come.
- Four years of treating a woman's death as the closing of a door, you were never once weighed against Scripture. It is written that the word went out at the hour itself, saying come, for everything is now ready, and it was the second time of asking.
- Lord, You send again, and Your Spirit is the one who carries the word to a person. You have never let a table go cold because somebody missed the first one, and I am eating at half ten on Thursday on purpose.
Luke 14:17
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.