The Man Who Counts the Cups

He is there at twenty past eight, every single week, and he has been for eleven years.

Nobody asked Grant to do it in the first place. He started because the man who used to do it got ill and somebody had to, and then the man who used to do it did not come back, and eleven years went by the way they do.

He knows how many. He knows without counting, and he counts anyway, because the one time he did not count was the week they were four short and he has never let that happen again.

He knows which cloth. He knows that the second table wobbles and where the folded card lives that fixes it. He knows to do the whole thing before anybody arrives, because it is not meant to be watched being set up, and he is right about that and he learned it from the man who got ill.

Eleven years.

And in February, in that hall, on his own at twenty past eight, he had a thought he did not want, which was: when did I last take any of this in?

Not the elements. He wants to be precise about this and so do I, and it is why he has never said it to anybody. He is not talking about the practice, which is his church's and is not in question and is not what this is about.

He means the whole hour. All of it. Everything that happens in that room while he is standing at the back with his hand on the light switch and one eye on the door because somebody always comes late.

He is fifty-six.

He is the most reliable man in that building and everybody would say so and they would be right, and he cannot remember the last Sunday he sat down in his own church and received anything at all.

And that is not a complaint about the church. Nobody put him at the back. He put himself there, week after week, because it needed doing and he could do it and there is a real gladness in that.

But a man who prepares for four hundred consecutive weeks has to eat somewhere, and Grant has not been eating.

And you may know that hall at twenty past eight. Yours may be a different room and a different job, and everybody may agree that you are the reliable one.

He asks to come in and eat with the person who opens

Let me take something off you before anything else, because you have carried it for eleven years and it was never yours.

You are not outside the arrangement because you are the one setting it out. You never were. Scripture has Him standing at a door asking to come in and eat with whoever opens it, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your position in the room, who does the feeding. Set that down here on the folding table. It is heavy and it has been at the back with you since February.

Now hear the sentence, and hear how ordinary the picture is.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.Revelation 3:20

Eat with that person.

Look at the shape of it. It is not a summons to a great hall. There is no occasion in it. It is a knock at a door and a meal with one individual, which is the smallest social unit there is.

And look at the direction of travel, because it is the opposite of what a man in your position expects. He is not asking to be received into a room that has been properly prepared. He is asking to come in and eat, which means He arrives with the meal rather than requiring one.

That knock is at your door. Right now, at fifty-six, on an ordinary weekday. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who is at it, and He has never once waited for the tables to be straight.

Now let me be careful here, because this is exactly the place where a page like this could do damage, and I am not going to do any.

Nothing on this page is a comment on your church's practice. Not the frequency, not the form, not the way any of it is done. That is your church's, it stays exactly where it is, and I am not putting a view about it into your head and you should not take one off a screen.

And nothing here says the eleven years were wasted or that you should stop, or that somebody at the back with his hand on the light switch is doing a lesser thing. He is not. That hall has been ready four hundred times because of you and nobody has ever had to think about the cloth, and Scripture honors that and His Spirit was in every one of those mornings.

The point is only that a man can prepare a room for eleven years and never once be a guest in it, and Scripture puts Him at a door with a meal in His hands. His Spirit is the one who has been knocking through every one of the four hundred.

Here is the plain part, and I will say it the way you would want it. You are not going to be sat down by anybody in that building.

Not because they do not care. Because you have been the one who does this for eleven years, and everybody's picture of that room has you at the back in it, and a picture that old does not change from the inside. Scripture does not wait for the room to notice and His Spirit is not waiting either.

So it comes another way, on an ordinary day, at a table with nobody else at it.