She has a chair and a blanket and she makes the coffee in the good cup.
Kirsty is forty-six and she has watched the service on the laptop, at home, on her own, more or less every week for three years and two months.
She does not treat it casually. She wants that established because people assume otherwise. She does not do anything else during it. She has been known to stand up during the singing in an empty front room, which she has told nobody.
It started for a reason that was entirely sound and lasted about four months, and the reason went away, and the arrangement did not.
And she has two positions on this and holds both of them at once, all the time, and it is beginning to tire her out.
Position one is that it counts. It is the same words, the same people, the same songs, she gives money, she prays through the prayers, and she has learned things and been moved and cried in that chair.
Position two is that it does not. She could not tell you why with any precision. It is more that she knows what she does at the end, and what she does at the end is close the laptop and put the cup in the sink.
Something happens at the end for everybody else and nothing happens for her.
She is not lonely, particularly. She has a life and people in it.
And in May, at about ten past twelve on a Sunday, she stood in her kitchen with the cup under the tap and said out loud, to nobody: I have been going for three years and I have never been.
And you may have a chair like that. And you may hold both positions at once and be tired.
The last invitation in the Bible is issued four times over
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it three years and it was never yours.
You have not been going through the motions. You never were, and standing up alone in a front room is not a lesser thing. Scripture ends the whole book with an invitation issued repeatedly, by more than one voice, and the last of them is thrown open to anybody at all, and it is the Holy Spirit, named there Himself, who does the inviting. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it has been in the good cup for three years.
Now hear it, and count the invitations.
The Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let the one who hears say, Come! Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.Revelation 22:17
Come, four times, from three sources.
The Spirit says it. The bride, which is the whole church, says it. Then whoever hears is told to pass it on. And then the last two lines drop the intermediaries entirely and address the thirsty directly.
And notice who leads. The Spirit is the first voice in that verse, which means the inviting was never a human arrangement and is not administered by anybody's front door.
The invitation is issued by the Spirit Himself, and it is open. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one saying it, and He has never once made a screen or a room the condition of it.
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 the three years were nothing. They were not, and the crying in the chair was real, and the money is real, and God has fed people through a laptop and Scripture has no complaint about that.
And nothing here promises what a Sunday morning would be like if you went, or that anybody would come and talk to you, or that you would be glad you did. I have not met those people and that is not in my gift.
The point is narrower and it is about your position two, and Scripture ends by throwing the invitation wide open in the Spirit's own voice, and His Spirit is the one who has been saying come the whole time.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. Nothing happens at the end.
You were exactly right about that and it is the truest sentence in this whole article. The thing you are missing is not the service, which you get in full. It is the eleven minutes afterward when nobody has quite gone yet, and that is not a small thing to have gone without for three years. His Spirit has been in that chair with you every week and He is the one who has made you notice.
So here is the turn, and it does not require a Sunday.
Go, or eat, or pray, without waiting to be asked and without announcing it to anybody.
Take the middle one this week. Eat something, slowly, at a table, at the hour that service ends, with the laptop shut and in another room.
That is the whole of it. Not a decision about the chair and the blanket, which have served you and can stay. Not a Sunday, which is yours to time and which is a bigger step than a meal.
One thing eaten at the hour, at a table, with the screen out of the room.
The invitation is issued by the Spirit and it is open to whoever is thirsty. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one issuing it, and neither of them has ever made the room the condition.
I am not going to tell you what a Sunday would be like or when you will go. 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 the last invitation in the Bible, said four times, with the intermediaries dropped.
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 in that chair every week. 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.
- Two positions I have held at once for three years, you have been wearing me out and you were never a question about whether I belong. In the name of Jesus I set you down at this table, because the invitation still stands, and nobody withdrew it and I do not need a new one to come.
- Sentence I said at the sink about going for three years and never having been, you were true and you were never once put beside Scripture. It is written, the Spirit and the bride say come, and the last lines drop every intermediary and address the thirsty straight.
- Lord, Your Spirit is the first voice in that verse and He has been saying it in that chair every week. You never made a room or a screen the condition, and I am eating at a table this Sunday with the laptop shut.
Revelation 22:17
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