Ninety-one pages, in the end, with footnotes.
It started as a talk and then it would not stop. She went through the Greek. She read what people have said about it across about fifteen hundred years, and she found a strand nobody had put together in quite that way, and when she finished it in the spring she knew it was the best thing she had ever written.
Two churches have used it. Somebody in another country emailed her about it in June.
It is genuinely good. That is not false modesty and it is not the problem.
The woman four doors down moved in about three years ago and is, at a guess, in her early thirties, and there is a child of about four, and she has never seen anybody else go in or out of that house.
They say hello. Twice they have had a proper two-minute conversation on the pavement, once about the bins and once about a storm.
She has never once invited her in.
She thought about it in the second year and then noticed she was thinking about it, and the noticing became a small private embarrassment, and the embarrassment made the thinking about it harder, and here she is in the third year with ninety-one pages and footnotes.
And last week the child was in their front garden alone singing something, in the rain, at half past four in the afternoon.
And she watched from her window and then went back to her desk.
The instruction is one sentence and it names strangers
Let me put the ninety-one pages where they belong before anything else, because I am not going to use them as a stick.
That document is good work. Two churches are doing things differently because of it and somebody in another country was moved enough to write to you in June, and none of that is undone by anything in this article. Careful work about a command is a way of loving it.
Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as a rebuke: the doing was never waiting on more understanding, and you are already past the line of sufficient knowledge, because you have had the whole of that instruction since somewhere around page nine. That is not my brisk reading of three years, it is what stands written in Hebrews, where the whole instruction is one sentence long and names exactly the person it means, and the same Holy Spirit who inspired that line had you at the window last week watching a child sing in the rain.
Read it, and notice how little there is of it.
Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.Hebrews 13:2
Do not forget. Not learn about. Not develop a framework for.
And the object is named without any softening: strangers. Not friends, not the people already at your table, not a category you get to define after fifteen hundred years of reading. A woman four doors down whose name you may not know is the exact person that sentence is about.
So this is yours right now rather than pending better preparation: you have the whole instruction and you have had it for three years, because the written word gives it in one line and leaves nothing to be worked out, and the Spirit of God is the one who put a four year old in a front garden in the rain in front of your window.
Now let me name the thing the document has done to you, because it is subtle and it is worth seeing.
Ninety-one pages of thinking about hospitality has given you an extremely high idea of what hospitality is. You now know what it meant in the ancient world and what it costs and what it is supposed to look like at its best, and every one of those pages has raised the bar for what would count as doing it properly.
So a knock and a cup of tea now feels like almost nothing. Too small. Not really the thing.
That is how expertise turns into paralysis, and it is not wickedness and it is very common in people who take a subject seriously. You are not a hypocrite and you have not been hiding. What is written is one sentence long precisely so that ordinary people could obey it without a framework, and the Holy Spirit is not asking for the version in your footnotes.
And the guard, because it belongs here: the study was not a mistake and you should not be sorry for it. Keep writing. It is simply that the next line of that document is not going to be written at a desk.
So knock this week.
Not with a plan for a proper evening. Not once you have thought about what to cook, because you will think about what to cook for another three years. Nothing written attaches a menu to that command, and the Holy Spirit has done a great deal of His work through a kettle.
Go on a weekday afternoon, when the child is likely to be back, and say: I am four doors down, and I have been meaning to say this for about three years, would you like to come in for a cup of tea sometime, or now if now suits.
That is available to you today, not after another draft, because Scripture gives the command in one sentence and does not attach a standard to it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept that house in front of you for three years without letting you settle.
Do not tidy first, or tidy for ten minutes and no more. Do not apologize for the house. You have everything that door needs already, because the written word attaches no standard to the command, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fills a room once somebody is in it. Do not perform any of the ninety-one pages, because a woman with a four year old and nobody visiting does not need excellence, she needs a door that opens.
And when she has gone home, go and write. You will write better about hospitality after one afternoon of it than after another six months of reading, and everybody who uses that document will get the benefit.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as somebody who has raised her own bar out of reach. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Standard I set that nobody could ever meet, you are lowered to a door. Scripture gives the whole command in one sentence and names strangers specifically, and it does not attach a single condition about how well it is done.
- Fear that a knock and a cup of tea is too small to count as the thing I wrote ninety-one pages about, get out, in the name of Jesus. The instruction was written short so that ordinary people could obey it without a framework.
- Jesus, You put a child singing in the rain in a front garden in front of my window and I went back to my desk. I am knocking this week without tidying first, and I am writing the next part afterwards.
Hebrews 13:2
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.
