The Bin I Have Watched Fill Up

Fourteen people in his front room every Thursday, and it has been running four years.

He does the food. That was never negotiable in his house and it is half the reason people come. Somebody brings something sweet, he does the rest, and by half past nine the table looks like a small argument has taken place on it.

They are three quarters of the way through Luke. They are good. Two of them have started to say things he wishes somebody had said to him at twenty-five.

The house next door has a woman in it who is maybe seventy and who he has spoken to perhaps eleven times in six years.

Her bin has not been put out for five weeks.

He noticed in the second week. He has noticed every week since, on a Thursday morning, taking his own out, while the chairs for that evening are already stacked in the hall behind him.

He has reasoned about it carefully, which is what he does. She may be with her daughter. She may not want a stranger at the door. There was that thing two years ago with the parking and it was awkward and it may still be awkward. And if she is unwell then a knock from a man she has spoken to eleven times might be the last thing she wants.

Five weeks of that reasoning, each round of it slightly shorter than the last.

And last Thursday, at about twenty past nine, with fourteen people in his front room and the parable of the man on the road to Jericho open on the table, he found that he could not look at the page.

The man who wanted the discussion was told to go

Let me stand up for the four years first, because they are not the problem and I will not pretend they are.

Fourteen people in a front room for four years, with real food and real teaching, is a serious work. Two of them are saying things now that will go on into other rooms for decades. Nothing here is telling you to shut it down or that the studying was a distraction. It was not.

Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as a rebuke: what you need is not more understanding, and what stopped you at twenty past nine was not guilt, it was the Holy Spirit finishing a sentence. That is not my read on your Thursday, it is what stands written in the tenth chapter of Luke, where a man who wants a careful discussion gets one and is then sent out of the room, and the same Holy Spirit who preserved that scene had that page open on your table.

Read how the Lord ends it, because the ending is aimed straight at people who host study groups.

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.Luke 10:36-37

The lawyer's question was a good question, asked properly, and Jesus answers it fully. He does not tell him the question was foolish and He does not shorten the story to hurry him along.

And then, at the end, the whole thing is converted into a verb and handed back to him. Go and do.

So this is yours right now rather than pending better reasoning: you already know what to do about the bin, because the written word turns understanding into a verb at the end of that parable and the Spirit of God is the one who has been putting it in front of you every Thursday morning for five weeks.

Now let me take your reasoning seriously, because it is not stupid and dismissing it would insult you.

She may be with her daughter. True, and you would find out in about forty seconds. She may not want a stranger at the door. Possible, and a man who has lived beside her for six years is not a stranger, he is an under-used neighbor. The thing about the parking was awkward. It was. It was two years ago and she has almost certainly forgotten it, and if she has not, then a knock is the fastest way it stops mattering.

Every one of those is a real consideration and none of them is a reason. They are the shape carefulness takes when it has been asked to do a job that only courage can do.

And notice what the reasoning has cost. Five weeks. In five weeks a person can be quite ill, and what is written says whatever you did to the least of these you did to Me, and the Holy Spirit does not put a bin in front of a man's eyes on five consecutive Thursdays for no reason.