He Set the Table at Midnight

She can pray for eleven thousand people and she cannot pray for four.

That is not a figure of speech and she has worked it out precisely. There is a prayer meeting she has led since two thousand and nine, and there is a list, and the list has the estates on it, the school, two hospitals, the men's shelter, the whole district by name. She prays for it out loud, in a room, and people say afterward that it moves something, and she believes them.

She is fifty two.

And she has never prayed out loud in her own living room.

Not once. Not at a table, not over a person in that house, not at anybody's bedside in that building, in twenty six years.

She prays for them constantly. That is the strange part. She prays for her own family more than anything else in her life, silently, in the car, in the kitchen, at three in the morning, and the volume of it is enormous, and none of it has ever been audible in that house.

She has never worked out why, and she has had a go, and the closest she has got is that in a hall she is somebody who does this and in her own hallway she is just the mother, and the two do not overlap, and it would be strange, and everybody would look at her.

The kitchen at half past eleven at night, when they are all in and the lights are on and somebody is making toast, is her favorite room in the world and she has never once said a word out loud to God in it.

There is a house in Acts that fills up at about two in the morning after an earthquake, and the thing that happens in it is not the earthquake.

And he set meat before them

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally hands over a duty. Your house should come first. Lead your family spiritually. I am not going to do that. A woman who prays for her family silently at three in the morning is not neglecting them, and telling her she has been failing them for twenty six years would be both cruel and untrue.

Paul and Silas are in the jail at Philippi. There is an earthquake at midnight, the doors open, and the jailer is about to kill himself and is stopped.

And then it moves out of the prison and into a house.

He takes them home. He washes their wounds. He is baptized, he and all his, straightway. And then: And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house (Acts 16:34).

Read where the chapter lands. Not at the earthquake. Not at the open doors. It lands at a table in a man's own house at about two in the morning, with food on it, and the phrase all his house appears twice in three verses.

You have been given the room you are standing in as the destination. That is not me shrinking the passage; Acts 16:34 puts the food, the house and the whole household in one verse, and the Holy Spirit who preserved it ended the most dramatic night in the chapter in a kitchen.

And notice what the man does with his hands. He sets meat before them. The great spiritual event of that night, for him, has a plate in it.

And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.Acts 16:34

Two voices and one of them is silent

Now the thing she has never worked out, because it is worth naming plainly.

In a hall she is somebody who does this. In her own hallway she is the mother. And she has treated those as two different people for twenty six years, and given one of them a voice and the other one silence.

There is nothing wrong with either of those roles. What is wrong is the wall between them, and the wall is not humility and it is not modesty, it is a kind of stage fright, and stage fright in your own kitchen is a strange thing to carry for a quarter of a century.

You have never had two selves, and the house was never a room you had to be somebody else in. Colossians 3:17 says whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the whatsoever there covers a hall and a hallway without distinction; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) does not change when a woman crosses her own threshold.

This is yours right now, at half past eleven with the toast on: the same voice, in this room. Acts 16:34 ends a chapter about an earthquake at a man's own table; the Spirit who preserved that put the important room inside a house.

Nobody in that kitchen would look at her strangely

Let me deal with the actual fear, because it is specific and it is the whole obstacle.

Everybody would look at me. That is the sentence. She has never tested it, in twenty six years, not once, and it has held her at the door of her own living room the entire time.

They might. For about two seconds. And then her son, who is twenty three and who nobody in this family thinks about God at all, would probably say something to break it, and then it would be over, and it would have happened, and the second time would be nothing.

That is not a promise about how it goes. It is an observation that a thing untested for twenty six years has had a great deal of authority for something that has never been examined once.

You were never going to be strange to the people who know you best. Mark 5:19 has Jesus sending a man home to his friends to tell them, which is precisely the audience everybody assumes will find it awkward; the Holy Spirit who preserved that instruction sent a man to the people who had known him longest.

Fruit is not output, and a prayer list is where the difference is sharpest. Output is the meeting: attended, led, effective, and remembered by people who tell her so. Fruit is what grows in a kitchen at half past eleven, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, in a hall or over a toaster.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. While the kettle does what it does anyway, tell Him one true thing about the twenty six years with nothing asked for and no plan attached. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody hears that but Him.