Abide With Us, It Is Toward Evening

She has noticed the exact sound and she wishes she had not.

It is a small mechanical click and then a heavier one as the door settles into the frame, and it happens at about twenty past six most evenings, and it means the same thing every time, which is: that was the day.

Not: now the evening. Not: I am home. That was the day, and everything that was going to happen has happened.

She is thirty four and she has lived on her own for five years and she is not unhappy about it and would like that on the record before anything else is said. She likes her place. She likes her own company. She has friends and she sees them and there is a Thursday thing and a person she calls on Sundays.

It is not loneliness. It is that the door has become a full stop.

Everything she counts as her actual life happens on the other side of it, out there, with other people, in the daytime, and the apartment is where she goes when that is over, and the six hours between twenty past six and bed are, she realized in about April, not really counted by her at all.

She does things in them. She cooks properly. She reads. It is not a wasted evening in anybody's terms.

She just does not think of any of it as anything, and she noticed in April that she has started saying nothing when people ask what she did last night, even when the answer is quite a nice list.

The light in that kitchen at seven in the summer is genuinely lovely and comes right across the counter, and she stood in it in April with a knife in her hand thinking about a door.

There are two people on a road in Luke who say one sentence to a stranger at the end of a day.

Abide with us, for it is toward evening

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally hands over a consolation. Fill the evenings. Get people round. Community is the answer. I am not going to do that. A woman who has friends and sees them does not have a social calendar problem, and prescribing a busier evening treats the door as a scheduling issue when it is not one.

Two of them are walking to Emmaus on the afternoon of the third day and a stranger falls in with them and talks the whole way.

And they draw near to the village, and He makes as though He would have gone further. And they constrain him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them (Luke 24:29).

Read the reason they give. It is toward evening, and the day is far spent.

That is the argument for coming in. Not: stay, because we want to hear more, though they did. Not: stay, because something is going to happen, because nothing has yet. Because it is getting late, and a person should not be out on a road at this hour, and there is a table in here.

You have been treating as a close what Scripture treats as a reason to open a door. That is not me reading against the passage; Luke 24:29 makes the lateness the grounds for the invitation, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that sentence put the evening at the front of it.

And then read what happens after they get in. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him (Luke 24:30-31).

The whole road, the whole exposition of the Scriptures, the entire seven mile walk, and He is not recognized until He is inside a house, at a table, breaking bread. The recognition happens after twenty past six.

But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.Luke 24:29

The door is not a full stop

Now the specific thing, because it is not about being alone.

She has assigned the daytime to her real life and the evening to the leftover, and she did not decide that, it accumulated, and the sound of the door has become the punctuation mark between the two.

And Luke 24 puts the recognition on the far side of that door. Not on the road, where the teaching happened. At a table, indoors, in the evening, in the part of the day she has stopped counting.

You have never had a leftover half of the day. Psalm 139:12 says the darkness and the light are both alike to Him, which makes no distinction between the hours a person counts and the hours they do not; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) has been in a kitchen at seven in the evening for five years.

This is yours right now, with the light across the counter: an evening that Scripture treats as an opening. Luke 24:29 makes the lateness the reason to come in; the Spirit who preserved that scene put the whole revelation after the door shut.

Whose house it is

Let me say the thing that has to be said in an article like this, because most of them assume a full house and hers is not one.

Two people asked somebody in. That is the entire household in Luke 24. Two, on a road, going home, and the table they sat at was the table they had.

There is nothing in that passage about the size of a house. The word that carries it is abide, and it is said by people who had one thing to offer, which was a room and a meal at the end of a day.

You have a house in the only sense that scene requires. Psalm 68:6 says God sets the solitary in families, and the setting is His own action and it does not wait on an arrangement; the Holy Spirit who inspired that line put solitary and families in one sentence.

Fruit is not output, and an evening that gets described as nothing is where the difference is clearest. Output is the daytime: reportable, out there, and what everybody means when they ask how you are. Fruit is what grows in six hours a woman does not count, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, at eleven in the morning or at half past nine at night.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. In the ten minutes while the light is still on the counter, tell Him one true thing about the door with nothing asked for and nothing planned. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody logs that.