I Always Meet People Somewhere Else

You are very good at this by now.

Somebody suggests meeting up and you have the alternative ready before they have finished the sentence. There is a place near the station. There is a park if it is nice. You will come to them, it is no trouble, you are passing anyway.

None of that is a lie. All of it is true. And under all of it, running quietly, is the same rule that has been running for about three years.

Nobody comes to the apartment.

It is not a decision you remember making. It assembled itself out of a hundred small choices, each of which was perfectly reasonable on its own, and the total of them is that no human being has stood inside the place where you live since you moved in.

And here is what I want to name at the start, because everything else follows from it.

There is a difference between a person having no visitors and a person doing a lot of quiet work to make sure there are none. The second one takes effort. Real effort, spread out across years, in small amounts, and it is exhausting in a way that does not show up anywhere.

So this is not an article about being sociable. You are sociable. You see people constantly.

It is about one door, and about the amount of energy that has been going into keeping it shut.

Come and see

There is a moment at the very start of John's gospel that is two words long and is about exactly this.

Two men ask Jesus where He is staying. Not a deep question. Where do you live.

He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day. (John 1:39, King James Version)

Come and see. That is the whole answer, and there is not one word of preparation anywhere near it.

You are allowed to answer that question the way it was answered in Scripture, and where a person is staying has never once needed to be got ready before somebody could see it. John 1:39 records the answer as come and see with no interval in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a young woman with a very good alternative ready.

Now look at what happens next in the verse, because it is the part that goes past the invitation.

They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day. They did not look at it and leave. They stayed the day.

The seeing of the place was the beginning of the time together, not a hurdle in front of it. And nothing about the place is recorded, at all, anywhere, because it was not the subject.

You have a door that can be the beginning of an afternoon rather than an obstacle to one, and a place a person lives has never once been a hurdle to get past. The Spirit of God is the one present where people stay a day with each other, and it is written in John 1:39 that they came and saw and abode.

What the alternative costs

Let me be plain about the cost of the arrangement, because it does not show up as a cost.

Every meeting is on somebody else's ground. Which means every meeting is slightly on their terms, at their convenience, in a place where they are the more comfortable of the two, and the one who traveled is always the same person.

That is fine once. Across three years it produces a very specific feeling, and the feeling is that you are a guest in every friendship you have.

You are entitled to ground of your own in a friendship, and three years of going to everybody else has never once been the natural shape of knowing people. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person somewhere to stand, and John 1:39 has two men going to where somebody else lived and staying the day.

And there is a second cost, and it is the one that surprises people.

Friendship deepens in unimpressive places. Not in the coffee shop. On somebody's floor at ten at night when the conversation has gone somewhere neither of you expected, and nobody is watching the time, and there is no one else in the room.

That cannot happen in a public place. It structurally cannot. And so three years of very good meetings have produced friendships that have all stopped at about the same depth, and there is nothing wrong with any of them, and you have noticed.

You are able to give a friendship the room it needs to go further, and a public table has never once been able to hold what a floor at ten at night can. The Spirit of God is the one present where two people stay past the polite hour, and it is written in John 1:39 that they abode with him that day.

And this, plainly, in these words. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on how far you have got, not on what you earn, not on whether you are doing well for your age. A place a young woman lives is not a verdict on the young woman, and I am not going to let it be read that way while she is standing in her own kitchen.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from an apartment, and where a person lives has never once been a statement about who they are. John 1:39 records no description of the place at all in John 1, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One person, this week

So here is the assignment, and I want it kept to one person on purpose.

Ask one person to come to your place this week, and let them in without doing anything to the room first.

One. Not a group, not a thing, not a plan with food in it. One person you already like, who has already been kind to you, coming over for an hour.

Ask plainly. Come to mine on Thursday. Do not attach a warning to it, do not say the place is small, do not do the thing where you build the excuse into the invitation.

You are able to give an invitation with nothing attached to it, and a plain sentence has never once needed a disclaimer welded onto the front of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a person's voice on a message that has taken three years to send, and John 1:39 has the answer arrive as come and see with nothing before it.

Then the second half, which is the harder one.

Do nothing to the room first.

Not the night before, not the hour before. The apartment on Thursday is whatever the apartment is on a Thursday, and that is the entire point, because a room that has been got ready is a room that has been submitted for approval and the whole exercise is about not doing that.

You will want to do something small at about four o'clock. That will be very strong. Let it pass.

You are letting somebody see where you actually live rather than a version of it, and a room that has not been prepared has never once been a poorer welcome than one that was. The Spirit of God is the one present in an ordinary hour in an ordinary apartment, and it is written in John 1:39 that they came and saw where he dwelt.