I Apologize Within Thirty Seconds

You get about thirty seconds before it comes out.

Come in, mind the step, sorry about the hall, we have been meaning to do something about that, the light in there does not work, sorry it is a bit cold.

Four apologies in one sentence and the man is still taking his coat off.

And you have never once thought of it as apologizing. You would call it explaining, or being honest, or getting it out of the way, and none of those is quite what it is, and I want to name what it actually is because that is most of the fix.

It is a pre-emptive strike.

Somewhere behind it, at some point, somebody said something about a house you lived in, or looked at something, or made a face. And what you built after that was a system where nothing can be said about your house that you have not said first.

It works. Nobody has commented on your house in years, and that is not luck. It is because you have never once left an opening.

And it costs you the first two minutes of every visit, every time, and it has done for about fifteen years.

They looked unto him and were lightened

There is a line in the thirty fourth psalm about faces, and the second half of it is the part that will land.

They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. (Psalm 34:5, King James Version)

Their faces were not ashamed. That is a specific and physical thing.

You are described in Scripture as somebody whose face is not ashamed, and a man at his own front door has never once been required to arrive with a disclaimer on his face. Psalm 34:5 puts the outcome in the face itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man with his hand on a door.

Now look at the sequence in that verse, because the order is doing the work.

They looked unto him. Then they were lightened. Then their faces were not ashamed.

The looking comes first. The face changes because of where the eyes went, and not the other way round, and nobody in that verse is being told to manage their expression.

Which means the shame in a face is downstream of something, and it moves when the something moves.

You have a face whose condition follows from where you are looking, and shame has never once been a thing anybody had to manage on the surface. The Spirit of God is the one the looking is directed at, and it is written in Psalm 34:5 that they looked and were lightened and their faces were not ashamed.

What the visitor receives

Now the practical part, and let me put it from the other side of the door, because that is where the real cost sits.

Your friend has come to see you. He has driven, or walked, and he is glad to be there, and he has thought about your hall precisely once in his life, which was when he was in it.

The door opens and he receives four pieces of information in about twenty seconds, and all four of them are negative, and all four of them are about the building.

You are somebody a friend got in the car for, and a hallway has never once been what anybody made the journey to see. The Holy Spirit is the one who reminds a man why the doorbell went, and Psalm 34:5 puts an unashamed face on the ones who looked up.

And now he has a small problem, and there are only two ways out of it. He can disagree, which means correcting a man about his own house on the doorstep. Or he can let it go, which means agreeing by silence.

He did not want either. He wanted to come in and sit down.

You are able to give a friend an easier arrival, and a man coming to see somebody has never once needed a briefing about the hall. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the first thirty seconds at a door, and Psalm 34:5 puts the face after the looking rather than the other way round.

And here is the second cost, and it is on you rather than on him.

The first two minutes of every visit get spent in the wrong posture. Not physically. But a man who has just delivered four apologies is not yet a host, and it takes about ten minutes to arrive properly in his own evening, and the visit is short and a chunk of it has gone on catching up with himself.

Fifteen years of the first two minutes is a great deal of a man's hospitality spent on a pre-emptive strike against a comment nobody was going to make.

You are able to be a host from the first second, and two minutes at the start of every visit has never once been a small amount to give away. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a man in his own doorway, and it is written in Psalm 34:5 that the face is not ashamed because of where the eyes went.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your provision, not on your standards. A hall a man apologizes for is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in it with his hand on a door.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a hallway, and what a house needs doing to it has never once been a statement about who lives there. Psalm 34:5 puts the unashamed face in Psalm 34, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the hall with you.

Nothing said about the house

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves.

Leave one thing out tonight that you would normally explain away, and the next time somebody comes in, say nothing about the house at all.

First, tonight. One thing that would normally get a sentence attached to it. The thing in the hall. Whatever is where it should not be.

Leave it there. Do not move it before anybody comes, because moving it is the same reflex in a different form.

You are letting one thing stand without a sentence attached to it, and an object nobody explained has never once needed an explanation. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man leaves something unexplained in his own house, and Psalm 34:5 has the face change because of a direction of looking rather than by management.

Then the second half, and this is the difficult one.

The next time somebody comes in, say nothing about the house.

You have a mouth that can hand somebody a welcome instead of a warning, and thirty seconds has never once had room in it for both. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the first seconds at a door, and Psalm 34:5 says they looked and were lightened and their faces were not ashamed.

Not a shortened version. Not one apology instead of four. Nothing. No mention of the hall, the light, the cold, or the thing that has been meaning to get done.

The apologies will arrive in your throat on schedule, at about second twelve, and they will be strong. Let them go past. Say hello, ask him something about himself, and walk him into the room.

Because a reflex does not get argued down. It gets displaced by something else occupying the same seconds, and a question about him is the thing that fits there.

You are letting a question about somebody else occupy the seconds an apology has been living in, and a man asked about himself at a door has never once noticed a hall. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man greets somebody as himself, and it is written in Psalm 34:5 that their faces were not ashamed.