I Cancel The Week It Is My Turn

It comes round about every six weeks and you have got out of it eleven times.

The excuse is always real. That is the thing worth saying at the start, because a man reading this will already be composing a defense and there is no need.

Something did come up. You were genuinely tired. The week had been what the week had been. Not one of the eleven was a lie, and if anybody laid them all out on a table and went through them one by one, every single one would hold.

And here is the thing that eleven real excuses produce.

A man who does not host.

That is the whole of it and it is worth sitting with for a second, because it is not what any of the individual weeks felt like. Each one felt like a postponement. Eleven of them in a row is not a postponement, it is a policy, and nobody wrote it and nobody voted on it.

So this is not going to be an article about being disciplined. You are disciplined about a great many things.

It is going to be about a small mechanism, and about one yes.

Let your yea be yea

There is a line about speech in the Sermon on the Mount that is usually read as being about oaths and is really about weight.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. (Matthew 5:37, King James Version)

Yes means yes. No means no. And nothing more than that, because the more is where the trouble starts.

You are able to give a yes that stands on its own, and a plain answer has never once needed a run of reasons behind it. Matthew 5:37 puts the whole weight into the bare word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man who has got out of eleven Thursdays.

Now look at what He is warning about, because it is not lying.

Whatsoever is more than these. The elaboration. The construction around a word that props it up and, in propping it up, quietly makes it provisional.

A yes with a structure around it is a yes that can be dismantled. And every one of your eleven was dismantled honestly, in good faith, using materials that were genuinely there.

You have a word that can stand without scaffolding, and an honest reason has never once been the same thing as a kept yes. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man's plain word hold, and it is written in Matthew 5:37 that anything more than the yes is where the trouble comes from.

The reason underneath the reasons

Now the part I actually came for, and I am going to say it directly because a man can hear it directly.

Eleven separate reasons, over eighteen months, with nothing in common between them, is not eleven reasons.

If it were, the distribution would be random. Some of the weeks it was your turn would have gone ahead and some would not, and the ratio would look like everybody else's ratio, and it does not. It is eleven out of eleven.

Something is selecting.

You are looking at a pattern rather than a run of bad luck, and eleven out of eleven has never once been a coincidence in anybody's calendar. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what has been selecting, and Matthew 5:37 asks for a yes that does not need a case built around it.

And I am not going to tell you what it is, because I am not in your house and I do not know.

But I will tell you the usual one, and you can decide whether it fits.

The usual one is that hosting means the evening happens in a place you are responsible for, and being responsible for the place means the place is part of the evening in a way it is not when you are somebody's guest. And a man who has any hesitation at all about the place he lives will find, week after week, that something has come up.

You are able to look at a thing straight rather than around it, and a hesitation about a house has never once been a fault in the man who has it. The Spirit of God is the one who is kind about what he finds when a man looks, and it is written in Matthew 5:37 that a plain word is what is being asked for.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your standard, not on the years you have put in. A place a man is quietly hesitant about is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is deciding about a Thursday.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a living room, and where a man lives has never once been a statement about who he is. Matthew 5:37 puts the whole weight into the word in Matthew 5, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is standing in the room with you.

One yes, kept

So here is the assignment, and it is one word and one restraint.

Say yes to the next time it is your turn and do not call it off, and open the door without doing anything to the house first.

The yes goes out plain. No conditions, no if nothing comes up, no let me check. Yes, Thursday, mine.

And then the important part, which is what happens on Tuesday.

You are able to see a thing coming and stand where it lands, and a plain word has never once needed an easy week to be kept in. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man on the Tuesday rather than only on the Thursday, and Matthew 5:37 asks for a yes with nothing propping it up.

Something will come up. It genuinely will, and it will be real, and it will be the twelfth real thing. That is not paranoia, it is the pattern, and knowing it is coming is most of the defense.

When it arrives, the answer is that Thursday still happens.

You are keeping a word through the arrival of a genuine reason, and a yes has never once been tested by an easy week. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a man to a plain word on a Tuesday, and Matthew 5:37 asks for a yes that is not more than a yes.

Then the second half, and it is the one that makes the whole thing repeatable.

Do nothing to the house first.

No jobs on Wednesday. No fixing the thing. Because if Thursday requires a Wednesday, then Thursday is expensive, and an expensive evening is exactly the kind that gets called off when the twelfth real thing arrives.

An evening that costs nothing to arrange is an evening that survives a bad week.

You are building something a hard week cannot dismantle, and an evening that needed no preparation has never once been the one that got called off. The Spirit of God is the one present in a house that opens without a rehearsal, and it is written in Matthew 5:37 that the plain word is the whole of what is asked.