I Talk To Her In The Doorway

She comes to the door about twice a month and you have never once let her in.

That is not how you would put it. You would say you had a chat. You would say she popped by. And what actually happened is that she stood on the step and you stood in the frame with one hand on the door, and the two of you talked for eleven minutes, and then she went home.

Eleven minutes is a long time to stand in a doorway. Long enough for a proper conversation. Long enough for the cold to get in and for both of you to be slightly uncomfortable and for neither of you to mention it.

And there is a sentence that has never been said, and it is two words long.

I want to be careful about why, because it is not unfriendliness. You like her. That is obvious from the eleven minutes.

It is that come in is a door that opens onto something else. It means she walks past you into a hall, and looks, briefly, the way everybody does, at whatever is there. And that is the thing being managed, and the doorway is the management, and it has been working for about four years.

So tonight we are looking at what a threshold is, and then the next time she knocks we are going to say two words.

Abide with us, for it is toward evening

There is a moment on the road to Emmaus where two men do the exact opposite of what happens at that door, and it changes the whole day.

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, King James Version)

They constrained him. They pressed. And the reason they gave was not a good one.

It is toward evening. The day is far spent. That is not an argument. That is somebody reaching for whatever is available because they do not want the conversation to end at a door.

You are allowed to press an invitation with a thin reason, and a good excuse has never once been required before somebody could be asked in. Luke 24:29 records two men using the time of day as their entire case, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman with her hand on a door.

Now look at what the invitation actually was.

Abide with us. Stay. Come inside and be here for a while. And nothing at all is recorded about the house, the meal, the state of anything, and the whole rest of that story happens indoors because two men would not let a conversation end on a road.

You have a conversation that does not have to end at a threshold, and a doorway has never once been the natural end of anything. The Spirit of God is the one present where somebody is asked to stay, and it is written in Luke 24:29 that he went in to tarry with them.

What a threshold does

Let me name what the doorway is actually doing, because it is doing three things at once and only one of them is on purpose.

It is protecting the house from being seen. That is the intended job and it works perfectly.

It is also capping the friendship. A relationship conducted at a door has a natural ceiling, and the ceiling is about eleven minutes, and neither person can get past it however much they might want to.

And it is telling her something. Not deliberately. But four years of a door held at that angle communicates a boundary, and a kind person reads a boundary and respects it, which means she has stopped expecting to come in and has adjusted what she brings to the step.

You are able to raise a ceiling that nobody meant to install, and eleven minutes on a step has never once been the most a friendship was capable of. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a conversation off a threshold, and Luke 24:29 has two men refuse to let one end at a door.

And here is the practical fact, and I think it is genuinely encouraging.

She is not going to look at your house. She is going to look at where the chair is.

A person who has been standing outside for four years and is finally asked in has exactly one thing on her mind for the first thirty seconds, and it is where to sit and whether to take her coat off. Nobody comes into a house for the first time and conducts a survey. They are working out the room the way anybody works out a new room, which is entirely practical and lasts about four seconds.

You are inviting somebody who will be looking for a chair rather than at a wall, and a first thirty seconds has never once been an inspection. The Spirit of God is the one present in the first moments inside a house, and it is written in Luke 24:29 that he went in and stayed.

And this, plainly. That house is not a report on you. Not on your standard, not on your care, not on the life you have made in it. A hallway that a woman keeps people out of is not a verdict on the woman, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while she is standing in her own frame with a hand on the door.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a hallway, and what a house looks like has never once been a statement about who lives in it. Luke 24:29 records no description of the house at all in Luke 24, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is standing at the door with you.

Two words, next time

So here is the assignment, and it is two words and one restraint.

The next time she is at the door, say come in and sit down, and do nothing to the room before she does.

Two words, said early, in the first thirty seconds, before the eleven minutes has a chance to start. Come in. Sit down, and point at a chair, because a person who has been on a step for four years will not sit unless she is told where.

Say it plainly and then step back out of the frame. The stepping back matters. A body in a doorway is still a door.

You are able to step out of your own frame, and two words spoken early have never once been harder than eleven minutes standing in the cold. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman in the first thirty seconds of something she has not done in four years, and Luke 24:29 has an invitation pressed with almost no reason attached.

Then the restraint, which is the second half.

Do nothing to the room before she comes in. There will be about three seconds where a hand wants to move something on the way past, and that is the whole habit compressed into one gesture. Let it go by.

Because if the room has to be adjusted first, then come in requires a preparation, and a preparation means it will not happen next time either.

You are letting somebody in on the terms that make it repeatable, and a room adjusted on the way past has never once made a guest more welcome. The Spirit of God is the one present when a woman walks straight to the kitchen without touching anything, and it is written in Luke 24:29 that he went in to tarry with them.