The Room Is Set For A Photograph

The cushions are at an angle and it was on purpose.

So is the stack of three books on the table, with the biggest at the bottom. So is the thing on the shelf that is turned about fifteen degrees, and the throw on the chair that is arranged to look as though it landed there.

That room is set. Not tidy. Set. The way a room is set for a photograph, with an implied camera standing in the doorway at about chest height.

And no photograph is being taken. Not today, not ever, and not by anybody.

I want to be careful about this before anything else, because there is a mocking version of this article and it would be useless.

You have a genuine eye. That is the first thing. A woman who can arrange three books and a turned object so that a corner reads well is doing something that most people cannot do, and it is a real skill and it is not vanity.

The problem is not the eye. The problem is what the eye is currently working for.

At the moment it is working for a viewer who is not in the building. And every arrangement in that room is addressed to a person who is not coming, which means the woman who actually lives there is looking at a set rather than at a room.

Not to be seen of men

There is a warning in Matthew about doing things for an audience, and the phrase in it is precise.

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 6:1, King James Version)

To be seen of them. That is the condition He names.

You are dealing with something Christ named directly, and an audience has never once been a small thing to be working for. Matthew 6:1 puts the whole problem into who a thing is done for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman standing in a room she has set.

Now notice what He does not say, because it matters here.

He does not say do not give. The alms are fine. He does not say the action is wrong or that it should stop.

He says take heed about the audience. The same act, done for a different viewer, is a different act, and the whole of the warning is about which viewer.

You are able to keep the act and change the viewer, and an eye for a room has never once been the thing that needed correcting. The Spirit of God is the one who redirects an audience rather than stopping an action, and it is written in Matthew 6:1 that the warning is about being seen rather than about the giving.

The viewer in the doorway

Now let me be concrete about the viewer, because naming her is most of the work.

There is somebody standing in the doorway of that room. She is not real, she has never been described out loud to anybody, and she has been there for years.

She notices the angle on the cushions. She would notice if the books were in the wrong order. She is the reason the throw is arranged rather than thrown, and she is the reason you feel something when a child puts a cup down without a coaster.

And she is not your friend, and she is not your mother, and she is nobody you have ever met. She is an assembled viewer, made out of pictures and other people's houses and something somebody said once, and she is standing in your doorway all day.

You are able to notice who is standing in that doorway, and an assembled viewer has never once been anybody who was actually coming. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman who she has been arranging for, and Matthew 6:1 puts the whole weight on which audience a thing is done before.

And here is what she costs, and it is not the arranging.

She costs the use of the room.

Because a room set for her cannot be used by anybody. Somebody sitting down in it disturbs it. A child in it is a hazard. Your own evening in it involves putting the cushions back afterward, and so the room is at its best when it is empty and slightly worse every time a person is in it.

You have a beautiful room whose condition is damaged by human beings.

You are able to have a room that improves when people are in it, and a set room has never once been a room that gets better with company. The Spirit of God is the one who is present where people actually sit, and it is written in Matthew 6:1 that a thing done for the wrong viewer loses what it was for.

And this, plainly, in these words. That room is not a report on you. Not on your taste, which is real, and not on whether you care too much, and not on anything you have done wrong. A staged room is not a verdict on the woman who staged it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a front room, and an eye for arrangement has never once been a fault in the person who has it. Matthew 6:1 puts the correction on the audience in Matthew 6, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing left out, overnight

So here is the assignment, and the overnight part is the whole of it.

Leave one thing out tonight that you would normally move before the room was right, and let the room stay that way overnight.

One thing. Whatever is in your hand at about half past nine. The cup, the book, the thing a child left, the throw as it actually landed rather than as it should be.

Leave it. Do not adjust the cushions on your way out. Go up.

You are able to leave a room in the state it ended the day in, and a cup on a table has never once ruined an arrangement made by somebody with a genuine eye. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman leaves a room used rather than set, and Matthew 6:1 asks about the audience rather than about the action.

And then the overnight part, which is where the difficulty actually is.

It has to stay that way overnight. Not until the end of the evening. Overnight, so that you come down to it in the morning.

Because the arranging happens on the way out and the way in, and a room that gets reset before bed is a room whose first appearance in the morning is for her. And a room that stayed the way it ended is a room whose first appearance in the morning is a record of a person having been alive in it yesterday.

That will be uncomfortable at seven in the morning. Let it be uncomfortable, and put the kettle on, and leave it a bit longer.

You are letting a morning start with a record of a life rather than a set, and a room that was used yesterday has never once been a worse room to come down to. The Spirit of God is the one present at seven in the morning in a room nobody reset, and it is written in Matthew 6:1 that the whole question is who the thing is being done for.