There Is A Blanket Over The Couch

There is a blanket on your couch and it is not for warmth.

It is spread across the seat and tucked down at the back, and it goes on every morning, and it comes off when you want to actually use the couch, and it goes straight back on afterward.

Underneath it there is a couch that four people have sat on every evening for nine years. There are marks on it. One arm is worn through in a patch. The cushion on the left has gone down further than the other two because that is where you sit.

And the blanket is there so that if somebody comes, nobody sees it.

I want to say the true thing about that blanket before anything else, because it is the whole subject of this article.

That couch is the most used object in your house. More than the table, more than the beds, more than anything. Every single evening of nine years has been spent on it, by everybody who lives here, and every mark on it was put there by a person you love doing something ordinary.

And it is the one thing in the house you cover up.

Tonight we are going to change the status of that couch. Not by replacing it and not by hiding it better. By putting things on it on purpose, in front of people, and by changing what the blanket is doing.

Charity shall cover the multitude of sins

There is a line in Peter about covering that is worth reading carefully, because it means the opposite of what the blanket is doing.

And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8, King James Version)

Charity covers. That is the phrase everybody knows.

But look at what kind of covering it is, because it matters enormously. This is not concealment. It is not hiding a thing from view in case somebody sees. It is love placed over something that is genuinely there, by people who all know it is there, and going on loving anyway.

You are living under the kind of covering God actually describes, and covering something out of love has never once been the same act as hiding it in case somebody looks. 1 Peter 4:8 puts the covering inside a household that already knows, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates that from a blanket on a couch at ten in the morning.

Now hold that beside your living room.

The blanket is doing the second thing. It is not love over a known thing. It is concealment aimed at a visitor who has not arrived and may never arrive, and it is switched on every single morning by a woman in her own house.

Which means, every morning, before anybody has done anything at all, the most-used object in your home gets categorized as something to be hidden.

You have a house that is not under inspection, and a worn cushion has never once been the kind of thing charity was talking about. The Spirit of God is the one who covers a household in love rather than in case, and it is written in 1 Peter 4:8 that the covering belongs among ourselves.

What the marks actually are

Let me name what is under that blanket, item by item, because it is worth being specific.

The worn patch on the arm is where a child sat sideways for about four years. The dip in the left cushion is nine years of you at the end of a day. The stain near the back is from something somebody spilled during a night that is probably a family story by now.

Those are not damage. Those are the record of the thing that has actually happened in that room.

You are looking at a record rather than at a problem, and nine years of a family sitting somewhere has never once been a thing to be hidden. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads a household's marks as a history, and 1 Peter 4:8 puts fervent love among people rather than a screen between them.

And here is what the blanket costs, which is not obvious and is real.

The couch is now provisional. It is on its way out, in some sense, permanently, without ever leaving. And a room with a provisional couch in it is a room in a house that is waiting for its real version to arrive.

Your family sits every evening on a piece of furniture the house has decided is temporary, and they can feel that even though nobody could put it into words.

You are able to end a nine year provisional status with one decision, and a couch that a family loves has never once needed to be on its way out. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a household into what it actually has, and it is written in 1 Peter 4:8 that love among a people is the covering, not a cloth over furniture.

And this, plainly, because it is the ground under the whole thing.

That couch is not a report on you. Not on your housekeeping, not on your money, not on the life you have built for four people. A worn arm on a nine year old couch is not a verdict on the woman who has sat on it every evening, and I am not going to let it be read that way while she is sitting there.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from that living room, and what a couch looks like has never once been a statement about the family on it. 1 Peter 4:8 locates the covering in love among a household in 1 Peter 4, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Three things on purpose, and the blanket folded

So here is the assignment and it has two halves.

Take three things that do not match and set them on the couch and the table on purpose tonight, and leave the blanket folded over one arm instead of spread flat.

First the three things. A cushion from another room that does not go with the couch. A book somebody is reading. A mug or a bowl or whatever is in daily use. Put them there, arranged, spaced, on purpose.

They will not match the couch or each other. That is deliberate. A room that is used has unmatched things in it, and this is the first time in nine years that anything has been placed on that couch by choice rather than dropped there and then cleared.

You are placing things on a couch on purpose rather than clearing them off it, and three unmatched objects have never once made a room look worse than a blanket over the seat. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman decides something about her own living room, and 1 Peter 4:8 puts love among a people rather than a cover between them.

Then the blanket. Do not throw it away. Do not put it in a cupboard. Fold it and put it over one arm of the couch.

That is a genuine change, and it is a small one, and both of those are true at the same time. Folded on the arm, a blanket is a blanket. Spread over the seat, it is a cover. Same object, entirely different job.

And the couch underneath it is now visible, in your own house, to you, before anybody else ever sees it.

You are letting a piece of your own furniture be seen by the person who lives with it, and a folded blanket has never once been too small a change to end nine years of covering. The Spirit of God is the one present when a household stops hiding from itself, and it is written in 1 Peter 4:8 that fervent charity among ourselves is what does the covering.