They Are Coming Over On Saturday

They are coming on Saturday and it has been sitting on you since Tuesday.

Not the people. You like the people. That is what makes this strange enough to be worth an article, because the dread and the fondness are pointed at exactly the same afternoon.

There is a list. Nobody wrote it down. It assembled itself somewhere around Tuesday lunchtime and it has been adding items ever since, and every item on it is real. The thing in the hall. The room they will walk past. The one you have been meaning to do something about since the spring.

And the list has a deadline on it now, which is Saturday at two.

I want to say the thing at the start, because everything else in this article depends on it being said clearly.

The list is not about Saturday. The list has been there for years. Saturday just gave it a date.

That is why it feels so urgent and why it will feel exactly as urgent before the next visit, and the one after that, no matter what gets done this week. A list that has been quietly running for four years does not get finished on a Friday night.

So we are going to do something else instead, and it is going to sound wrong at first.

We are going to leave the list entirely alone.

Entertained angels unawares

There is a line in Hebrews about having people in that ends somewhere nobody expects.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2, King James Version)

Unawares. That is the word the whole verse turns on.

They did not know. Whoever they were, they were not ready, because being ready requires knowing, and the entire point of the sentence is that they had no idea what was walking through the door.

You are able to receive somebody without having prepared for them, and an unprepared house has never once been the thing that stopped anything. Hebrews 13:2 puts the whole weight on people who did not know and could not have got ready, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman with a list running since Tuesday.

Now think about what that means practically, because it is more than a nice observation.

Every one of those occasions happened in an ordinary house on an ordinary day. Nobody had done anything. There had been no notice. The house was in whatever state a house is in when nobody is expecting anybody.

And that is the setting the writer of Hebrews picks to say something enormous about.

You have a house that is exactly as ready as the ones in that verse were, and a room that nobody prepared has never once been outside what God does in a house. The Spirit of God is the one who moves through unremarkable afternoons, and it is written in Hebrews 13:2 that it happened to people who did not know.

What the list is actually protecting

Now let me name what the list is doing, because it is doing something real and it deserves respect before it gets put down.

It is protecting you from a moment. One specific moment, about ninety seconds after they arrive, when somebody looks around while taking a coat off.

That moment has happened before. Somewhere back there it went badly, or somebody said something, and the list is a very sensible piece of engineering built to make sure it does not happen again.

You are being protected by something you built for a good reason, and a list that runs before every visit has never once been a foolish thing to have. The Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle about why a thing was built, and Hebrews 13:2 puts the whole matter on the receiving rather than on the room.

But look at the arithmetic of it, because the arithmetic is not good.

The list costs you four days. Every visit. The moment it is protecting you from lasts ninety seconds and may not happen at all. And when the list is finished, if it ever is, the ninety seconds still happens, because a list cannot control what another person notices.

Four days of your life, spent in advance, on an outcome nobody was ever able to guarantee.

You are able to stop spending four days on something nobody can promise, and a room got ready has never once been able to decide what another person sees. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a transaction that never worked, and it is written in Hebrews 13:2 that the people in that verse had no chance to prepare at all.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on your standard, not on your care, not on the life you have built inside it. A room a woman dreads being seen 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 hall on a Thursday.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a front room, and the state of a house has never once been a statement about who lives in it. Hebrews 13:2 puts the whole weight on the entertaining in Hebrews 13, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Let one person in, as it is

So here is the assignment, and it has two halves and the second one is the one that changes the ninety seconds.

Let one person in this week without doing anything to the room first, and sit down with them within the first two minutes.

First half. Nothing. Not Friday night, not Saturday morning, not a quick pass at half past one.

You will find yourself doing something at about one o'clock without having decided to. If that happens, stop when you notice and do not turn it into a failure.

You are able to let a room be seen exactly as it stands, and a house on an ordinary Saturday has never once needed a rehearsal to be a house. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a woman still on a Friday night, and Hebrews 13:2 records people receiving somebody with no notice whatsoever.

Second half, and this is the mechanism.

Sit down with them within the first two minutes.

Not after the coats. Not after the kettle. Not after a circuit of the kitchen doing three things while they stand in the hall. Get everybody into the room and sit down, fast, before the ninety seconds has anywhere to happen.

Because the looking-around moment needs a gap to live in, and the gap is the time between arriving and everybody being seated. Close the gap and the moment mostly does not occur, and nobody in the room will ever know why the afternoon went easily.

You are closing the gap the dreaded moment lives in, and two minutes has never once been too short a time to change the shape of an afternoon. The Spirit of God is the one present in the first two minutes of a visit, and it is written in Hebrews 13:2 that some have entertained angels without knowing anything about it in advance.