We All Live In The Back Room

Count the rooms in your house and then count the ones your family actually lives in.

There are four of you and you are in the back room. All of you. Every evening. On the smaller couch, with the smaller window, in the room that was never meant to be the main one, with somebody always slightly in somebody's way.

And thirty feet away there is a bigger room with better light and more seats, and it is empty, and it has been empty most evenings for years.

You know why. Everybody knows why, and nobody in the house has ever said it out loud in one sentence, so I will.

The front room is being kept for people who are not here.

It is the room somebody would see. So it stays right, and staying right means nobody in it, because the four of you in a room for an evening does not leave a room right. It leaves cups on things and a blanket on the floor and somebody's shoes in the middle, and that is what four people in a room looks like.

So you all go in the back and the good room waits.

I want to be careful, because there is nothing stupid in that arrangement. It comes from wanting the house to be all right when somebody comes. That is a decent instinct and I am not going to make you feel foolish for having it.

But there is arithmetic underneath it that is worth looking at straight, and then we will do something about it tonight, and the something is ten minutes long.

Better is a dinner of herbs

There is a proverb that does arithmetic on exactly this, and it is blunt about it.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. (Proverbs 15:17, King James Version)

A stalled ox is the best meal available in that world. Herbs are the cheapest thing on the table.

And the proverb does not say both are fine, or that it depends. It sets them against each other and says which one wins, and the winner is the cheap meal in the room with the people in it.

Now notice the thing that decides it. Not the food. Not the room. Where love is. The whole comparison turns on which room the people are actually in with each other.

You are the head of a house where love is, and the standard of a room has never once been the thing that decided which one was better. Proverbs 15:17 puts the whole weight on where the people are rather than what is on the table, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so in a small back room on a Tuesday night.

Now run that proverb over your own floor plan, because it maps exactly.

There is a good room, kept right, with nobody in it. And a smaller room with everybody in it. And the proverb has already said which one of those two is the better room, and it is not the one with the light in it.

Which means your family has been choosing correctly the whole time. Nobody has failed here. The four of you in the back room is the herbs, and the herbs win.

You have been getting the important part right for years, and a smaller room full of your own people has never once been the poorer arrangement. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a crowded room the good one, and it is written in Proverbs 15:17 that love in the room settles the comparison.

Then why move at all

So if the back room already wins, why bother?

Because the proverb is answering a question about which is better, and it is not saying you cannot have both.

There is no verse anywhere that requires the good room to stay empty in order for the love to be real. The herbs beat the ox when you have to choose. Tonight you do not have to choose. The front room is sitting right there, paid for, with the better light and the seats for everybody, and nobody is coming.

You are able to take the people into the better room without losing one thing that made the back room good, and a family has never once been required to choose the smaller space to prove anything. Proverbs 15:17 measures by where love is rather than by the size of the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who walks a whole household through a doorway.

And I want to name the real cost of the arrangement, because it is not about comfort.

Your children are learning something in that back room every single night, and they are learning it without a word being said. They are learning that the best of what this family has is for other people. That the good things get held back for an audience. That the family itself gets the second best of what it owns.

They will not remember being told that. They will remember which room they were in.

You are teaching a household what it is worth every evening, and a family has never once needed to be given the leftovers of its own house. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a father to open the better door, and Proverbs 15:17 refuses to rank a room above the people sitting in it.

And this, so it is said plainly. The state of any room in that house is not a report on the man who pays for it. Whatever the front room looks like after four people spend an evening in it, that is what a lived-in room looks like, and nothing about it is a mark against you.

You are looking at evidence rather than at a mess, and cups on a table have never once been a verdict on the father of the house. The written word puts the whole matter into where love is in Proverbs 15:17, and the same Spirit who wrote that has no complaint about a blanket on a floor.

Ten minutes, all of you, in there

So here is the assignment, and I want it kept small on purpose.

Take the family into the front room for ten minutes tonight, sit down in it together, and move one chair before you all leave.

Not a family meeting. Not an announcement. Do not stand in the hallway and say that things are changing in this house, because that makes everybody brace and somebody will refuse on principle.

Take whatever is happening into the other room. If somebody is watching something, watch it in there. If somebody is eating, eat it in there. Ten minutes.

You are moving an ordinary evening thirty feet and nothing else is being asked, and ten minutes in the better room has never once required the room to be prepared for it. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in an unannounced move down a hallway, and Proverbs 15:17 keeps the whole comparison on where the people are.

Somebody will be uncomfortable. Probably you. There will be a strong pull to put a coaster under something and to move a bag off a chair, and the pull is the four years of keeping the room, and it will pass.

Then, before you all leave, move one chair. Turn it so it faces the couch. Pull it out of the corner it has been placed in for looks and put it where a person would actually sit.

Leave the room slightly wrong on purpose. That is the whole point. A room that is slightly wrong is a room somebody used.

You are making the best room in your house usable by putting one chair where a body goes, and a room arranged for looking at has never once been arranged for living in. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a household spreads out into the space it has, and it is written in Proverbs 15:17 that a cheap meal where love is beats the best table in the country.