I Am Home Every Evening And Still Not Here

You are home by six most nights. That is not the problem and it never was.

The problem showed up on a Sunday when somebody asked how the week went and you had to think about it, and what came back was a series of rooms.

You in one. The oldest in another with the door mostly shut. The youngest somewhere with a screen and a blanket. Your wife in the kitchen with the radio on.

Four rooms, one roof, five nights running.

And there is nothing wrong with any of it. Everybody was fine. Everybody was doing something reasonable. Nobody was hiding and nobody was avoiding anybody.

But you did the sum on Sunday and could not name the last evening when two of you sat in the same room with nothing else going.

That is a strange thing to discover about a man who has been home every night since the season turned.

I am not going to tell you that being there does not count. It does. It matters enormously and there are households that would trade a great deal for a man who comes home.

What I am going to do is separate two things that have been sitting under one word.

God setteth the solitary in families

There is a line in the psalms that describes something God does, and it is worth reading slowly because the wording is unexpectedly precise.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains. (Psalm 68:6, King James Version)

He sets the solitary in families. That is the sentence.

Which means solitary is a real condition that God moves people out of, and a family is the place He moves them into. Both halves are His work and both halves are deliberate.

You are a man God set in a family on purpose, and a house with everybody in it has never once been the same thing as a household together. Psalm 68:6 has God setting the solitary in families as an act He performs, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man notice a distinction he has been living inside for months.

Now hold that verse next to your Sunday.

Nobody in your house is solitary in the sense the psalm means. Nobody is abandoned and nobody is unloved. And yet five people spent five evenings alone in adjacent rooms, and something in a man went quiet about it, and the going quiet is the point.

The ache is not an accusation. It is the same instinct the verse describes, working correctly, in a man who has everything he needs to answer it.

You have the whole thing already in the building, and an ache about four rooms has never once been the sign of a family in trouble. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a right instinct in a man on a Sunday afternoon, and it is written in Psalm 68 that setting people together is something God does rather than something a household achieves.

So the ache is information, and the information is small and precise: not the house, the room.

The difference between the building and the room

Here is what has been happening, and it took no fault to arrange.

Being in the house feels like presence. It has the shape of presence. A man is there, a man can be called, and a man would come immediately if anybody called.

Availability is not the same as company. They are different goods and only one of them can be experienced by another person.

You are able to give a thing your family has not had in months, and being available has never once done the work that being in the room does. It is written in Psalm 68 that God sets people into families rather than into buildings, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man the size of a difference he has been treating as no difference at all.

And here is why this is such good news, which I want you to feel before we go any further.

You do not have to arrange anything. You do not have to organize an evening, propose a plan, or find a slot that four people can agree on.

You have to walk about eleven feet and sit down.

You have a twenty minute answer to a five night problem, and eleven feet has never once been too far for a man who is already in the building. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a man out of one room and into another, and Scripture puts the setting of the solitary into families in God's own hands and not in a father's diary.

That is not a trick and it is not a shortcut. It is genuinely the whole of it.

You are eleven feet from the thing you have been missing for five nights, and a short walk across a hall has never once been too ordinary to be the answer. It is written in Psalm 68 that God sets people into families rather than into buildings, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a man out of his own chair.

Go where somebody already is

So the method, and it has one rule that makes it work.

Do not call a meeting. Go where somebody already is.

The instinct of a man who has just noticed four rooms is to fix it centrally: announce a time, gather everybody, make it a thing. That is how a well meant Sunday realization becomes an obligation four people have to attend by Wednesday.

Instead, go and sit in the room somebody is already in. Put nothing in your hands. Do not bring a job.

You are able to arrive without turning your arrival into a summons, and a man sitting down in a room has never once put anybody under pressure. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in an ordinary room when nobody was asked to come, and Psalm 68:6 is God gathering people rather than a father scheduling them.

And then, put something on the table if there is a table, or on the floor if there is not, and say nothing about it.

Twenty minutes of two people in one room with a reason to stay in a chair is the whole event. The thing you set down is only the excuse for it.

You have everything this needs in the house tonight, and twenty minutes in one room has never once been a lesser thing than the evening you were planning instead. It is written that God sets the solitary in families, which is His work and not a project, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a short ordinary sitting weigh what it weighs.

If they carry on with what they were doing, sit anyway and be easy about it.

You are able to be in a room without needing the room to change, and staying twenty minutes has never once required anybody's permission. The Spirit of God is the one who does the setting together while a man is only sitting still, and Psalm 68 puts the bringing out and the setting in on the same list of things God does.