I Run The Evening And I Am Never In It

They told a story on Sunday about something that happened at your own table and you were not in it.

You were in the room. You were about four feet away. You were carrying something at the time and you have no memory of what they are describing.

Everybody laughed and you laughed too, from slightly outside it, the way you have laughed at that table for about six years.

Here is what has been happening and nobody has ever named it, including you.

You run the evening. Somebody has to and it is you, and you are extremely good at it, and the result is that you have not been a person at your own table since about the second child.

The others are guests at something. You are staff at the same thing.

And it is not that anybody has asked you to be. It arrived over years, one job at a time, and there was never an evening where you decided to stop sitting down.

Martha was cumbered about much serving

There is a scene in Luke where a woman doing everything right says something out loud that most women in her position never say.

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. (Luke 10:40, King James Version)

Cumbered about much serving. Loaded down, going round in circles, with real work in her hands.

And notice that nothing in that sentence is a criticism of the work. The meal was needed. Somebody was going to have to make it.

You are a woman allowed to be one of the people, and running an evening has never once been the same thing as being in it. Luke 10:40 describes the state of somebody carrying a load rather than the wrongness of the load, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put that in front of a woman without any charge about the serving.

And read what she actually asks for, because it is the most human line in the chapter.

Bid her therefore that she help me. She wants the other person to come and do the work too.

That is the request a loaded woman makes, and it is completely understandable, and it is not what she is given.

You have been asking for help with a load rather than for a way out of it, and more hands on a job have never once put anybody at a table. The Spirit of God is the one who hears a request and answers a different one, and it is written in Luke 10 that she asked for assistance and was offered something else entirely.

Because what she is offered is the good part, which is the sitting.

Not fewer jobs. Not a better distribution. A chair, and permission to be in the room as one of the people in it.

You are able to receive a chair rather than assistance, and sitting down has never once been a way of leaving somebody else with the work. It is written that one thing is needful and Mary hath chosen that good part, and the Holy Spirit is the one who offers a woman a seat in her own kitchen.

The evening runs without you for ten minutes

Now the practical objection, because it is already forming.

If you sit down, things do not happen. That is true, and I am not going to pretend a household runs itself.

But nothing that needs doing in those ten minutes cannot wait ten minutes. Nothing at all. Check it and you will find it is true.

You have ten minutes of nothing urgent most evenings, and a room left alone for ten minutes has never once cost a household anything. The Spirit of God is the one who checks a fear against a clock, and Luke 10:40 has a woman cumbered by things that were genuinely real.

And there is the harder half, which is not about the jobs.

Sitting down with nothing in your hands is exposing. A woman with a job in her hands has a reason to be at a table. A woman with nothing has to just be there, as herself, with no function.

That is why the jobs have accumulated, and it is worth saying, because it is not laziness and it is not even habit.

You are able to be at a table with no function, and a woman with empty hands has never once had less right to be in that room than anybody else at it. It is written in Luke 10 that the good part was chosen rather than earned, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody sit down without a reason.

And here is what your household gets, which is bigger than what you get.

They get their mother as one of the people. Not the person running it. One of the six, laughing at the same time as everybody else, at the same thing, from inside.

You have something to give that only shows when your hands are empty, and a household has never once been able to be with somebody who was working. The Spirit of God is the one at work in a room where somebody sat down, and Scripture puts the good part on the sitting.

Ten minutes, nothing in your hands

Here is the instruction and the two details are the instruction.

Sit down at the table tonight with nothing in your hands and stay for ten minutes.

Nothing in your hands. Not a cloth, not a plate you are about to take, not a phone. Empty.

You are able to sit with empty hands, and ten minutes with nothing to do have never once been ten minutes of not helping. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in a woman with nothing in her hands, and Luke 10:40 names the cumbering rather than the serving.

And do it while it is still going, which is the part that matters.

Not at the end, when everybody is drifting and the good part is over. In the middle, at about the eighth minute, while the room is still warm.

You have been arriving after everything, and sitting down in the middle has never once been the same thing as sitting down at the end. The Spirit of God is the one who works in an ordinary ten minutes, and it is written that she came to Him in the middle of the serving rather than afterward.

And when the pull comes to get up, which it will at about the third minute, stay.

You are able to stay in a chair through three minutes of an urge, and a job left for seven more minutes has never once been a job that suffered. It is written in Luke 10 that Mary chose the good part and it was not taken away from her, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a woman staying seated.