I Shut It Before They Come

Somebody is coming at seven.

And at about a quarter to, without thinking about it, without making a decision anywhere you could point to, you go down the hall and you close that door.

I want you to notice something about that sentence. There is no moment in it where you decided.

You did not stand in the hall weighing it. You did not think about what they might see. Your body did it, the way a hand goes up when something comes at your face, and by the time you were aware of anything the door was shut and you were back in the kitchen.

That is what I want to talk about tonight. Not the room. The reflex.

Because a reflex you cannot see is a reflex you cannot decide about, and something has been making choices in this house on your behalf for a long time without ever asking you.

They heard the voice of the LORD God

There is a moment in Genesis that everybody knows and almost nobody reads slowly.

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8, King James Version)

Read what happened in that garden and read what did not.

They hid. That part everybody knows. What people skip is what God then did, which was to keep walking, and to call, and to ask a question. He did not leave. He did not announce the hiding was disgraceful. He came into the garden in the cool of the day exactly as He always had.

You have been closing a door inside a house He was already walking in, and no reflex here has ever once changed who was present. Genesis 3:8 puts the voice in the garden in the cool of the day exactly as it always was, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a habit from altering a single fact about the room.

The hiding was the new thing. The walking was the old thing, and the walking did not change.

And the second thing people skip is that hiding was a reflex there too. Nobody in that account holds a meeting about whether to hide. Something happened and they were among the trees.

You are not devious, and Genesis 3:8 has never once presented hiding as a scheme rather than as a reflex. It is written that the voice kept walking in the garden while they were among the trees, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that continuing presence real to somebody who has been hiding without deciding to.

You have been hidden from people, and never once for a single second from the one already walking in this house. The word puts God in the garden in the cool of the day with the hiding already underway, and the Spirit of God is the one who is inside a house at a quarter to seven when a door gets closed.

A reflex is not a lie

Now I want to take one accusation off you, because I think it is the one that stings most.

There is a question that has been circling for a while now. Whether the version of yourself that people get in your front room is a fake, and whether closing that door makes somebody a person who deceives.

A reflex is not a lie. Nobody calls a flinch a lie. Nobody says that a person who pulls their hand back from something hot has misrepresented themselves.

You are not a fraud in your own front room, and a body protecting an evening has never once been the same thing as a person deceiving a friend. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the word dishonest off somebody who was only trying to get through a Tuesday, and Genesis 3:8 records the hiding without ever calling it a scheme.

What that door protects is not your reputation. It is your capacity to get through an evening. Because if the door is open, you will spend two hours running a second conversation in your head about what they can see, and there will be nothing left of you for the first conversation, which is the one with your friend in it.

So the door is not deceit. It is a person conserving what little is left, and that is a completely different charge. The room behind it is a record of what a season cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman who lives here.

You were never lying to your friends, and closing a door before somebody arrives has never once made you a fraud in your own home. Genesis 3:8 records a reflex and then a God who keeps walking anyway, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the word dishonest away from a person who was only trying to survive an evening.

But a reflex can be looked at. That is the whole difference between a reflex and a decision, and looking at it is what turns it into something you can hold.

You are permitted to watch yourself close that door tonight, and watching it has never once obligated you to stop. It is written that God came calling into a garden where people were already hidden, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person look at their own reflex without flinching from it as well.

Two minutes, with nobody coming

So here is the whole of it, and the timing matters.

Do this on a night when nobody is coming. That is important. Not before a visit. Not as preparation. On an ordinary evening when the house is yours.

Open that door. Put the light on. Stand there for two minutes.

Touch nothing. Move nothing. Begin nothing. Just be in the house with the door open and nobody arriving.

Then close it, and stop.

You are able to have that door open for two minutes tonight, and having it open has never once required anybody to be ready to see it. Genesis 3:8 has the voice walking in the garden with nobody prepared for it, and the Spirit of God is present in an open door in an empty house at nine in the evening.