The Parcel At The Door

Let us count the arranging, because I do not think anybody has.

You have a place things get left. You have a note. You know which driver knocks and which one does not. You have a way of getting to the collection point that involves a bus. You have said the words leave it in the porch more times than you have said most sentences in your life.

And you did all of that because there was a version of this where somebody stands at your door and the door has to open and they can see into the hall.

Here is what I want to point out, gently. The exhausting part of your week is not the deliveries. It is the management. It is being the person who has thought about the front door of their house every single day for two years.

And that management is invisible. Nobody has ever thanked you for it, because from the outside nothing is happening. From the outside you are a person who receives parcels like everybody else.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers

There is a line in Hebrews that gets used to make people feel bad, and it should never be used that way.

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

I want to take the pressure off that verse before we use it, because it has been used badly on people in your position for a long time.

Notice the word unawares. The whole point of that line is that the people in it did not know. They were not running a hospitality ministry. They were not prepared. Abraham was sitting in a tent door in the heat of the day, and the passage that this refers back to has him running out to three men with no notice at all.

Nobody in that story had a clean house.

And notice what the entertaining actually consisted of. Water for feet. Bread. A place to sit under a tree. It is almost entirely about a threshold and a chair, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of the rooms behind.

You are not disqualified from any of this, and Hebrews 13:2 has never once made a prepared house the condition of it. It is written that they entertained unawares, which rules out preparation as the qualifying thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a beautiful verse back from the people who have been using it as a stick.

You have been keeping a whole door shut against a verse that only ever asked for a threshold. The word puts the whole account at a tent door in the heat of the day, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ordinary doorway enough.

One route is a different thing from a clean house

Now the practical piece, and it is the reason this article exists.

There is an enormous difference between a house being ready and a route being clear.

A house being ready is a project. It is weeks. It is the whole thing that has been refused for good reasons, and I am not asking for it. A house is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the man who lives in it.

You are able to make a corridor tonight, and a corridor has never once been a smaller version of hospitality. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a threshold sufficient where a whole house had been demanded, and Hebrews 13:2 keeps the entertaining at a tent door with bread and water and nothing else.

A route is a corridor. It is the path from your front door to the first chair a person could sit in. It might be four steps. It might be the hall and one turn.

And a route can be cleared in fifteen minutes, tonight, without touching a single room.

Once the route exists, the door becomes a door again. Somebody can stand in it. Somebody could even step inside it. And every one of those things becomes possible without any of the rooms changing at all.

You were never unable to have somebody at your door, and what was missing has never once been a whole house. Hebrews 13:2 puts the entertaining at a threshold with bread and water rather than in an inspected home, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a corridor enough in a place where a whole house had been demanded.

So tonight is a route, and only a route.

You are permitted to prepare four steps and nothing else, and four steps have never once been a token version of hospitality. It is written that the men were met at a tent door, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a cleared hallway that leads nowhere in particular.

Clear the path to the first chair

So here is the whole of what I am asking, and it has an end in it.

Start at your front door. Walk to the first chair a person could sit in. Notice what is in the way on that path.

Move only those things. Not near them. Only what is actually on the route.

Fifteen minutes. Then stop, whether it is finished or not.

You are not doing this because somebody is coming. Nobody is coming. You are doing it so that the door stops being a thing you manage.

You are able to make a route tonight, and a route has never once obligated you to use it. Hebrews 13:2 rests the whole thing on a threshold, and the Spirit of God is present in a cleared hallway on a night when nobody is expected.