They Want To Come For Christmas

They ask every year, and every year you say something.

The house is too small. We will come to you, it is easier. Maybe next year, when things have settled.

And every one of those has been true at some point, and none of them is true now, and you have been repeating a sentence that expired a while ago because the real sentence cannot be said.

I want to be careful here because family is not like friends. With a friend you can be vague forever. With family there is a history, and there are people in that history who knew your house when it was a different house, and some of them remember your mother's kitchen or your grandmother's table and the standard those set.

So the refusal is not only about the mess. It is about the distance between the house they remember and the house you have, and about the fact that the distance would be visible in about four seconds. That distance is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the person who lives here now.

That is a heavy thing to carry every December.

Given to hospitality

There is a phrase in Romans, in the middle of a long list of practical instructions.

Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. (Romans 12:13, King James Version)

Given to hospitality.

Now I want to look at what that phrase actually points at, because it has been read to a lot of people as a standard they are failing.

The word behind it is about pursuing, about being inclined toward. It describes a disposition, not a facility. It is about which way a person leans, not what their dining room looks like.

And notice its neighbors in that chapter. Distributing to the necessity of saints. Rejoicing with them that rejoice, weeping with them that weep. Every one of those is a movement of the heart toward a person. Not one of them is a description of a room.

You have been reading a verse about direction as though it were a verse about a house.

You are not failing at hospitality, and Romans 12:13 has never once described a room. It is written as a leaning toward people rather than a standard for a dining table, and the Holy Spirit is the one who restores a verse to somebody it has been used against.

You have been given to hospitality this whole time, and every one of those refusals has hurt precisely because of it. The word puts the whole thing in the disposition, and the Spirit of God is the one who sees a leaning that never once got to be expressed.

What they are actually asking for

Let me say the plain thing about family visits, because I think a picture in your head has grown enormous.

They are not asking to tour your house. They are asking to sit in a room with you and be given a cup of something.

And here is the piece that matters. In most families, the person who arrives is far less interested in the state of the place than the person who lives there believes. They are thinking about the drive. They are thinking about whether they have to leave by four. They are thinking about their own life, which is full, the way everybody's is.

I am not saying nobody would notice. Somebody might. There is often one. But that one is not the reason you have been saying no for six years, and if we are honest, that one would find something to say about a spotless house too.

You were never refusing your family, and what you were refusing has never once been a visit. Romans 12:13 puts hospitality in the leaning toward people, and the Spirit of God is the one who shrinks a picture that has been running at four times life size.

So tonight I am not asking you to say yes to anybody. Nothing gets promised.

You are permitted to prepare a route with no invitation attached, and preparing it has never once meant December is decided. It is written that the disposition is what is asked for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a hall cleared for nobody in particular.

Clear the route to the first chair

So here is the whole of it, and it takes fifteen minutes.

Start at your front door. Walk to the first chair somebody could sit in.

Move only what is on that path. Nothing else. Do not enter a room that is not on the route.

Fifteen minutes and then stop.

No calls. No messages. No decisions about Christmas. Tonight is a strip of floor between a door and a chair.

You are able to make one route tonight, and there has never once been an obligation attached to a cleared floor. Romans 12:13 asks for a leaning and not a layout, and the Spirit of God is present in a hallway cleared with nobody expected.