They Are Coming Over On Saturday

You said yes on Tuesday and the list started about four seconds later.

Not a written list. The other kind. The one that begins running the moment somebody says they will come over, and continues, quietly, underneath everything else you do all week.

The hall needs doing. They will see the kitchen from where they sit. That thing on the landing has been there since Christmas. Should I get something in. What if they want to use the bathroom.

And you have been carrying that since Tuesday, and it is now Thursday, and something you were pleased about when you agreed to it has become a thing you are slightly dreading, and you have not told anybody that either.

Here is what I am not going to do.

I am not going to tell you to tidy up. Not one word of that here.

Because if I gave you a tidying plan, I would be agreeing with the list. I would be confirming that yes, the house does need to reach a standard before a person may be admitted, and the only disagreement between me and the list is about method. And that would leave you exactly where you started, doing the same performance, just more efficiently.

The list is not wrong about the state of your hall. It is wrong about what a visit is.

And that is worth going after, because you are going to have people over for the rest of your life, and the list is going to run every single time, and getting the hall right once does not touch it.

Entertained angels unawares

There is a line in Hebrews about having people in, and the detail in it is the whole answer.

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

Some have entertained angels unawares.

Unawares. They did not know. That is the entire mechanism of the sentence, and it is doing something for you specifically.

If you had known an angel was coming, you would have prepared. Anybody would. The house would have been got ready, and the whole thing would have been a performance, and the visit would have been about your competence.

The verse describes the opposite. People took somebody in without knowing who it was, which means without preparation, which means whatever state the house was in is the state it was in. And that is the occasion scripture chose to record as the one where something extraordinary was happening.

The unpreparedness is not incidental to the story. It is the condition of it.

And notice the word used for the visitor. Strangers. Not friends who will understand. People who do not know you, who have no context for your house, who cannot be told about the plans you have for the hall. The most exposing possible version, and that is what is being commended.

So the practice named in that verse is not hospitality as an event. It is letting somebody in.

Letting somebody in is the whole of what is asked, and it has never once been conditional on the state of the hall. Hebrews 13:2 puts the extraordinary visit inside a house nobody had prepared, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an occasion off a woman and hands her back a doorway.

What the list is actually protecting

Here is the honest part, and it is not about housework at all.

You are not worried they will judge the hall. Say it out loud and you will hear how unlikely it is that anybody coming on Saturday cares about your hall.

You are worried about what the hall says about you.

And underneath that there is usually one specific belief. That you are behind. That other women have this in hand and you do not. That if somebody sees the house as it actually is, on an ordinary Thursday, they will understand something about you that you have been managing.

That is why tidying does not settle it. You can clear the whole house and the feeling returns for the next visit, because the feeling was never generated by the mess. The mess is just where it lands.

And here is the cost, which is the reason this matters more than a tidy hall.

People come over less. Not because you refuse. Because saying yes has a price attached now, and something in you counts that price before answering, and slowly you become someone who is often busy that weekend.

The list is not protecting your reputation. It is thinning out your life.

What is being defended here is not a room, and the mess has never once been what generated the feeling. The written word commends taking in a stranger unprepared, and the Spirit of God is the one who reaches the belief sitting underneath a tidy hall.

Let one person in, as it is

So here is the assignment.

Let one person in this week without doing anything to the room first.

One person. Somebody safe, not the hardest person you know, because this is a first attempt and there is no virtue in making it heroic.

And nothing beforehand. No quick pass through the front room. No shutting of doors. No moving the pile on the stairs. Not one action taken between the knock and the opening.

And do not say anything about it. This is the discipline, and it is harder than the not tidying.

Do not say sorry about the state of the place. Do not say you have not had a chance. Do not explain the thing on the landing. Every one of those sentences is the performance surviving the loss of its props, and the apology does more work than the mess ever could, because it tells them there was a standard and you missed it.

Just let them in and put the kettle on.

Watch what happens, which is nothing. They will not look. Nobody has ever walked into a friend's house and conducted a survey. They came to see you and they are mostly thinking about themselves, which is the ordinary and merciful truth about people.

It is possible to let somebody in exactly as things are, and the apology has never once been required by anybody standing at your door. Hebrews 13:2 records the visit that mattered happening in a house nobody had made ready, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman opening a door she has not prepared behind.