She Rang For Nothing

She has the first line ready before it rings.

That is how she phones her sister, and it has been that way for about fifteen years. She works out the reason first. The hospital letter came, or the boiler is booked in, or their mother has said something that needs relaying. Then she rings, and she leads with it, and once the reason is delivered they can talk about anything at all for forty minutes. But the reason goes first. The reason is the ticket.

On a Tuesday afternoon in October she is at the sink with the window open, potatoes in the bowl, a ball being kicked against a fence somewhere behind the garden. Her phone goes off on the windowsill, face up, and it is her sister.

She dries one hand and answers with the alarm already climbing in her, because if her sister is ringing then something has happened, and she starts running through which thing it might be.

"Nothing," her sister says. "Nothing's happened. I just wanted to hear what your kitchen sounds like."

And she stands there with a wet hand and the tap still running and she does not know what to do with a phone call that has no reason in it. That is the thing she tells people about afterwards. Not the affection. The disorientation. Fifteen years of paying at the door, and it turns out there was never a door.

You do this. Somewhere in you there is a small clerk who writes the agenda before you pray. A request, a confession, a thank you list, some item of business that justifies the interruption, because turning up with nothing feels like turning up empty and you would rather not waste anybody's afternoon. The clerk has been in post a long time and he is very diligent and he has never once been paid.

There was never a door

Where I keep watch, the houses have two ways in. There is a front door, which has a bell, and which strangers use, and where you stand and wait and are shown through. And then there is the back, which is not really a door at all so much as a habit: you come round the side of the house, past the boots, and in you go, and nobody looks up, and somebody says your name into a cupboard without turning round.

Everything about a household is contained in the difference between those two ways in. The front door is for people whose welcome is being decided. The back is for people whose welcome was decided long ago and is not up for review this afternoon.

Paul wrote one sentence about this that is so short people read straight past it. He had been talking about two groups of people who were once a long way from each other and from God, and about a wall between them that Christ pulled down, and then he lands it.

For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.Ephesians 2:18

Three parties in eleven words. Christ is the way in. The Spirit is what carries you. The Father is who you arrive at. Nothing in that sentence is a procedure you perform, and nothing in it is a fee.

So hear it said over you, and let it be said plainly. You have access. Not access pending, not access under review, not access on the days your week has gone well. It is written down in the letter as a present possession, and His Spirit is the very thing carrying you through, which means the coming is not something you generate at your end at all.

Now, I know what is sitting underneath the clerk and his agenda, and I want to name it before I go any further, because unnamed things run a life from the back of the room. It is not that you think God is unwilling. Most of us know the doctrine. It is that somewhere along the way you learned that presence has to be earned by usefulness, and that a person who arrives with nothing to offer is a person taking up someone's time. Maybe you learned it early. Maybe you learned it at work, or in a church, or from a season when you were only wanted when you were producing. Wherever it came from, it went in deep, and it is exhausting, and it has been costing you the best part of your prayers for years.

And I am not going to tell you that you misunderstood something and should have known better. The feeling of needing permission is not a fault in your theology. It is a bruise. Bruises are not corrected; they are healed, slowly, by being handled gently and often.

Here is what is true while the bruise is still there. You are in the household today, and you were in it yesterday when you did not pray at all. The word does not attach your standing to your performance in it, and the Holy Spirit is not a doorman weighing up whether today's approach was sincere enough to let through.

So what do you actually do with a mouth and an open house?

You speak. That is the appointed way, and Jesus set the required measure of faith so low that the men listening to Him argued about it. He never said bring a bigger quantity of anything. He said the mountain is spoken to (Matthew 17:20), and what is true of a mountain is true of a doorway: the thing gets said out loud, in a real room, in your own voice, and that is what turns a private wish into a word.

You have the standing to speak it. Not because your record is good this month, but because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and Scripture calls people in that position children in a house rather than staff on a rota. His Spirit is what makes the sentence live when it leaves your mouth.