Nothing At The Door

There is a house on the Bracken road with the porch light on every evening and Della stood outside it for eleven minutes in October before she went in.

It is not a formal thing. Sylvie and Tom have had people in on a Wednesday for about six years and it started with three and is now anywhere between nine and twenty, and there is soup, and somebody usually brings bread, and about half past nine people start going home.

Della had been told about it four separate times by four different people, which is how a small place works.

And she stood at the bottom of the steps in the dark doing the thing she has done at every door in her life.

She was working out whether she qualified.

Not out loud, and not in those words. What it feels like from the inside is a series of very reasonable questions. Do they actually mean me. Am I the sort of person this is for. Will I know anybody. If I have not come for six years is it odd to come now. Is there a thing you bring.

Eleven minutes on a dark step with a porch light on and her hands in her sleeves.

She went in because Tom came out to get logs and saw her and said, "Oh good," and held the door.

She said afterwards, and she has said it more than once, that the worst part was not the eleven minutes. The worst part was going in and finding out how completely unnecessary they had been. Nobody looked up in any particular way. Somebody moved along a bench. Sylvie asked if she wanted soup in a bowl or a mug because they had run out of bowls.

Nothing at the door. There was nothing at the door at all.

And she said, sitting in her car afterwards, that she had a very clear thought which was: I have been doing this with God for about thirty years.

You have probably stood on that step. Not necessarily at a house. At a church, at a conversation, at a prayer you did not say because you were not sure you were the sort of person who gets to say it. And in all that time nobody has ever told you plainly what was actually at the door.

The Calling Was Not According To Anything You Did

There is a sentence in a letter Paul wrote to a younger man from prison that settles the doorway question in one clause.

"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began."2 Timothy 1:9

Not according to our works.

That is the clause that empties the step. Whatever it is you have been standing outside checking, it is not the criterion, because the sentence names what the criterion actually was, and it was His own purpose.

And then it goes further and puts a date on it. Before the world began. The arrangement predates every single thing anybody could have brought to it.

You were called on a basis that was settled before you existed to affect it. 2 Timothy 1 names the criterion and then dates it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line from a prison letter and puts it down on a dark step under a porch light.

That is why the eleven minutes are unnecessary rather than merely unfortunate. It is not that Della was being too hard on herself. It is that she was checking against a standard that was never the standard, and would have got the same answer whatever she found, because the door was not that kind of door.

You have been assessing yourself against a criterion that Scripture names and then rules out. That is what the written word says about how anybody was ever included, and it is the Spirit of God who takes thirty years of a step off somebody in one clause.

Nothing Is Being Asked At This Door Either

Now say it flat, the way it would get said in a kitchen, because a page about a door with nothing at it should have nothing at it.

There is no request in this article. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no habit, no membership, no next step, no sign-up sheet, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all, this one included.

If you are short at the moment, and a lot of people reading this will be, then there is nothing here aimed at you sideways either. No small amount hinted at. No suggestion about giving time instead of money. No observation about what people in your situation often find helpful.

That is not a technique. It is simply what this whole site is.

You have nothing to produce at this door. It is written that by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, which removes the contribution entirely rather than reducing it, and His Spirit is the one who has been standing on the step with you through all of the years you spent working it out.

And you are as welcome tonight as you would be after any amount of anything, because the sentence in Timothy settles it before the world began, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from becoming another doorway with a question at it.