Home, Where Nobody Says It

The door sticks slightly in wet weather and he has been meaning to plane it for two years and it has become a joke, mostly his.

He gets in at about twenty to seven. The house is going. There is homework at the table and something on the stove and a conversation happening between two rooms that he arrives in the middle of, and a child says hi and does not look up, and his wife says there is a thing about Thursday, and he says right, and puts his bag down.

Nobody asks about the day.

And here is what must be established before anything else, or this article turns into something ugly. His family is not cold. His wife is not neglectful and his children are not spoiled. He would fight anybody who said so. What is actually happening is that his day is not describable in the four minutes available at twenty to seven, and everybody has learned that, and so the question stopped being asked years ago, and the not asking is efficient rather than unkind.

He has thought about this properly and does not blame anybody. He has also, twice, tried to answer the question that was not asked, and both times heard himself start and stopped after two sentences because he could see it landing nowhere and did not want to make anybody perform interest.

So he comes in and puts the bag down and joins whatever is happening, and is glad to be there, and it is a good house.

And somewhere in the first ninety seconds, most nights, there is a very small thing that he has never named. It is not disappointment. Nothing has been withheld. It is more like a door closing on a room he was in all day and nobody in this house having any idea the room exists.

He is forty six. Tomorrow he goes back into that room, and comes home at twenty to seven, and it will be the same, and he does not want it to be different because the alternative is a household that performs interest and that would be worse.

You will have your own twenty to seven. The door you come in through into a house that is glad you are there and cannot come where you have been.

What God is described as doing, and how loudly

There is a verse in one of the small prophets that is so unlike the register of the rest of the book that people sometimes check the reference twice.

Zephaniah is three chapters and most of it is severe. And then, near the end:

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.Zephaniah 3:17

Four things happen in that sentence and every one of them has God as the subject.

He is in your midst. He saves. He rejoices over you. He exults over you with loud singing.

And the last one is the one that matters at twenty to seven, because of the volume. Loud singing. The word is not quiet approval. It is not a dignified pleasure. It is somebody making noise about a person, which is the single least likely image of God most people carry and is the one Zephaniah actually wrote down.

So take it plainly: you are somebody who is made noise about, and that is what Zephaniah 3 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a line from a severe little book and lays it down in a hallway where the door sticks in wet weather.

Now, the small thing at ninety seconds, which is not about being welcomed. He is welcomed. His family is glad he is home. The thing is about the room he was in all day and the fact that nobody in the house has been in it.

And notice where Zephaniah puts God. In your midst. Not waiting at home for him with an interested face. In the middle of it, which in the geography of that sentence means in the day as well as in the hallway. The room he was in all day had somebody in it.

You have been in a room all day that somebody else was in, because the written word puts God in the midst rather than at the end, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a man putting a bag down at twenty to seven.

And the middle clause is the one for the ninety seconds. He will quiet you by his love. Not explain you. Not vindicate you. Quiet you, which is what that small unnamed thing has been asking for, and which is not the same as being asked about. You have been quieted rather than interviewed, and Scripture is what offers that instead of the thing he thought he wanted, and His Spirit is the one who makes it land as better rather than as second best.

What this will not turn into

Now the guardrail.

Nobody is telling him to talk to his wife about it. He could. It might go well. It is not what he came here for and it is not being prescribed, and a man who leaves this article with a conversation to schedule has been handed a job rather than helped.

And nobody is telling him his family should ask. They are not doing anything wrong. This site is not going to stage a grievance in a good house.

And nobody is telling him what is coming. Not recognition, not a change, not a season when it is different. Scripture does not describe it and I am not going to.

And the years are not accruing anywhere. There is no account. The crown in this book is placed on a head by somebody else and thrown down, and nobody in that scene has been paid for coming home.

You are held by a regard that has nothing to do with whether the question gets asked, because the written word puts our standing on Christ rather than on our record, and His Spirit is what makes that a floor rather than a phrase. You have nothing ahead of you to earn, and Scripture is what settles that, and His Spirit is what keeps a hallway from becoming an installment.