My Grandmother Kept One Chair Empty

There were seven of you and eight chairs.

Every Sunday, all through your childhood, at your grandmother's table. And the one at the end nearest the door stayed empty unless somebody came.

Nobody explained it. It was not announced as a policy. It was simply a fact of that kitchen, like the clock or the smell of the oven, and you did not think about it once in twenty years.

And about four times a year somebody did come. A neighbor. Your uncle who was not reliable. A woman from the church who had nowhere that week.

And there was a chair.

Not a chair fetched from another room while everybody shuffled. A chair, already there, already at the table, which is a completely different arrival for the person coming through the door.

I have been thinking about that chair for a long time, and about the fact that not one house I have been in since has had one.

And yet there is room at this table

There is a line in a parable in Luke where a servant comes back with a report, and the report has a remarkable phrase in it.

And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. (Luke 14:22, King James Version)

And yet there is room. That is a report on a house that has been filled and still has capacity in it.

The whole of that parable turns on the fact that after everybody who was brought in has been seated, the house is not at its limit, and the master sends out again on the strength of that sentence.

You are living in a house where there is still room, and yet there is room has never once been a small sentence. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman remembering a chair at the end of a table, and Luke 14:22 makes the remaining capacity the thing that keeps the story going.

And notice that the room is spare capacity in a full house.

It is not an empty house. It is a house that has been filled and still has more, which is the exact condition your grandmother's kitchen was in every Sunday of your childhood.

You were raised in a house with spare capacity in it, and that spare capacity has never once been wasted room. The written word keeps the story moving on the strength of room that was still available, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has not had a spare chair at a table in twenty years.

What she was actually doing

Let me say what I think that chair was, because she certainly never explained it.

It was a standing decision. Made once, decades before anybody at that table was born, and then simply maintained, and it said that this house is able to receive somebody without notice.

That is not a small claim for a household to be making continuously. Most houses cannot. Most houses require warning, and preparation, and a chair from another room.

You were watching a standing decision maintained for twenty years, and no decision like that has ever once required a word to be spoken about it. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who never once thought about that chair until now, and Luke 14:22 reports capacity as an available fact rather than as a plan.

And here is the cost of not having one, which nobody names.

A person who needs somewhere to be does not ring ahead. That is the whole nature of it. The ones who need a chair most are exactly the ones who will not ask, and a house that requires notice is a house they cannot come to.

You have been in houses that require notice, and the people who need a chair most have never once been able to give it. The written word sends out again because there was room already, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has just understood what her grandmother was doing all those years.

One surface, kept open

So here is the last assignment, and it is a chair or a surface, whichever is available.

Clear one, and keep nothing on it for a week.

If it can be a chair, make it a chair. If it can only be a foot of table, make it that. Either way, it is kept for whoever comes.

You are keeping one place for somebody who has not arrived, and that has never once been the same as an empty seat. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman looking at an empty chair at the end of her own table, and Luke 14:22 reports the remaining room as the reason to send out again.

And say nothing about it to anybody, the way she never did.

It is not a gesture and it is not a statement. It is a standing arrangement that nobody needs to know about, and the only person who ever needs to know is whoever turns up on the day they have nowhere else.

You are making an arrangement nobody needs to know about, and it has never once needed to be explained to work. The written word simply notes that there is room and acts on it, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman at a table with one chair nobody has sat in yet.