Room For A Person, Not For Storage

It is called the spare room.

That is what everybody in the house calls it, and it has been called that for eleven years, and for about eight of those it has not been spare in any sense.

There is a bed in it. Under the bed there are four boxes. On the bed there is a stack of things with no other home and a suitcase that has not been closed since the summer.

And the last person who slept in it was your wife's cousin, and that was the year before last.

So it is a storage room with a bed in it, and everybody calls it the spare room, and nobody has ever once said the true sentence out loud.

Here is why that matters more than it sounds.

Your mother in law has stopped suggesting she comes for a few days. Your brother stays in a hotel when he is down and says it is easier. Neither of them has mentioned the room and both of them know.

A house that cannot receive anybody has changed something about how it sits in a family, and it did that quietly, over about eight years, without one decision.

There was no room, and He came anyway

There is a sentence in Luke that everybody knows and that is worth reading as a plain statement about a building.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:7, King James Version)

Because there was no room for them in the inn. That is a fact about capacity, stated without blame.

Nobody in that sentence is being accused. The inn was full. It was doing what inns do. And the consequence was that a family who needed a room did not get one, and something enormous happened in a stable instead.

You are able to keep room for a person, and no room kept for somebody has ever once been storage that failed. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man whose spare room has four boxes under the bed, and Luke 2:7 records the consequence of a house with no capacity without condemning anybody.

And notice what the sentence has done ever since.

It has stood, for two thousand years, as the definitive picture of arriving somewhere and there being no space. Everybody in the world knows that sentence, which means the world has always understood that room for a person is not a small matter.

You are living inside a sentence the whole world knows, and having no room has never once been a neutral fact. The written word states the absence of room as the thing that determined where a birth happened, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man whose brother stays in a hotel and says it is easier.

What a spare room is for

Let me say the obvious thing, because in eight years nobody has said it in that house.

A spare room is for a person. That is the entire purpose of the word spare. It means held in reserve, not currently in use, available.

The moment it holds things, it is no longer spare, and it becomes the only room in the house with a name that is a lie.

You have a room with a name that no longer describes it, and calling it spare has never once made it available. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who has called something the spare room for eleven years, and Luke 2:7 makes the absence of room the decisive fact of the evening.

And here is the honest arithmetic about the storage.

Those four boxes and that suitcase are not worth what the room costs. Not close. Storage for five objects, versus the ability of your house to receive a person for three nights.

Nobody ever made that trade deliberately. It happened one item at a time, and each item individually was obviously fine.

You have made a trade nobody ever agreed to, and not one of those items has ever once been worth what the room is. The written word shows what it costs when there is nowhere to put somebody, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man who has just priced his own spare room properly.

One surface, kept for a person

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not the room.

Clear one surface in there. The side table beside the bed. That is all. And keep nothing on it for a week.

You are clearing one small surface in a room that needs more, and starting small has never once been the same as pretending. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man clearing one side table in a room full of boxes, and Luke 2:7 turns on the presence or absence of room.

And here is why the side table and not the room.

Because a side table beside a bed is the thing a person puts a glass of water and a watch on. It is the smallest possible unit of a room being for a person rather than for things.

Clear that one surface and the room contains, for the first time in eight years, one square foot that is unmistakably for a guest.

You are making one square foot unmistakably for a person, and one square foot has never once been too small to change what a room is. The written word makes room for a person the deciding question, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a man looking at a clear side table beside a bed.