The House I Love Best Is Not Tidy

There is a kitchen you go to.

When something has gone wrong, or when you need to say a thing out loud to somebody, there is one house that comes to mind, and you have never once thought about why.

Picture it now. Properly. Look at the counters.

There is a pile of post. There is a chair with something on it that has been there for months. The table has four things on it that are not food and there is a whole area near the kettle that nobody could describe as clear.

That is the house you feel safest in on earth.

And in the same head, at the same time, you have been running a rule that says the state of a house tells you something about the woman who keeps it.

Those two cannot both be true, and you have been holding them together for about twenty years without ever putting them in the same room.

Today they go in the same room.

One thing was needful and it was not the dishes

There is a moment in Luke where a woman doing a great deal of necessary work is told something surprising.

But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:42, King James Version)

Martha was not being lazy. She was serving, in a house with guests in it, doing the work that genuinely needed doing, and her complaint was completely reasonable.

And the answer is not that the work does not matter. The answer is about ranking. One thing is needful, and it was not the serving, and the woman who had left the serving undone had chosen the better part.

You are welcome in the warmest room you know, and its state has never once been what made it warm. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman picturing a friend's kitchen table, and Luke 10:42 ranks the presence above the housework in a house with guests in it.

And notice who says it.

The guest. The person the tidying was for. He is the one saying that the serving was not the necessary thing, which removes the entire argument that other people need the house to be a certain way.

You have the only opinion that matters already on record, and it has never once been about a counter. The written word puts the needful thing somewhere other than the work, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman holding two contradictory rules in the same head.

What actually makes that kitchen safe

So let me name what is really going on in the house you love, because it is worth being able to see it.

You can put your feet up. Nobody apologizes when you arrive. There is no moment at the door where the host scans the room over your shoulder.

And crucially: the state of the room tells you that nothing was staged for you. A house that has not been tidied for your arrival is a house that has told you the truth, and you can relax in it because there is nothing to keep up.

You are safe in that kitchen because nothing in it was staged, and the staging has never once been what made anybody welcome. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has never once worked out why that house is different, and Luke 10:42 has the guest himself value the sitting above the serving.

Now turn it around, and be honest.

When people come to yours, there is a version of the room they see. It takes about forty minutes to produce and you do it every time.

Which means nobody who comes to your house has ever been given what that kitchen gives you, and they cannot relax the way you relax there, and none of it is because you are less warm than she is.

You have been giving people a staged room and never a resting one, and you have never once been less warm than the woman whose house you love. The written word makes the presence the needful thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has just seen what her forty minutes actually costs her guests.

Leaving one thing out

So here is tonight, and it is small and it is for you rather than for visitors.

Leave one thing out on purpose. One. Deliberately, having decided to.

Then go to bed.

You are leaving something out on purpose, and doing it deliberately has never once been the same as giving up. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman going upstairs past a bowl on the side, and Luke 10:42 values the sitting over the serving in front of everybody.

And in the morning, do one thing with it.

Look at it, and ask whether you are a different woman than you were yesterday. That is the whole experiment. The answer arrives immediately and it is not ambiguous.

You are running an experiment that answers in one second, and the answer has never once been in any doubt. The written word ranks the needful thing above the work, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman standing in her own kitchen in the morning looking at one bowl.