It was the tea urn that did it, which is not where a man expects anything to happen.
He had been standing there twenty two years. Same church, same end of the same row, same job on the rota, tea after, chairs stacked by half eleven. That morning a family he did not know had sat two along from him, and afterwards the father had come over to the urn and asked where the cups were kept, and they had talked about the weather and the traffic on the ring road, and then the man went back to his own people and so did he.
And walking to the car he found himself running a search he had never once run in his life.
Twenty two years. Who have I actually sat down with.
He went through it properly, in the car, with the key in his hand and the engine off. Names. Faces. Sunday after Sunday of them. Good people, every one, and he loves them, and several of them have sat up with him through the worst weeks he has ever had.
And every single one of them grew up more or less the way he grew up. Same kind of street. Same kind of money. Same kind of accent when they get tired.
He is not a cruel man. He has never in his life turned anybody away from anything. He simply chose the way everybody chooses, twenty two years ago, and then he stopped choosing, and the room settled around him like water finding its level.
And now I am going to stop saying he.
Because you have just run the same search, or you are about to, and I want to say something before you do.
You are not on trial here. Nothing on this page is an accusation and nothing on it is going to become one. A line you cannot see is not a sin you are hiding; it is a line you cannot see. Almost every one of us is standing inside a room that quietly matches us, and almost none of us built it on purpose, and being shown the wall is not the same as being blamed for it.
But you have seen it now. And a thing you have seen tends not to un see.
All flesh, and what that word actually covers
Before anything else, hear where you are standing. You are not a man being brought to a subject he has avoided. Acts 2 says the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, and the Holy Spirit who did that pouring has been the one quietly making a room visible to you that you have sat in for twenty-two years.
I want to sit with what you noticed at the car, because there is a grief in it that is worth naming.
It is not guilt. Guilt would almost be easier. It is closer to loss. Twenty two years of Sundays and a whole side of God's household you have never once eaten with, and you cannot get those Sundays back, and the people you missed were never withheld from you by anybody. They were four rows over.
So let me put the oldest promise about this next to you.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.Acts 2:17
Two words carry the whole weight of that sentence, and they are not the exciting ones.
All flesh.
Not all the ones who were already in the room. Not all who could be trusted with it. All flesh, which in that sentence immediately breaks into sons and daughters, young and old, and keeps going, because the moment you start listing who is included you have already admitted the list has no end on it.
And then look what He pours out on them. Prophecy, visions, dreams. Not tasks. Not seats at the back. He gives the whole household the same equipment, and He gives it out without checking which side of any line a person came in on.
Here is the thing I most want you to feel, and it is the reverse of what you are braced for.
The line is not costing them. It is costing you.
Somewhere in this city there is a person carrying a dream God gave them that was meant to land in your ear, and they have never been in a room with you. That is not a project you are being handed. That is a loss you have been quietly sustaining for twenty two years without knowing the name of it, and God is not angry about it, and He is not finished with your Sundays.
And you have not been indicted here. The word says all flesh, and all flesh has never had a footnote on it, and the Spirit is not showing you a row in order to leave you condemned in it.
So what do you do with a wall you did not build.
Not a campaign. Please, not a campaign. Nobody is asking you to become a person with a plan about a group of people, and if there is one thing in this message I would not have you carry out of it, it is that. Human beings are not an initiative and they can feel it instantly when they have become one.
Here is the whole of it, and it is smaller and harder than a campaign.
One person. Not a category. One human being whose name you know or could learn by Sunday, whose week does not look like your week, and whom you would not naturally end up beside. Somebody you have already met at an urn.
And then you sit down. That is it. You do not arrive with a purpose. You do not bring anything. You sit down beside them and you ask a real question and you stay long enough to hear a real answer, and you let it cost you the fifteen minutes you were going to spend stacking chairs with the people you always stack chairs with.
That is how a line gets crossed. Not by a room deciding something at a meeting. By one man carrying two cups instead of one.
You are carrying the whole of what this asks for. Acts 2 puts sons and daughters in the same sentence with servants and old men, and the Spirit who wrote that list is the One walking you across a floor you have never crossed.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. This standing is yours in Christ and it belongs to you as a member of a household that was never sorted by kind. Speak to the line and to the habit, never against another person, and bless every soul in your row. What God does with your Sundays after this is His to decide, and He may answer in a way you did not plan for.
- Line I stopped seeing, you are not the shape of my table any more. God poured out His Spirit on all flesh, and all flesh has always meant all of it.
- Habit of calling a room full when it only ever holds people like me, you have run my Sundays for nineteen years and you do not get another one. In the name of Jesus I put you out, and the Spirit who fell on all flesh is the One widening this room one face at a time.
- God, Acts 2 says You poured out Your Spirit on all flesh, and I am agreeing with what is written instead of with what I have been looking at. I am receiving one face at a time until this room looks like what You said, and I am not keeping to a table that only ever looks like me.
Acts 2:17
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