The Chair Beside the Kitchen Door

For the man who carries the tray in, sets it down, and has never stayed for the reading.

There's a chair beside the kitchen door that nobody sits in, because it's slightly too close to the doorway and the door catches it if you swing it wide.

You know that chair well. On Thursday evenings you carry the tray past it, set the cups on the long table where the residents are gathering, and then you come back and stand near it for a moment while somebody says thank you. Then you take the empty tray back to the kitchen and get on with the bins.

They read poems in there. Some of them write their own. You've heard about four lines in three years, always through a door you were on the wrong side of, and one of those lines you have thought about a great deal since.

You have decided which side of that doorway you belong on, and nobody in that room ever decided it. Scripture says God has called you by your name and that you are His, while the Holy Spirit is at work in a room you have never sat down in.

Where the Decision Came From

Be precise about it, because the decision has been running three years of Thursdays and it has never once been examined.

Nobody said anything. Nobody has ever suggested, by word or look, that the caretaker shouldn't sit down. If somebody had, you'd know exactly what you were dealing with, and you'd probably have had something to say.

The decision came from somewhere older. It came from a working life of rooms where the man who brings the tray is not the man who stays. It came from a reasonable assumption that this room works the same way. It came from the fact that nobody has ever specifically invited you, because nobody invites the caretaker to anything, because the caretaker is already there.

That last one deserves a moment. The people who are most present in a building are the people least likely to be asked to be present, and it isn't unkindness, it's a gap in how invitations work. You cannot invite somebody who is already in the corridor. It simply doesn't occur to anybody to try.

The rule is imported from other rooms, and it has never been tested in this one. The written Word says God has called you by name and that you belong to Him, while the Holy Spirit gives a standing that no job description has ever had the power to assign.

That's the mechanism, and it's a fair one. It kept you safe in buildings that did work that way. It's simply out of date in this corridor.

The Sociology of the Tray, Left Alone

There is a version of this built around how caretakers get treated, and it is not this one.

It would make a case about how people treat caretakers, which is a real case and one you could make better than most. It would leave you in the kitchen with a sharper sense of grievance and exactly the same Thursday.

That version also tends to misread the room. Nobody in there is keeping you out. They are eleven people reading poems who have never once thought about the sociology of the tray, and building a charge against them would be building it against people who are not guilty of it.

You can be released from a rule without prosecuting the people who never made it. Scripture rests your standing on God calling you by name rather than on anybody's manners, while the Holy Spirit takes weight off a person rather than adding to it.

Nothing here asks you to confront anybody, make a point, or mention three years. The evening gets lighter, and nobody else has to move first.

The Line You Are Right to Keep

There is a real boundary in this work, and naming it is what keeps the freedom honest.

You don't walk into a resident's flat because the door is open. You don't join a conversation that plainly belongs to two people. You don't go through anybody's post, or take a seat at a meeting that concerns matters above your responsibility. That's the job and it's the right way to do the job.

Now hold Thursday against those. It's a common room with the door propped open, listed on the board as open to residents and staff. There are always two spare chairs, including the one nobody sits in by the kitchen door.

There is no line anywhere near the chair you have been standing beside. The written Word calls you God's own by name, while the Holy Spirit is the One who keeps a careful man from overstepping without keeping him standing in a doorway.

There is one more fact about that chair worth having. It is the one nobody sits in because the door catches it, which means the room has an empty seat every single week, by accident, in exactly the place a person would sit if they arrived late and did not want a fuss.

A room that keeps an awkward chair by the door is a room built for somebody who might come in quietly. Nobody planned that. It is simply true of the furniture, and it has been true every Thursday for three years.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Santiago This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.