The Man Who Is Always Useful

He cannot sit in a room.

It is not restlessness in the medical sense and he is not anxious. He can sit perfectly well on his own, for hours, and does.

He cannot sit in a room where other people are.

Within about ninety seconds he is up. There is always something. A chair that would be better over there, a plate to take through, a child who needs something, a door that is not quite shut. He does it lightly and pleasantly and everybody is glad of him, and at every gathering on that shore he is the man who is always doing something helpful.

Here is what he worked out about a year ago and has told nobody.

He is not being helpful. He is paying.

Not consciously and not resentfully. He would be genuinely surprised to hear it said out loud. But somewhere a very long way back there is an arrangement in him that says a man is welcome in a room in proportion to what he is contributing to it, and the arrangement has never once been examined, and it runs every time he walks through a door.

He noticed because his cousin, who has known him since they were four, said something at a gathering. Not pointedly. Just: sit down, you are making me tired.

And he sat down. And lasted about four minutes.

If you cannot sit in a room, come and sit on this mat a minute. Nobody is going to give you anything to carry.

Jesus arranged rest for people who had not finished

There is a moment in Mark that is worth reading for the timing of it rather than the words.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.Mark 6:31

Look at when He says it.

Not after the work was finished. There were many coming and going, which is Mark's way of saying the demand had not stopped and was not going to. The queue was still there. Nothing had been completed.

And He does not say you have earned this. He does not say once you have dealt with these people. He arranges it, in the middle of the demand, for people who had not had time to eat.

You are being invited into a rest arranged during the demand rather than after it. Mark 6:31 has Jesus calling people away while the coming and going was still happening, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes such a permission land in a man who has never taken one, which means the hour is not sitting behind a finished room.

Usefulness is not rent, and the room was never charging you

Now the thing you worked out and have never said, which is the actual obstacle.

You believe your welcome in a room is priced, and that you are paying it in chairs and plates and small helpful acts, and that the payment has to be continuous because the welcome is continuous. Ephesians 2:8 says by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, and it is written of a welcome nobody is invoiced for, and it is the same Spirit by whom we both have access unto the Father.

Nobody in that gathering thinks this. Your cousin said sit down, which is the opposite of an invoice.

But you would not be able to hear that from them, because a man does not believe he is welcome for nothing on the basis of somebody telling him so at a barbecue. He believes it, if he ever does, because it turns out to be true somewhere it counts more.

So here is where it counts more.

You were welcomed before you had done anything, and the welcome was not priced. Ephesians 2:8 says by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a gift like that something a person can actually receive rather than a doctrine they can recite, which means the arrangement running in you every time you walk through a door has never once been the arrangement God is operating.

And I am not handing you a scheme for sitting still. No method, nothing to keep up, no target for how long you should manage. That would be one more thing to be good at and you would be excellent at it and it would not be rest.

I am also not going to tell you which day, and this site never will. That question has cost more than it was worth and no reader will fail this article by having a different answer to it.

You are not the one holding this together, and the room does not require you continuously. Colossians 1:17 says by Him all things consist, and it is His Spirit at work in the ordinary machinery of a gathering, which means the chairs will be roughly where they should be whether or not you move them.

God is the one holding you, and He has been holding you through every room you paid your way into.