There were eleven on Wednesday and one of them was the man who comes for the biscuits.
Ray does not say that unkindly. He is fond of him. He has been fond of him for about fourteen years, and if the man wants biscuits then there are biscuits, and once in a while he says something in there that stops the whole room.
But eleven is what it was, and eleven is about what it has been for a while.
The room is the small one at the side because the main hall costs too much to heat, and there is a fan heater in the corner that Ray brings from home in a bag every week and takes home again after, because it went missing once.
Nineteen years of Wednesdays.
He started it with three others in the year his brother died, for reasons he can no longer entirely reconstruct, and it has run every week since apart from two hard winters and the year everything was shut.
And what Ray is dealing with now, at seventy-one, is not discouragement about the numbers. He was never in it for numbers and he would tell you so, and it would be true.
It is that he has started to feel foolish.
There is a difference and he has been trying to work it out. Discouraged is when a thing is not working. Foolish is when you begin to suspect that everybody else has quietly agreed it is not a real thing, and has been too kind to say so, and that you are the last man carrying a bag with a fan heater in it across a car park in the rain.
It came on him properly in January. He was putting the chairs back and somebody from the church office came in to lock up, and said, perfectly pleasantly, still going then, Ray?
Still going then.
He said aye, still going, and laughed, and finished the chairs, and went out to the car and sat in it for a while before starting it.
Nineteen years, eleven people, and a fan heater in a bag.
And you may be somewhere similar. A small room, a small number, a long time, and a growing suspicion that you are the only one who has not noticed something everybody else worked out years ago.
He named a number, and the number He named was two
Let me get one thing out of the road first, because you have been carrying it across that car park and it is not yours.
You are not a fool for keeping a small thing going for nineteen years. You never were. Scripture puts the threshold for His presence at a number smaller than the one in your side room, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the size of the gathering, who fills it. Set it down here, next to the bag. It is heavy, and it has been getting heavier since January.
Now hear the sentence, and hear the number in it.
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.Matthew 18:20
Two or three.
He could have said any number. He picked the smallest one that is still more than a man on his own, and He put His own presence on the other side of it, and He did not attach a condition about the room, the heating, the age of the people or how long it had been running.
Which means the eleven of you on Wednesday are five times over the threshold He named.
And He is there. Present tense, by promise, in a side room with a fan heater. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who makes the promise a fact, and He has never once counted the room and reconsidered.
Now let me be careful, because there are ditches either side and I am not putting you in either one.
Nothing here says small is holy and big is suspect. That is a comfort people reach for and it is not true, and it curdles into pride quite quickly. God fills large rooms too, and has, and He is not more impressed with eleven than with four hundred.
And nothing here promises you that the eleven becomes a hundred. I cannot promise you that and I will not try. Nobody has ever arranged a move of God, nobody has earned one, and nineteen quiet years are not a report card on you, or on your eleven, or on the biscuits man. Scripture never once makes it anybody's fault, and His Spirit moves as He chooses.
Here is the plain part, and it is the one I want you to keep. Still going then was not an insult and the man meant nothing by it. What it did was give a name to a suspicion you had already been carrying, and it landed because it landed on something.
You are not the last man who has not noticed. You are a man who has kept an appointment for nineteen years, and Scripture calls the presence of Christ into a room of two, and the same Spirit who was in that room in the year your brother died was in it last Wednesday with eleven of you and a heater in the corner.
So here is where we get to, and it is small and there is no push in it.
Say one prayer for your own street this week, out loud, by its name.
That is the whole of it. Not the meeting. Not the numbers. Not a new plan for Wednesdays. Name the road you live on, name two houses on it, say one short thing for the people inside them, and stop.
And go on Wednesday, with the bag, the way you have for nineteen years.
You have the promise for that room already. Not one day when there are more of you. Now, at eleven, at seventy-one. His word says where two or three gather in His name He is there, and His Spirit is the one who makes that true in a cold side room, and neither of them has ever waited on a bigger number.
I am not going to tell you what will come of nineteen years or nineteen more. That belongs to God and He does it in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth to make an old man feel better, and I will not let you carry the blame for the quiet either. It was never yours to arrange.
What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is His presence in that room by promise, five times over the number He asked for.
Take the heater. He is there before you plug it in.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing at your own gate, out loud, in the cold if that is what it is. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours in every one of the nineteen years. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Suspicion that I am the last man who has not noticed, you came in on a kind sentence in January and you have never once been true. In the name of Jesus I leave you in that car park, because He has done this before and He can do it here.
- Feeling foolish with a fan heater in a bag, you are not humility and you are not realism, and you do not get another January. Scripture says where two or three gather in His name He is there, and eleven of us is five times the number He asked for.
- Lord, You were in that room the year my brother died and Your Spirit was in it again last Wednesday, and I am not despising the quiet years while I wait. This is my street tonight, and I am saying its name out loud to You.
Matthew 18:20
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