There were four of them and one table and no room at all.
Saturday started at seven with the radio on, and by nine the kitchen had steam on the window and somebody's coat over a chair and three conversations running at once, and Simone was the child in the middle of it being handed things to stir.
And they sang. Not performance singing. The kind that comes and goes underneath talking, where somebody starts a line while chopping and somebody else picks it up from the sink without breaking off what she was saying, and it goes round for a while and then it stops and the conversation carries on as if nothing happened.
The word lived in those songs.
Simone did not learn it from a definition. She learned it the way you learn the words of a song you have never been taught, and by the time she was eleven it was simply one of the words that lived in her family's mouth, in among the food and the noise and the arguing about who put the pot lid there.
She is thirty-four now and she works somewhere with a lot of glass in it.
And on Thursday somebody in the kitchen at work asked her, quite warmly, what she was doing at the weekend, and she said she had a thing on Sunday, and they said what thing, and Simone felt a whole sentence assemble itself in her mouth and then get quietly disassembled before it came out.
She said, just a family thing.
Which is true. Which is not a lie in any sense. And which is not the word.
In that glass kitchen the word does not arrive as a song. It arrives as something that would need explaining, and she can feel the explaining stacking up behind it before she has said one syllable of it. Where she works, the word is an opening statement. In her aunties' kitchen it was a lyric.
And that is the whole distance she is standing in, and it has taken her about ten years to walk it without noticing.
The strange part, and the part that gets her, is that she is not embarrassed of those women. She would tell anyone at that office about her aunts. She would bring them in. She is proud of them the way you are proud of weather.
It is the word itself that has gone somewhere she cannot reach on a Thursday.
And you know that gap. You learned your word somewhere warm, and you now only ever meet it somewhere that requires footnotes, and you have started leaving it at home.
The word was made for telling, and telling is not the same as explaining
Take this off first, because you have been carrying it into that building every day and it was never given to you.
You are not the one who has to make it explainable before it is allowed out. You never were. Scripture puts the word in your mouth as something to tell and never once turns it into a case you have to open properly, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the quality of your footnotes, who carries it into a person. Set that down. It is heavy and it is not yours.
Now hear what the word is actually asked to do, because it is not what you think.
Sing to the Lord, praise His name; proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvellous deeds among all peoples.Psalm 96:2
Sing. Proclaim. Declare. Tell.
Not defend. Not establish. Not set out the background so it can be evaluated. Four verbs, and every one of them is a verb about saying a thing out loud to people who were not there.
And notice day after day. Not once, brilliantly, when the conditions are right. Day after day, in among the ordinary, the way a song goes round a kitchen and stops and starts again while somebody is looking for a lid.
That is what your aunties were doing and they never once called it anything. They were proclaiming salvation day after day over a pot, and it went into a child who was not being taught, and it is in you now.
You have it. In the glass building, on a Thursday, in the middle of a sentence you disassembled. That is written, and His Spirit is the one who keeps it alive in you there as much as He did in that steam, and the postcode has never once changed what is true.
Now here is the part that will loosen something, and I want you to have it slowly.
Explaining and telling are two different activities and they use two different parts of a person.
Explaining is defensive, and it is exhausting, and it always assumes a court. Telling is just the news going out of your mouth. Your aunties never explained a thing in their lives. They told it, and they sang it, and they put it in the food, and if somebody did not want it they poured them a drink and carried on.
You have been trying to do in a glass kitchen a thing they never attempted anywhere. No wonder it will not fit in your mouth. It is not the word that got too heavy for that building. It is the version of the word you built to survive the building.
You are carrying good news. Scripture says to declare His marvelous deeds among all peoples, and the same Spirit who filled a Saturday kitchen with singing is the one in you at a desk, and He has never asked you for an opening statement.
And I will say the plain half, because it is the useful half. Just a family thing protects the moment and costs you the day. You knew that on Thursday evening on the train. You have been paying it out in small amounts for ten years, and the person at that desk has forgotten the exchange entirely, and you have not.
So here is the turn, and it is small and it is not a task.
There is a word, and it is yours, and today you are going to say it out loud once, in a room with nobody in it, the way it was said in that kitchen. Not explained. Said.
That is the whole of it, and there is no second half. Nobody is sending you back into the glass kitchen with a script this week, and if the word never comes up at that desk again this year you have not failed anything and nothing has been withdrawn.
You have this. Right now, before you feel one bit readier, in whatever room you are sitting in. His word says to proclaim His salvation day after day, and His Spirit is the one who makes that living in you, and neither of them waits on you finding a way to make it sound reasonable first.
I am not going to tell you what will happen when you say it, or how Thursday goes next week. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so that a page ends neatly. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is a word that was made to be told and never once to be argued.
Say it like a lyric. Let it go round once and stop.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing, out loud, the way a woman starts a line at a sink without stopping what she is doing. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours in that steam before you could reach the table. 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.
- Explanation, you were never the thing and you have never once been asked for. In the name of Jesus I leave you at that desk, because the word you keep queueing behind means good news, and telling it is what it was made for.
- Ten years of quiet disassembling, you do not take my sentences apart in my own mouth any more. Scripture says to proclaim His salvation day after day, and day after day is a rhythm rather than a performance I have to be ready for.
- Lord, they sang it over a pot and never called it anything, and Your Spirit is the one who carried it into a child who was not listening. The word is a song before it is a case, and I am singing it out loud in this room today.
Psalm 96:2
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
