The Family That Means To

"Two minutes," somebody shouts down the stairs, and every single person in this kitchen knows exactly what that is worth.

Four plates go down. Three of them get eaten in three different places, which was not the plan and has not been the plan for about a year and a half. The middle one is at the counter with one earbud in, on the grounds that one earbud is basically the same as none. The eldest has already eaten, apparently, at a time and in a manner nobody can establish. And your husband has sent the message that says he is leaving work now, which in this house has always been less a statement of fact than a warm expression of hope.

You are the one at the hob, with a tea towel over your shoulder, doing the thing your hands have done every evening for eleven years.

And somewhere between the pan and the plates you say it. Half under your breath, to nobody in the room, the way you have said it a thousand times.

Lord, help us.

Then the timer, and the plates, and the evening takes the rest of it.

You would not call that praying. In your own head there is a word for what this family does, and the word is meaning to. You are the family that means to. You mean to start after the holidays. You mean to start when the eldest is home more. You mean to start on a Sunday, properly, with everyone sitting down.

Because there is a picture. It has been in your head so long you have stopped noticing that it is there. In the picture the five of you are round this same table with the book open and the phones face down, and one of the children asks a question so good that you have to put your fork down before you answer it. You bought the book. It is on the shelf above the bread bin. Day one is soft at the corner from handling, and everything past day four is still crisp.

Nobody in this house is against prayer. It is only that prayer keeps needing a quiet room, and this house has never once produced one.

The house you have been trying to build

And you are standing on ground you did not have to lay. Psalm 127:1 says except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than one more thing to get right.

Let me put something under your feet before anything else, because I think you have been standing on nothing for a long while and calling it your own fault.

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.Psalm 127:1 to 2

Read who is doing the laboring in that verse, because it is not the Lord. It is the builders. They are up early and they are up late, and they are eating what the psalm calls the bread of sorrows, which is as plain a name as anybody has ever put on the feeling you carry upstairs at the end of a Tuesday.

Now hear the strange comfort in it. The psalm does not say their work is bad. It says it is in vain, which is a different word altogether. In vain means it was never the thing holding the house up. The walls of your household are not going up because of your organizing, and they are not coming down because of your disorganization, and neither of those sentences is an insult. They are the same mercy said twice.

And you are living in a house He is already in. Scripture says where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them, and the number given is two, not a full table on time, and the Spirit is the one who makes a kitchen at half past six a gathered place.

Here is what I think has actually happened, and I want to say it carefully, because I do not think anyone has said it to you and I do not think you have said it out loud.

Somewhere along the way you appointed yourself the builder of this household's faith. Nobody handed you the job. You took it, the way conscientious people take jobs, because you looked round and nobody else appeared to be doing it. And ever since, every evening that got away from you has gone down as a fault in the structure, and the fault has your name on it.

So you are tired, and it is not the pans. It is the low grinding sense that this family is behind, and that it is behind because of you. You would never say that out loud. You would say you are just busy. But underneath the busy is a verdict you passed on yourself years ago, and you have been serving the sentence quietly ever since, in a kitchen, alongside everything else you carry.

And you were never asked to build the picture first. His word says except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it, and it names the builder before it names the labor, and the Spirit is the one who takes an exhausting project off a family that never signed up for it.

Put that down. Not because you have done enough, but because it was never yours to hold. You cannot build a soul. You can pray, you can bless, you can keep the door open and the light on and the table set, and every one of those is real work and God honors it. But nobody made you responsible for another person's faith. Not your husband's. Not the eldest one's, who did not sit down tonight. Their road is theirs and God's, and He is a better builder than you, and He has never once needed a household to be tidy before He would work in it.

And He has not gone quiet since that psalm was written. He is not a historical figure who used to visit orderly homes in a more religious age. Scripture does not hand you one spotless household to copy; it hands you a long line of complicated ones, and the Lord at work in every single one of them, which ought to tell you something about the kind of house He is willing to walk into.

Which leaves only the personal wall, and it is the one that matters. Not does God still do this, but does He do it here, in this kitchen, for a woman with a tea towel over her shoulder. The psalms say plainly that the Lord is near to everyone who calls on Him, and near to everyone who calls on Him honestly. They do not say near to everyone who calls on Him at the table with the book open and the phones face down.

Three words over a pan is calling on Him. It qualified the first time you said it, and it has qualified every time since.