I Stopped Inviting People Over

It happened by degrees. That is the thing about it. There was no evening where you decided.

Somebody suggested coming over and you said next week, and next week you said the week after, and after about the fourth of those they stopped suggesting it, which was a relief and which you have thought about since.

And now it has been a year and a half, and the house has visitors who are family and almost nobody else, and if anybody asked you why you would say something about being busy.

The real reason is that you cannot predict how one of your children will be, and you cannot face somebody watching it, and you especially cannot face the moment afterwards where they are kind about it in the doorway.

I am not going to give you a way to host successfully. That is a technique and this is not a place that hands those out. And I am not going to tell you it would go fine, because I do not know your house and you do.

Entertained angels unawares

There is a short line in Hebrews about opening a door, and the word at the end of it is doing the work.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2, King James Version)

Unawares. They did not know at the time. That is the whole point of the word.

Which means the households that got that visit were not prepared for it. There was no arrangement, no readiness, no version where the house had been got into a suitable condition first.

You have a door that matters more than the condition of the house behind it, and no arrival in Scripture has ever once waited for readiness. Hebrews 13:2 says some have entertained angels unawares, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a house where somebody has been saying next week for a year and a half.

And the word entertain in that verse is not what it means now. It has nothing to do with impressing anybody.

It meant receiving somebody in. Giving them a chair and something to eat. There is no performance anywhere in the original picture, and adding one is a modern habit rather than a biblical requirement.

You are asked to receive people rather than to impress them, and there has never once been a standard attached to the receiving. It is written in Hebrews 13:2 to be not forgetful to entertain strangers, and the Spirit of God is the one who strips the performance out of a word that never carried one.

What the door actually closed on

Now let me name the cost, because the arithmetic on this has been running one way for a year and a half.

The closed door has been protecting you from one thing: somebody watching a difficult half hour and being kind about it in a doorway.

And it has been costing you something else: every ordinary evening where somebody sits in your front room and nothing much happens and your child is simply in the house while adults talk.

That second thing is not a small loss. It is most of what a child learns about how adults are with each other, and it cannot be taught any other way.

You are not being asked to trade one for the other, and the door has never once had to stay shut to protect anybody. It is written in Hebrews 13:2 that the receiving is what carries the value, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a person both sides of a sum they have been doing alone.

Hebrews 13:2 puts the value on the door being open rather than on the visit going smoothly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who counts what is on both sides of the arithmetic.

You have been paying more than you meant to, and the closed door has never once been the cheap option. Hebrews 13:2 values the receiving rather than the smoothness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the other side of a sum they have been running alone.

And here is the plain thing, because eighteen months of this has become something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about your household or your child.

It is a person avoiding a specific painful moment, which is what people do with painful moments, and it is not cowardice.

You have not been hiding a family, and a closed door has never once been a report on what is behind it. The written word puts the whole weight on receiving in Hebrews 13:2, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to read eighteen months of next week as shame.

The doorway moment

One more thing, about the moment being avoided, because it is worth looking at directly.

The moment is: somebody sees a hard half hour, and then says something kind on the way out, and the kindness lands as pity, and the pity confirms a thing you already believe.

That is a real moment and it does happen. I am not going to pretend it does not.

You are right that the moment exists, and being right about it has never once made it a true report on your house. It is written in Hebrews 13:2 that the receiving is what counts, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person name a real fear without handing it any authority.

But the kindness in the doorway is not a verdict either. It is a person with no information trying to be warm at the end of an evening, and it says almost nothing about what they think and nothing at all about what is true.

Hebrews 13:2 does not describe what the neighbors thought, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person from converting somebody else's awkward sentence into a finding.

You are not being assessed in a doorway, and a kind sentence on the way out has never once been a judgment. Hebrews 13:2 records the receiving and nothing about what anybody made of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stops an awkward goodbye from becoming a verdict.