Somebody at the round table by the window is doing the voice. Hands up, eyes squeezed shut, that swooping wobble people do when they are being a preacher, Faaaather God, we just really just. The table goes up.
He is four feet away at the counter with a fork in his hand and the microwave counting his rice and peas down to nothing, and not one of them has noticed him standing there. It is a good impression, which is the part nobody gets warned about. He can hear that it is funny. Something in his stomach drops straight through the floor anyway.
Then one of them turns and clocks him, and the laugh changes shape. It goes quieter and rounder, and somebody says "no offense" over the top of it. And here is the bit you take home with you, because by now you have worked out that this kitchen is yours. You said "none taken." You smiled. Your face got there before you did, quick and easy and practiced, and you stood there holding a fork while you laughed along with a room that was laughing at the best thing that has ever happened to you.
They are not cruel, and that is what makes it sit so badly. One of them covered your shift in February when your mum was in hospital and would not let you thank her for it. You like them. You will be back in that kitchen tomorrow at twenty to one, the microwave will count down, and not one of them will remember a second of it.
You will. At eleven tonight, with the lamp off, you will be standing at that counter again.
What your face did, and what it never decided
Let us go gently here, because the sore place is not where you have been looking for it.
You are not lying awake over four people at a round table. You have more or less forgiven them already, and there was little to forgive, since they were not aiming at you and did not know you were there. What you cannot put down is your own face. The speed of it. That your mouth went along before your heart was ever consulted, and that you have no memory at all of choosing it.
So hear this slowly.
A face that smiles when the temperature in a room changes is not a face that betrayed anybody. It is a body doing the oldest thing bodies do, which is to go soft and small and agreeable until the room is safe again. That reflex was in you long before your faith was, and it is not a measurement of your love for God. A startle is not a verdict. A flinch is not a renunciation. Nobody in that kitchen asked you a question, and there was no examination running that you sat and failed.
You are not standing in a betrayal. Not for a reflex your body has had since long before your faith did. The written word never grades a startle, and the Holy Spirit was in that kitchen at twenty to one and was not embarrassed by you.
And this is not the part where I hand you three good sentences for next time. You do not need a better line. You need your face back.
They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.Psalm 34:5
Read where the eyes go in that verse, because everything is in the direction.
They looked to Him. Not around the room to see who else believed it. Not down at the floor tiles while they waited for it to pass. The lightening happens inside the looking, and notice that the radiance is not something a face produces. It is something a face catches. A face turned toward light does not have to work at shining. It only has to stay turned.
You have a looking that is still available tonight. The written word puts the lightening inside the looking rather than after a recovery, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a dark kitchen at eleven that is not even the right kitchen.
And notice whose line it is. The note at the top of that psalm says it belongs to the day David changed his behavior before a king, the day he made himself look out of his mind at a city gate to get himself out of a room alive. That is the hand that wrote their faces were not ashamed. Not a man who had never gone quiet in the wrong company. A man who had, and who found out afterward that the looking was still available to him. It always is. It was available one minute later at that counter, and it is available at eleven tonight while you stand in a dark kitchen that is not even the right kitchen.
Two things have to be settled in you before the words at the bottom of this page are any use, and both of them are true whether you feel them or not.
The first is that a person can speak to a thing and the thing moves. Jesus said that faith the size of a mustard seed says to the mountain, move from here to there. Say. Not brood over, not wait out, not hope quietly about. He put the authority in a mouth, and He never set an expiry date on it.
The second is that this belongs to you. Personally. Not to the confident ones, not to the ones who have a scripture ready and a steady voice to say it in. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and He does not clock off at the door of a building that has no religious surface to it. He came into that kitchen with you at twenty to one, wearing your lanyard, carrying your lunch. The room did not turn secular the moment you walked into it, and He was not waiting outside by the lifts for you to come back out.
You carry authority in a staff kitchen and not only in a sanctuary. The written word puts the speaking in a mouth and attaches no venue to it, and the Holy Spirit came in with you wearing your lanyard and carrying your lunch.
Hear also what you are not being handed. Not a technique for winning a staff kitchen. Authority was never given to you so you could take a round table apart, and a person who has to win the room has only made the room the judge all over again.
You are free of any obligation to that table. The written word never makes another person the ground you have to take, and the Holy Spirit is fond of all four of them and is not standing on your side against them.
Something is meant to happen here, tonight, in the room you are actually standing in. It is not that you become a bolder person by Thursday.
Put down what you have been holding. You have been carrying that laugh around as evidence, filing it, running it back, treating twenty to one as an exam you sat and failed. It was not an exam. Nobody set it and nobody marked it. And the One who was in that kitchen with you was not standing at the edge of it wishing you had done better. He was not embarrassed. He has never once been embarrassed by you, and He did not leave the room when the joke started.
He is not waiting for you at the far end of a braver version of yourself, either. The gospel does not run on the volume of your voice.
So here is what moves tonight, and it is not four colleagues. It is the eleven o'clock replay, the one that keeps calling you a coward in your own kitchen using your own voice. That is the mountain. Speak to that, and speak to the shame sitting in the middle of your chest, and leave the people out of it entirely, because they were never yours to command and they were never the thing in your way.
You have your face back and it was never forfeited. The written word says their faces were not ashamed, and it says it in the hand of a man who had gone quiet in the wrong company himself. The Holy Spirit has been with you through every replay since twenty to one.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud with that hand where it is. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the standing to speak over your own chest has been given to you, and it is not on loan from anybody in that kitchen. You do not need a bigger faith than the one you already have, and you do not need a steadier voice than the one you have got; you need the smallest true thing you believe to leave your mouth and go straight at the mountain. The mountain here is the replay at eleven at night, not four people at a round table. Speak to it. However He answers, and whatever He does with that room and those people, that part is His to decide and never yours to carry.
- Shame, you are not a tenant in this chest, and I put you out in the name of Jesus. The Word of God says they looked to Him and their faces were lightened, so this face was made for looking up, and looking up is what it is doing. Light, you belong here now, and you are welcome to stay as long as you like.
- Twenty to one in that kitchen, you do not get to hold a trial in my head at eleven at night, because the Judge of all the earth has already ruled and He calls me His own. Every person who was laughing at that table, I bless you, and I hold nothing against you. Grievance, you get no seat at my table and no room in my mouth.
- Jesus, You are not ashamed to call me Yours, and Scripture says God is not ashamed to be called their God. Steadiness, you are mine today, given to me in Christ and never borrowed from the mood of a room. Lord, I thank You, because You have never once looked away from a face that was looking at You.
Psalm 34:5
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