Two Minutes Before I Open It

The knock comes and there is a sequence, and you could time it.

Call out that you are coming, which buys time. Hallway mirror on the way past. Hands do something. Hair goes back or comes forward. A last check in the glass of the picture by the door, which nobody knows you use for that.

Two minutes, near enough. Sometimes ninety seconds if it is somebody you know.

And on the other side of that door, somebody is standing on a step.

That is the part I want to sit with, because nobody has ever thought about it from out there.

They are standing in whatever weather there is. They knocked. Something inside is happening that they cannot see and have not been told about. And after two minutes the door opens and somebody says sorry, I was upstairs, and that is not true and it has been said hundreds of times.

I am not interested in the not being true. Nobody is being harmed by that and I am not going to make a moral point out of a small kindness.

What I am interested in is the two minutes, and what is standing outside during them.

What the sequence costs

Let us count what those two minutes actually contain, over years.

There is the doorbell becoming a small event rather than a good thing. That is the largest cost and it never gets counted. A knock at your door used to mean somebody has come, which is one of the plainest pieces of care a street can offer. Now it means something is required.

There is the fatigue. Two minutes of small work, several times a week, for years, and every instance of it is trivial and the total is not.

And there is the delay itself, which sounds like nothing and is not. There are people who have knocked once, waited, decided you were out, and gone.

You are paying two minutes several times a week for years, and no caller of yours has ever once known why the door was slow. The Holy Spirit is what counts a cost that has never been added up, and Revelation 3 has somebody standing at a door and knocking and waiting.

And there is one more, which is the heaviest.

The sequence trains you. Every time it runs, it says the same thing without a word, which is that this house cannot be opened as it stands. And it says it in your own hallway, in your own voice, several times a week, and it has been saying it since about 2015.

Nobody in the world has told you that. The hallway has been telling you, and the hallway learned it from you.

You are being taught something by a hallway several times a week, and no person on any doorstep has ever once said it. Scripture in Revelation 3 says behold, I stand at the door, and knock, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a sequence out of a hall.

I stand at the door and knock

There is a sentence in Revelation that everybody knows and almost nobody reads from the outside.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20, King James Version)

Look at where He is.

Outside. On the step. Standing, and knocking, and waiting, which is exactly the position of every single person who has ever been on your doorstep.

And notice the condition, because it is one thing and it is not what you would expect.

If any man hear my voice, and open the door.

Hear, and open. That is the whole of it. There is no preparation in that verse. There is no getting the house ready, no making yourself presentable, and no two minutes in a hallway. The condition is that the door opens.

You are asked for an opened door and nothing whatever else, and no verse anywhere has ever once put a preparation in front of it. It is written in Revelation 3 that if any man hear my voice and open the door, He will come in, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a condition off a doorway that nobody put there.

And then what happens when it opens.

I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

Supper. Which is the most ordinary meal there is, the one at the end of the day, in a house that has been lived in since the morning. Not a banquet and not an occasion. The evening meal, in an ordinary kitchen, with whatever is there.

The whole picture assumes an unprepared house. That is what supper with somebody means.

You are invited into a supper rather than an occasion, and there has never once been a version of that verse that required a tidy house or a ready face. The Spirit of God is what puts an ordinary evening where a woman has been expecting an inspection, and the written word says I will sup with him, and he with me.

Open on the first knock

So here is the assignment, and it is one door.

Open the door once this week on the first knock, with nothing done first.

Not the second. The first. Go straight there.

And do not say sorry. Do not say anything about being upstairs and do not explain a thing, because there is nothing to explain and the explaining is the last piece of the sequence.

You are able to open a door with no explanation attached to it, and the person on the other side has never once asked you for one. Revelation 3 says behold, I stand at the door, and knock, and the Holy Spirit is what takes the apology out of a woman's first sentence.

Open it and say hello.

Two things about it, and both make it easier.

It does not have to be a visit. A delivery is perfect, and probably better, because it is over in thirty seconds and it still counts entirely.

And nobody will remark on anything. Nobody has ever once remarked on it in the history of doorsteps, because the person out there has an errand and a coat and somewhere else to be.

You are able to open a door on the first knock, and no person on that step has ever once required the two minutes. The written word in Revelation 3 puts the condition on the opening and on nothing else, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one quick answer into welcome rather than into exposure.