He is always the last one out, because he is the one who stacks the chairs, and he has been the one who stacks the chairs for nineteen years.
There were about a hundred and forty in that room once. Now there are eleven, and one of them comes for the company and would say so cheerfully, and the urn is cold by twenty past eight because there is nobody left to drink it.
Nobody did anything wrong. The season ended the way seasons end. People moved, people died, a great many people went on being faithful in ordinary ways and simply stopped expecting the extraordinary, which is not a scandal and is not apostasy and is mostly just what tiredness looks like over nineteen years.
He used to ask for it. Out loud, in that room, every week, for a long time.
He stopped about three years ago. Not because he stopped wanting it. Because he noticed one evening that he had become the man who still mentions it, and that there is a particular expression people wear when the man who still mentions it starts mentioning it, and it is not unkind, and it is unbearable.
So now he carries a chair in each hand and he says nothing, and he goes home, and he asks in the car where nobody has to arrange their face about it.
If you gave up asking out loud in your own building, come and stand by the table. Not one of those eleven is going to be criticized here.
Missing a season and asking for a Person are two different requests
Let us separate what he has been asking for, because the two have been fused for years and the fusion is why he feels foolish.
One of them is a season. A hundred and forty people, a particular decade, an atmosphere he can still feel if he stands in the right part of that room. That is a memory, and wanting it back is nostalgia, and he is right to be slightly suspicious of himself about it.
The other is a Person. And nothing about the first one being nostalgia makes the second one a nostalgic request, though he has been treating them as one thing and blushing for both.
You are not being sentimental. Nothing about missing a decade has ever made asking for the Holy Spirit a request for a decade. I am not saying it to get an old man asking again. The written word says how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him (Luke 11:13), where the object of the asking is named and it is a Person rather than a period, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it hold in a man with a chair in each hand.
The object of the request is named for you
Here is the part that turned this for me, and it takes nothing off those eleven.
Read what the verse hands over, because it does not leave the object of the request open.
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?Luke 11:13
The Holy Spirit. Not an atmosphere, not a season, not a hundred and forty people in a room. The gift is named, and the naming does the sorting for a man who has not been able to sort it himself.
And how much more is an argument from the lesser to the greater: if a flawed man knows what to hand his own children, then the willingness on God's side is not the thing in doubt in this room. What is in doubt is whether anybody is still asking.
Your request has an object and Scripture names it for you, which is a Person and not a period. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it to a man stacking chairs at twenty past eight.
Nobody in that room is being blamed
Something must be said very plainly, or this becomes a page about ten people who let something go.
They did not. Several of them asked for years and carried disappointments he has never had to carry, and the one who comes for the company is doing something genuinely good by being there at all, and nineteen years of turning up on a wet Wednesday is not a small thing in anybody's ledger.
And the expression they wear is not contempt. It is care that has learned to brace, which is what happens to hope in decent people over a long time.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him (Psalm 145:18), where nearness is stated as His position and no size of room is attached to it, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not the eleven or the hundred and forty, who determines what a Wednesday holds.
And if these nineteen years have cost more than the people by that table know, if sleep has gone, if the drive home has become the hardest part of the week, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise that anything comes to that hall, or when.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. The written word says how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him (Luke 11:13), where the gift is named as a Person and the willingness is argued from the lesser to the greater, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a decade, who is the object of what you have been trying to ask for.
I cannot tell you what God does in that room, or when, or whether the eleven ever becomes twelve. Nobody honest would, and a promise here would make a nineteen year servant look foolish in front of people he loves. What I can tell you is that missing a decade and asking for a Person are two different requests, and only one of them was ever nostalgia.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Feeling foolish for being the one who still remembers, you are a thing I carry out with the chairs and you are not a reason to stop asking. Luke 11 names the gift as the Holy Spirit rather than a season, so the naming does the sorting I could never do myself, and His Spirit has been in that hall through all nineteen years. In the name of Jesus I put you down.
- Fusion of a decade and a Person in one request, you are not what God says about me and you are not standing in that room on Wednesday. Psalm 145 says the Lord is near to all who call upon Him, so nearness is His position and no size of room is attached, and His Spirit determines what an evening holds. I am asking for this again, here.
- Father, how much more shall You give the Holy Spirit to them that ask You, and Luke 11 argues it from a flawed man handing good things to his own children. I thank You for ten people who asked for years and carried disappointments I never had to carry. The fire that stayed is the one I want, not the one I remember.
Luke 11:13
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