A Room in the House

Eleven addresses since he was six, and none of them was ever his, and he has never made a thing of it because to him it is not a story, it is arithmetic.

Two of those were with an aunt, who was good to him and who had four of her own. Three were with his mother in different towns depending on the work. Two were rooms in other people's houses in his twenties. Then four more, three of them fine, one of them a place he does not talk about.

He is fifty-two now and he has been in this house nine years, which is by a distance the longest, and it is not his either. It belongs to his wife's family and there has never been an unkind word about it and the arrangement is generous and it is understood by everybody, including him, that it is an arrangement.

Manu lives light. That is the phrase people use about him and they mean it admiringly. He owns almost nothing. He can pack in about forty minutes and he has done it eleven times. He does not put things on walls, and when his daughter asked him why once, he said something about the plaster.

And here is what he cannot do, and he has tried for nine years, and he would not tell you he was trying: he cannot hold the idea of a room being kept for him.

Lent, he understands. Offered, given for a season, made available: all of those he can receive, gratefully and easily, and he is good at being a guest, and that is a real skill and he has it.

Kept is a different word and it will not go in.

If everywhere you have lived was lent, hear the question. Which verse says this one is too?

Whose house it is, and who does the preparing

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.John 14:2

Take the three parts separately, because each one lands somewhere different in a man like Manu.

In my Father's house. The house is named, and it is named as a family's rather than an institution's. It is not a hall, not a facility, not a place with a warden. It is His Father's house, and Jesus is speaking to men He has just called friends.

Are many mansions. The old word means dwelling places, rooms, places to remain. And the emphasis is on many, which is a word about capacity, spoken to people who might reasonably have wondered whether there was space for them among more obvious candidates.

I go to prepare a place for you. And this is the one that undoes eleven addresses. The preparing is His work. Manu has spent his whole life being able to arrive somewhere and be no trouble; he has never once had somebody go ahead and get a room ready with him in mind.

You have a place being prepared by somebody who went ahead for you, and it is already in His Father's house. I am not being warm to a man on a veranda. It is written in John 14:2, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence spoken to friends the night before everything and lays it on somebody who packs in forty minutes.

The clause in the middle

And there is a clause in that verse that people read straight past and it is the one for a man who has learned to be careful about what he lets himself expect.

If it were not so, I would have told you.

That is Jesus anticipating the exact suspicion. He knows they might wonder whether He is being kind rather than accurate, and so He puts in a line that says: I would not tell you this if it were not true.

A man like Manu has been managed his whole life by people who meant well. He has been told, in eleven houses, versions of this is your home now, by people who were being generous and hopeful and who were, in the event, wrong. He is not cynical about that. He simply learned to receive that sentence as a kindness rather than as information.

And Jesus, knowing that exact reflex, includes a clause certifying that this one is information.

You are being told something certified as accurate rather than kind, and the clause is already in the verse for people who cannot tell the difference. Scripture says if it were not so, I would have told you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a certification into a sentence for somebody who has been let down by warm ones.

What he could do this week

And this is practical, because a promise about a future house does not automatically change a Tuesday, and it should.

If he has a room being kept for him by God, then the arrangement he lives under here is not the whole truth about his standing, and he could start living in this house as a man with a home elsewhere rather than as a man with no home at all. Those are different postures and they produce different Tuesdays.

Practically: he could put something on a wall. One thing.

It is a small act and it will be difficult in a way that would sound absurd if he described it, and it is exactly the right size, because a man who has never hung anything is a man who has been keeping his own life packed.

You are able to live as a man with a place, and the place is already being prepared, and it does not depend on the paperwork of the house you are standing in. It is written that in my Father's house are many mansions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person put a nail in a wall.