He carries them out one at a time even though he could manage both, and he has thought about why he does that and decided not to look at it too closely.
Two chairs. In a courtyard, facing each other at a slight angle so it does not feel like an interview.
It used to be a room. Sixty-some people on the busy weeks and a queue at the door of a hall he had to book a year ahead, and a rota of five who did the food, and a man on the sound desk who took it far more seriously than the situation required and who is dead now.
It ended in a way that everybody in the family has agreed not to discuss, and there is no need to discuss it here either. It was four years ago. There was a period afterwards that his wife describes, accurately, as the two bad years.
Tonight, two chairs. One person coming, and that person is a neighbor's son, and it was the neighbor who suggested it and not him.
The sentence arrives while he is setting the second one down. Not this is a start. It is: this is what is left of a thing that used to fill a room, and putting out two chairs is not a beginning, it is an admission.
You know that courtyard. It might be two chairs, or four people, or a table where twenty used to sit. You are doing again, at a size you can manage, something that was once much larger, and the smallness of it is standing next to you the whole time like a witness for the prosecution.
Two sounds, and nobody made them choose
There is a scene in Ezra when a rebuilt foundation is laid, and it is the only honest description of this exact moment in the whole of Scripture.
But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy.Ezra 3:12
Two sounds, at the same time, in the same courtyard. The young ones shouting because something has started. The old ones weeping, out loud, without embarrassment, because they had seen the first house and this was not that.
And the text does not correct anybody.
Nobody tells the old men to be more positive. Nobody tells the shouters to be more respectful. The next verse says the noise was so mixed that the people could not tell one from the other, and the sound was heard a long way off. Both were real. Both were allowed. God did not ask for a vote on which sound was appropriate.
You are standing at a foundation where weeping and shouting are both permitted, and God has never once asked you to pick one. That is what the written word says over you and not a soft framing chosen for a man with two chairs, and the Holy Spirit who was in that hall on the busy weeks is the evidence that the earlier thing was real and is not being erased by the smaller one.
Watch what that does to the arithmetic in the courtyard. If both sounds went up together, then two chairs is information about four years and a family agreement and the two bad years. It is not an admission, and it never had the standing to become that.
Nobody here is going to call this a seed
Here is the second thing, and it is the sentence that has been coming since the first paragraph.
Somebody is going to tell you that two chairs is a seed. That it will grow. That God is starting something small and by this time next year the courtyard will not be big enough.
Nothing here says that. Nobody on this page knows whether one person becomes two, or whether the neighbor's son comes back next week, or whether this is still happening in a month. Promising you growth would make this article one more voice adding weight to two chairs, and they are already carrying enough.
What is here is that two chairs is allowed to be two chairs. Not a stage. Not a seed. Not a lesson in humility. Two chairs in a courtyard on a Thursday, which is a real thing that is happening rather than a small version of a thing that is not.
You have been carried through all four years and both bad ones, and the carrying did not scale with the numbers. Scripture says He works all things after the counsel of His own will, and it is the Holy Spirit at work in that courtyard tonight with exactly the same weight He had in a hall with sixty people in it.
And nothing here requires you to do this again next week. If tonight is the only one, it happened.
This is where your mouth comes into it, because I am not leaving you with a warm thought and two chairs. Jesus taught that the smallest living faith a man has, spoken out loud at the thing in the way, is enough for God to work with. Spoken. Not carried out one chair at a time in silence. And the thing in the way is not the ending and it is not the family agreement. It is a sentence: this is not a beginning, it is an admission. Nobody has ever answered that out loud, and you least of all.
You have real authority to answer it, and it is yours because you are in Christ, not because you feel like a man with any authority setting out furniture. Scripture hands you the standing and the Holy Spirit carries the words, and the power was never in the sixty-some people.
If this has taken you somewhere darker than grief, and there are hours when you would rather not be here at all, tell a living person today. Your doctor, or a crisis line, 988 in the United States, 116 123 in the United Kingdom, or the emergency number where you live. That is not a detour from what God is doing with your life. Very often it is exactly what He is doing, arriving down a telephone.
So. The courtyard, the second chair just set down, a slight angle so it is not an interview.
Put both hands on the back of one of them. Actually do it, palms on the frame, before anybody arrives, which is the only time you would.
Say out loud what this is. Plain words, the flattest in your language. Say the number. Two.
Then say one sentence naming who was in both sounds. Not what it might become, because nobody here knows and nothing on this page will promise you a room, and God has never required a work to grow in order to have been real. Just who was in both. One sentence, then sit down in one of them and wait.
You are not a man making an admission, you are a man at a foundation where the weeping and the shouting are both allowed and both true. That is the word's account of this evening rather than my comfortable version of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in that courtyard with the same weight He had in the hall.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these out loud with your hands still on the chair. You stand in Christ, and Scripture is what makes these words a declaration rather than a wish, and the Holy Spirit carries them rather than however small this feels tonight. What God does next with this, and whether anybody comes back next week, is His to decide, and He has not promised you a room and neither has this page.
- Two chairs in this courtyard, you are not a smaller version of a life. Ezra says the old men wept aloud and many shouted for joy at the same foundation, and nobody was corrected, and you are two seats at a slight angle.
- Sentence that calls this an admission rather than a beginning, you have no place in my mouth, and I put you out in the name of Jesus. Scripture let both sounds stand together and never asked for a vote, so I do not have to choose which one tonight is.
- Lord, You were in the weeping and in the shouting and You did not correct either, and I am standing on that in this courtyard with my hands on a chair back. I thank You, because Your Spirit is out here tonight with the same weight He had in that hall, and I am sitting down without calling this small.
Ezra 3:12
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