I Do Not Know Him Well Enough to Knock

Tonight we are making a pot of chicken and noodle soup, and it is the most portable food there is.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put four chicken thighs in a pot with a chopped onion, two chopped carrots, two sticks of celery, a bay leaf, plenty of salt and eight cups of water. Bring it up, skim off anything that foams, then simmer gently for forty minutes until the chicken is completely tender and cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. Take the chicken out, pull the meat off, and put the meat back in the pot. Taste the broth and salt it properly, because an underseasoned broth is the only way this dish goes wrong. Add a couple of handfuls of any short noodles and cook them for the time on the packet. Black pepper and any green thing at the end. It feeds six, it costs a few dollars, and it travels in any container with a lid.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the soup.

It is the man you keep thinking about.

Something is going on with him. You do not know the details and you are not going to. But he has stopped doing the thing he used to do at the same time every day, or his car has not moved, or somebody mentioned something at the store.

And you have a pot, and you could easily make twice as much, and you have thought about taking him some four separate times.

And every time you get stuck at the same place: I do not really know him. We have spoken maybe eleven times. He might think it is strange.

The one in the story who had no connection at all

There is a famous story about a man on a road, and the important detail is usually skipped in favor of the moral.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. (Luke 10:33, King James Version)

Read who the helper is. The two men who walked past were the ones with a connection. Same nation, same religion, same community, every reason in the world to stop.

And the one who stopped had no connection at all. Different people, different worship, a history of genuine hostility. If anybody in that story had a reason to say I do not really know him, it was the Samaritan.

And the phrase Luke uses is: came where he was. That is the whole qualification. Proximity, and then compassion, and then doing something.

You are as qualified as anybody in that story, and God has never once required an introduction before a person could be fed. Luke 10:33 puts the helping in the hands of the one with no connection at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen with a big pot on it.

You have not been presumptuous for thinking about him, and heaven has never once graded a kindness by how well the two people knew each other. It is written that he came where he was and had compassion on him, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the broth is going.

The reason is real and it is not the reason

Now let me be honest about the objection, because it is a good faith one and it deserves respect.

It is genuinely true that you do not know him well. It would genuinely be slightly unusual. And there is a real possibility that he is a private man who would rather not have anybody at his door.

All of that is accurate. And none of it is the reason nobody has gone.

You are not intruding on anybody, and God has never once treated a plate of food as an imposition. The Spirit of God is saying it as plainly as Luke 10:33 says it: the one with no connection at all came where he was, and that is the whole qualification.

Nobody has gone because knocking on a stranger's door with food is exposing. There is a moment on that step where one man is holding a pot and the other is deciding what to do with his face, and that moment is uncomfortable, and the discomfort belongs to the one on the step.

And that is the actual price. Not his privacy. Your eight seconds of awkwardness.

Which is a completely fair price and quite a small one, and it is worth saying plainly so that it stops being disguised as consideration for him.

Barely knowing somebody is not a verdict on whether you should go.

You are not intruding, and God has never once treated a plate of food as an imposition. The passage has a total stranger stop and be commended for exactly that, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a genuine concern from a comfortable excuse.

You have been thinking about that man for two weeks and nobody else on this road has. Luke 10 has two qualified men walk past and one unqualified man stop, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the unqualified one move.

Say it in a way he can refuse

Here is the practical part, and it is about wording, because the wording is what makes it easy for him.

Do not say I heard things have been hard. Do not say I have been worried about you. Both of those require him to confirm or deny something, and a private man will deny it and then there are two people standing on a step with nothing to say.

Say: I made too much soup, do you want some, it will only go in the trash.

You are able to offer this in a way that costs him nothing, and God has never once handed a person help with a hook in it. Luke 10:33 has a man simply come where somebody was, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one plain sentence at a door do the whole of that.

That sentence does three things. It gives a reason that is about your kitchen rather than his life. It gives him a completely graceful way to say no. And it lets him say yes without admitting anything at all.

And take it in a container you do not need back, so there is no return visit hanging over him.

If he says no, say no problem, and go home, and that is a good outcome too, because he now knows there is somebody two hundred feet away who thought about him.

You are able to offer this in a way that costs him nothing, and God has never once handed a person help with a hook in it. Luke 10:33 has a man simply come where somebody was, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes one plain sentence at a door into exactly that.