I Do Not Want to Intrude

Tonight we are making a pot of leek and potato soup, and it is the gentlest thing in this whole collection.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Cut three leeks in half lengthways, wash them properly because grit hides inside, and slice them. Cook them in a good lump of butter in a pot over low heat for ten minutes with salt, and keep the heat low so they soften rather than color. Add three peeled and chopped potatoes and five cups of water or broth. Bring it up and simmer for twenty minutes until the potatoes fall apart when pressed. Mash about half of it against the side of the pot or blend part of it, and stir it back so the whole thing goes thick and creamy without any cream. Salt properly. Black pepper and a little milk if you have it. It feeds five, it costs about two dollars, and it is easy to eat when a person has no appetite.

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

It is somebody you have not gone to see.

Something happened. A death, or a diagnosis, or something that nobody has said out loud but everybody has understood. And you have wanted to go for weeks.

And every time, the same sentence stops you: I do not want to intrude.

It is a good sentence. It sounds like consideration. It sounds like respect for a person's privacy, and there is a version of it that genuinely is that.

But I want to ask you something gently, and only you can answer it. Whose comfort is that sentence protecting?

The seven days nobody talks about

There is a verse in Job that comes right before everything goes wrong, and it is the best thing his friends ever did.

So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. (Job 2:13, King James Version)

Seven days. On the ground. Not one word.

Those men are remembered badly, and they earned it, because of everything they said afterward. But for a whole week they did the single most difficult thing available to a human being in that situation: they turned up, and they stayed, and they said nothing.

And the verse gives the reason plainly: they saw that his grief was very great. The size of the grief is what produced the silence, not what produced the distance.

You are able to be in a room without filling it, and God has never once called presence an intrusion. Job 2:13 has the only unambiguously good thing his friends did consist of arriving and staying quiet, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen with a pot of soup on it.

You have not been given a reason to stay away, and heaven has never once treated somebody turning up as a trespass. It is written that they sat down with him upon the ground and none spake a word, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the leeks are softening.

The politeness is doing another job

Now let me say the gentle hard thing, and then I will leave it.

There is a real and good version of not wanting to intrude, and it is about them. It notices that a person has family with them, or has said plainly that they want to be left, or is at the point where an extra face in a room is genuinely too much.

And there is another version, which wears the same clothes, and it is about us. It is that going into a house where something terrible has happened means being in a room with grief and having no idea what to say and no way to fix anything, and that is one of the most uncomfortable things a person can do.

You are not an intrusion, and having no idea what to say has never once been a reason to stay out of a room. Job 2:13 records seven days of sitting on the ground in silence as the one thing those men got right, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a real consideration from a comfortable one.

Both versions produce the identical outcome: nobody goes. Which is why the second one is so hard to catch. It never announces itself. It arrives wearing the clothes of respect.

Not knowing what to say is not a verdict on whether you should be in the room.

You are not intruding, and God has never once required a person to have the right words before He would send them. The passage has men sit for a week with nothing to offer but their presence and records it as the right thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a real consideration from a comfortable one.

You have wanted to go for weeks, and wanting it that long is what makes it real rather than intrusive. Job 2 has the visit happen before any of the talking goes wrong, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody to a door with nothing prepared.

Go, and do not ask a single question

Here is the practical part, and there is one rule, and it is the entire method.

Take the soup. Go. And do not ask a single question.

Not how are you. Not is there anything I can do. Not do you want to talk about it. Every one of those requires an answer, and answering is work, and there is no capacity for work in that house right now.

You are able to arrive with nothing prepared, and God has never once needed a person's words before He would use their presence. The same Spirit who breathed Job 2:13 is in this kitchen, and the written word there makes the staying rather than the speaking the good part.

Instead: put the soup on the counter and say what it is. Fill the kettle. Sit down. And be quiet.

If she talks, listen and do not fix. If she does not talk, sit for twenty minutes and then say you are going to go, and go.

That is a complete visit. It is not a failed one, and it is not a lesser version of a proper conversation. It is the thing Job's friends got right, and they got it right for a week.

You are permitted to arrive with nothing, and God has never once needed a person's words before He would use their presence. Job 2:13 makes sitting in silence the whole of what was done well, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes twenty quiet minutes into exactly that.