I Stopped Inviting After the Last Time

Tonight we are making a big tray of nachos with beans and cheese, and this is the least serious food in this entire collection, on purpose.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Heat the oven to 400. Spread half a big bag of tortilla chips on a sheet pan. Warm a can of refried beans or mashed black beans with a spoon of cumin and a splash of water until it is loose enough to dollop, and spoon it over the chips in patches. Cover the whole thing generously with grated cheese, and then add a second layer of chips, beans and cheese on top of that, which is the single most important technique here because it stops the bottom layer being dry and the top layer being everything. Bake for twelve minutes until the cheese is fully melted and bubbling. Then pile on whatever cold things are in the house: chopped onion, tomato, jalapeños from a jar, a spoon of sour cream, hot sauce. Put the whole pan on the table. It feeds six, it costs a few dollars, and there is exactly one thing to wash.

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

It is that you have not asked anybody over in a long time.

There was a last time. You remember it well. You cooked, and you cleaned up first, and fewer people came than you expected, or nobody did, and you sat with it that evening and you did not say anything to anybody about it.

And you have never made a decision since. That is the thing. There was never a moment where you decided to stop having people over. You have just been busy, and the timing has not been right, and it has been a while, and it has been a while for about two years now.

The householder who did not close the door

There is a parable in Luke where somebody throws a dinner and the guests do not come, and what happens next is the point.

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. (Luke 14:23, King James Version)

Look at what he does not do. He does not cancel. He does not put the food away and decide never again. He does not spend the evening working out what was wrong with the invitation or with himself.

He sends somebody back out. Twice. And the second time he says compel them, which is not force, it is the word for an insistence warm enough that a person who assumed they were not really wanted comes anyway.

The house gets filled. It is filled with a completely different set of people from the ones originally invited, and the story presents that as a good outcome rather than as a consolation.

You are standing in a story that does not end with the guests who declined, and God has never once let one refused invitation close a house. Luke 14:23 has the host send out again rather than shut the door, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen tonight.

You have not been quietly retired from this, and heaven has never once accepted an empty evening as a verdict on a host. It is written that he said go out and compel them to come in that my house may be filled, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the oven is heating.

The way a door closes without anybody closing it

Now let me describe the mechanism, because it is worth seeing clearly.

Nobody decides to stop inviting people. What happens is that the cost of asking goes up by a small amount after a bad evening, and it never goes back down on its own. And so each time the thought arrives, there is a slightly better reason not to, and the reasons are all genuinely true. Busy. Tired. House is a mess. Not a good week.

And two years later a person has a life with no risk in it, and no empty chairs in it, and also almost nobody in it, and they have never once made a choice they could point at.

You have not decided anything, and a door that closed by accident has never once been a decision about a person. Luke 14:23 has a host send out a second time rather than reconsider, which is the written word and not my encouragement, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reopens what nobody meant to shut.

That is not cowardice and it is not pride. It is a completely ordinary way that a door closes.

One bad evening is not a verdict on whether people want to come to your house.

You are not unwanted, and God has never once let an unlucky Tuesday become a permanent arrangement. The passage has the invitation reissued rather than reconsidered, and the Spirit of God is the one who reopens a thing that closed by accident rather than by decision.

You have been protecting yourself from a small hurt at a very large price. Luke 14 has a house filled with people who never expected to be asked, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary invitation possible again after a long quiet.

Ask before it comes out of the oven

Here is the practical part, and the order is the whole trick.

Ask people before the food is ready. Not after. Right now, while the oven is heating, send two messages that say: making nachos, come over, twenty minutes.

The reason is that a big invitation is what has become impossible, and a small one has not. Nobody has to tidy for nachos. Nobody has to be impressive. There is no menu to plan and nothing to be judged on, and if somebody cannot come there is nothing to interpret, because the nachos were happening regardless.

And a tray of nachos with two people around it is a genuinely good evening, which is the part that has to be relearned. Not an occasion. A pan, a table, and people picking at it.

You are able to ask small, and God has never once required a person to be impressive before He would fill a room. Luke 14:23 has a house filled from the highways and hedges rather than from a list, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a two line message on a Tuesday into the beginning of that.