As Much As Lies In You

The evening went cold at about ten to nine and Fadi felt it happen the way you feel a door open somewhere else in a house.

Twenty-two people. Long table down the middle of the courtyard, lamps on the wall, somebody's baby asleep in a basket under the vine, and the good year for the apricots so there was too much of everything.

It went cold because two men at his table said, in the same three minutes, two things they both genuinely believe about this subject.

Neither of them was rude. That is what Fadi keeps saying about it. Both of them were careful, and both of them were doing the thing you do where you say the sentence and then look at your plate, and everybody at that end of the table went quiet in the specific way that means everybody knows.

Fadi got up and got more bread that nobody needed.

And standing at the doorway with a basket in his hands, out of the light, he did what he has done for about fifteen years, which is start engineering.

He could seat them apart next time. He could get his brother to sit between them. He could raise it privately with the older one, who would listen. He could raise it with the younger one, who would also listen and would be hurt.

He has a whole apparatus for this. He is very good at it, and everybody in that family thinks the reason it works is that they all get on well, and the reason it works is Fadi.

He stood in the doorway with the bread and he was, for the first time, genuinely tired of it.

He said it to his wife much later, when the last of them had gone: "I cannot make them agree."

She said, "Nobody asked you to."

And he said the true thing, which is the reason this article exists: "I did. About fifteen years ago. I asked me to."

You may be carrying the same thing. In a family, in a workplace, in a small congregation. Somebody is always the one who manages the temperature of a room, and if it is you then you probably took the job on without anybody offering it and you have never once handed it back. And nobody has shown you how carefully the verse about this is worded.

The Verse Has Two Limits In It And Both Are Kind

There is a line in Romans about living at peace, and almost everybody quotes the middle of it and drops the two clauses that make it survivable.

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."Romans 12:18

If it be possible.

That is the first limit and it is doing serious work. Paul is allowing, in writing, for the possibility that in a given situation it is not. He does not promise that every relationship resolves. He does not say a sufficiently skilled peacemaker can always get there.

As much as lieth in you.

That is the second limit and it is the one for Fadi. It draws a boundary around what is actually yours. Your conduct, your words, your seating plan if you like. Not the other person's convictions, not their tone, and not whether the thing is settled.

You have been handed a job with two limits written into it. Romans 12 puts a possibility clause and a scope clause around the instruction before it gives it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it in a doorway with a basket of bread nobody needed.

And notice who the limits protect. They are not there to let a person off. They are there so that somebody who genuinely tries is not crushed by an outcome that was never inside their part of it.

You were never given the other side of that table. That is what the written word says about peace between people, and it is the Spirit of God who makes two small clauses land in a man who has been running a room for fifteen years.

Nobody Here Is Asking You To Settle It Either

Now be exact, because a page about a host carrying too much would be a poor thing if it added anything at all to his load.

This site does not rule on what those two men said at your table. It does not lean toward either of them, it is not withholding a view as a tactic, and it does not think the disagreement is silly.

And it is not asking you to raise it, resolve it, mediate it or bring it up privately with the older one. If you seat them apart next year, fine. If you seat them together and say nothing, also fine.

You can host a room you cannot fix. It is written that as much as lieth in you, which was written by somebody who knew perfectly well that some rooms do not warm up, and His Spirit is the one who has been in that doorway with you for fifteen years of engineering.

And say the guard, since this whole site turns on it. Nothing here asks you for anything. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no position, no side, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all. You are as fully His on an evening that went cold at ten to nine, that is the written shape of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from handing you a fifteenth technique.