I Open Up And Turn The Heat On

Ten past seven and the building is the temperature of the outside, which in February is a thing you feel through the soles of your shoes.

She does the same seven things in the same order, because she worked out the order in her second year and has never varied it.

Lights in the corridor first, because the main switch is at the far end and you have to walk it in the dark otherwise. Boiler. The two valves in the vestry that have to be opened or the far side of the building stays cold, which nobody knows about except her and one man who is dead now and who showed her. Doors unbolted. The heater in the small room where the older ladies sit, which is separate and which has to be on for the full two hours. Then the water on. Then the two windows in the hall that get opened for twenty minutes and closed again, because otherwise the room smells like a closed room.

It takes about thirty-five minutes and then she sits in a cold building in her coat for a while, and that is the part she likes.

Thirteen years.

And by nine, when people come in, the building is warm. Every time. And here is the fact she came to a long while ago and has never mentioned to anybody.

Not one person who walks into that room at nine has ever experienced that building being cold.

They have no reference point. There is nothing for them to notice. The warmth is simply what that room is, in the same way the roof is what is over it. Which means the entire result of thirteen years of ten past seven is an absence, and you cannot thank anybody for an absence, and she does not expect anybody to.

What is not coming

Let me say this at the top so you can hear the rest properly.

Nothing on this page is going to promise you that anybody will notice. I do not know that. You may do this for another thirteen years and nobody may ever say a word, and that would not surprise either of us.

And nothing here is going to hold you up as an example to anybody. There is no paragraph coming where the ones who arrive early are set in front of the ones who arrive at nine. That is just a person being put at the front of a different room.

And nothing here is going to tell you that hidden work is more spiritual than the visible kind. It is not, and you have no use for that.

You are not being consoled here, and nothing on this page asks you to be pleased about being invisible. That is not caution on my part. Scripture handles this in one sentence, and the Holy Spirit has never once needed a woman reconciled to being filler before He would speak to her.

The verse, exactly as it stands

Here it is, and I am going to quote it and then not improve on it, because it does not need improving and every attempt to improve it makes it worse.

Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.1 Corinthians 12:22

Necessary.

Not valuable. Not appreciated. Not quietly important. Not the real backbone of the church, which is a compliment people give and which is not what the verse says.

Necessary, which is a word about a thing that cannot be done without.

And notice the first half: which seem to be more feeble. Seem. Paul is describing how a part looks to the room, and then he says the room's reading is not the true one.

You are necessary in that body and the word says so in exactly those words about exactly the parts nobody watches. I am not adding to it. 1 Corinthians 12:22 says necessary about the parts that seem feeblest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written line like that and lands it on a woman sitting in a cold building in her coat at quarter to eight.

An absence is a real result

Now the thing worth naming, because you have been carrying an accurate observation and drawing a conclusion from it that does not follow.

You are right that the result is an absence. Nobody experiences a cold building. There is nothing to be noticed, and therefore nothing to be grateful for, and that is not a failure of anybody's manners.

But an absence is a result. It is one of the hardest results to produce and the only one that is completely invisible when you succeed.

Think about the two valves in the vestry. One man knew and he is dead. Now you know. The day you stop, or the day you are ill and somebody else does it, half that building is cold and nobody will know why, and there will be a discussion about the boiler, and it will not be the boiler.

You are the last person alive who knows a thing about that building that keeps forty people warm.

You are holding something in place that is invisible only because it has never once failed, and the word calls exactly that necessary. That is 1 Corinthians 12:22 in its own words, and the Spirit who searches all things has been in that corridor at ten past seven for thirteen years and has never once needed the room to notice.

And the quarter of an hour in the coat

One more thing, and I want to be careful here because it is not the point of the article and it may be the point for you.

You sit in a cold building for fifteen minutes in your coat, and you said it is the part you like.

I am not going to tell you what that is. It is yours. But I will say that in thirteen years you have spent something like a hundred and seventy hours alone in an empty building with God before anybody else arrived, and that nobody arranged that and nobody knows about it and it was not on any schedule.

You have had a hundred and seventy hours nobody scheduled, and the word says God sees in secret without any suggestion that a witness would have improved it. Matthew 6:4 says exactly that, and the Spirit who was given to bear witness has been in that cold room with you every one of those mornings.