The Bottle We Never Opened

It came in a box with a ribbon on it and a card signed by nine people, and it has been at the back of the top left cupboard for five years, behind the good glasses that also do not get used.

It was for their tenth. Amy's colleagues clubbed together, which was kind, and none of them knew, because Ryan had stopped eleven months before and it was not the sort of thing Amy told a workplace.

They put it in the cupboard on the night, laughing about it a bit, and said they would decide what to do with it later.

That was five years ago. It is a good bottle. It is worth actual money, and it was given by people who meant well, and it is still there, and every time Ryan gets the big serving dish down he moves it aside.

He cannot open it, obviously. He cannot pour it away, because it feels wasteful and slightly dramatic. He cannot give it to anybody, because who do you give it to, and Amy's colleagues might ask, four years later, whether they ever drank it. He cannot sell it. He cannot throw it out.

So it stays, and it is not a temptation, and it has become something worse than a temptation: an object with a small permanent question attached, in a cupboard he opens twice a week.

You know that object. It might be a bottle, a set of glasses, something in a garage, something a person gave you. You cannot use it and you cannot get rid of it, and it has been sitting there for years accumulating a question.

You are living in a house that somebody has moved into, and you were never the only one keeping residence here. Jesus said if a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live fact in a kitchen with a cupboard in it.

We will come and make our abode

Let me name the difficulty, because it is genuinely a strange one and it is not what people expect.

You do not want to drink it. That has not been the question for years. What that bottle is doing is holding a question open in your house, and an open question in a cupboard is heavier than a closed one. Every time you see it you have a small decision to not make, and you have been not making it twice a week for five years, and that is about five hundred small decisions declined.

And nothing here is going to tell you what to do with it. Pour it out, give it away, keep it, sell it, put it in a box in the loft. That is your business and Amy's and it is not the point of this. The point is who lives in the house.

Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.John 14:23

Abode. It is the noun form of the verb Jesus uses all through that chapter for abiding, remaining, staying. It means a dwelling place, a residence. And He does not say we will visit him. He says we will make our abode with him, which is the language of moving in.

You have a house with somebody resident in it, and you were never running a place that God visits occasionally. That is what stands written in John 14, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes residence a real category rather than a poetic one in an ordinary kitchen.

And notice the plural. We will come. The Father and the Son, together, in the same sentence, and a few verses earlier He has already said the Comforter will be with you and shall be in you. That house is not lightly occupied.

You have a fully occupied house, and you were never keeping it on your own. Scripture puts the Father, the Son and the Spirit in the same chapter about dwelling, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a settled fact about a specific address.

And here is what changes a cupboard. When somebody lives in a house, the objects in it stop being landmarks and become furniture. A guest notices things. A resident does not. The difference between a bottle that is an event every time you see it and a bottle that is simply a thing at the back of a cupboard is not the bottle; it is whether the person opening that door is at home there.

You are at home rather than visiting, and you were never a guest in a house God moved into. The written word describes a residence rather than a visit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a man at home in his own kitchen.

And the plain thing, said the way this site says it every time. Five years of a small permanent question is worth telling somebody about, and it is exactly the sort of thing that sounds ridiculous until you say it out loud and somebody says, oh, I have one of those. A friend, a counselor, the room where people say true things. That is God's kindness with a face on it. And you are allowed to talk to Amy about it, and you are allowed not to.