Nobody Noticed

He unlocks the courtyard gate at six every morning and he locks it again at nine at night, and he has done that for twenty-two years.

In between, he waters six clay pots along the south wall, sweeps the passage where the leaves collect against the step, wipes the rim of the shared basin, and rights the two chairs that somebody always drags out of line. It takes him forty minutes in the morning and about twenty in the evening. He has never written any of it down and he has never once had to be reminded.

There are twelve families in that building. Some of them have been there longer than he has. Most of them are kind to him in the ordinary way that people are kind to somebody they see every day: a lifted hand, a word about the weather, a child sent down with a plate at a festival. None of them have any idea what time the gate gets unlocked, because it has always been unlocked when they come down, which is the entire point and also the entire problem.

His own life fits in a room off the passage. A chair by the window, a radio he listens to with the volume low, a shelf, a kettle, a picture of his mother. He goes up to her at seven every morning before the gate and again at midday, and he does the things that need doing there, and he does not talk about that part with anybody.

On summer evenings the families eat out in the courtyard. They drag the tables together under the lamps and it goes on for hours, and there is a lot of noise, and someone always brings out more than they meant to. He likes it. He genuinely likes it. He stands at the edge with the ring of keys in his hand and he watches it and he is glad it is happening in a courtyard he swept.

He does not sit down. Twenty-two years, and he has never once pulled a chair into that circle.

And here is the sentence he has never said to a living soul, though he has half said it to God a few times in the dark, in the room off the passage, with the radio off.

Nobody noticed.

Not the gate. Not the pots. Not the fact that the basin has been clean every single morning since before some of those children were born. He does not want a speech about it and he would be mortified if anybody made one. That is not what the sentence means. What it means is older and quieter than that, and it goes like this: if a life this small has been held this carefully for this long and it has not registered anywhere, then perhaps it has not registered anywhere at all. Not with them. Not, he sometimes fears at three in the morning, with God either.

He locks the gate at nine. The lamps are still lit and there is still laughing behind him.

Perhaps you keep something like that. A few things, held faithfully, for years, in a life that has not grown and is not going to, and no sign anywhere that anybody has seen you do it.

Count the words the master actually says

Let us go straight to the parable Jesus told, and I want you to count something in it, because the counting is where this turns.

Three servants. One is given five, one is given two, one is given one. The first two go and trade with what they have. When the master comes back, the man with five brings him ten, and the man with two brings him four.

Now listen to what the master says to the man who came back with four.

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.Matthew 25:21

Here is the thing to count. That is word for word what he says to the man who came back with ten. Not a shorter version. Not a warmer one for the bigger number. The same sentence, twice, in the same scene, and Jesus tells it that way deliberately, because He knew exactly who would be reading it at three in the morning with the radio off.

You are being spoken over in the same words as the man with the larger portion, and no one has ever been given a smaller commendation for a smaller life. Matthew 25:21 puts the identical sentence in the master's mouth twice, and the Holy Spirit is the One who takes an old written line about two talents and carries it down a passage into a room with a low radio and a picture on the shelf.

And notice the words the master chooses for what was done. Faithful over a few things. He does not say small. He does not say only. He says a few things and he says faithful, and he puts them in the same breath as though there were no tension between them, because in his accounting there is not.

You have been faithful over a few things, and few is His own word for it, not a concession He is making to you. Matthew 25:21 is on the page in that shape and it has never been edited, and the same Spirit who moved a man to write it down is not standing in your courtyard grading the acreage.

The reward he hands over is a room, not a raise

Now look at the end of the sentence, because most people stop reading one clause too early.

Enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Not here is a bigger department. Not now we will see about expanding you. The master opens his own gladness and tells the servant to come inside it. Whatever else that means, it means the man ends the story in the room where the master is happy, sitting down, on the inside of the door.

That is not payment for output. That is a host bringing somebody in.

You are invited into His own joy, which is not a thing you were ever going to earn by acreage. Matthew 25:21 ends with an invitation rather than a promotion, and the Holy Spirit is the One who opens a written door like that in a courtyard at nine at night with the keys still in somebody's hand.

And I want to say something plainly here, and then leave it alone, because it needs saying and it does not need explaining. Some lives are small by force. Illness decided it, or somebody who needed looking after decided it, or a hundred circumstances nobody chose decided it between them. If that is your life, I am not going to hand you a lesson about the beauty of small things, and I am not going to suggest you set anything down. God is not grading the size of your portion. He never was. The size was never the subject.

What I will say is that the man in that parable is not commended for having little. He is met in it. There is a difference and it is the whole difference. Nobody in that story tells the servant that two was better for him than five would have been. The master simply comes to where he is, says the same words he says to everybody, and opens the door.

You were met, and being met is not the same as being told your life is the right size. The written word has the master coming to the servant rather than the servant being called up to explain himself, and the Spirit who inspired it is not in the business of telling anybody their portion suits them.