Not Loud, and Not Hiding

The coffee machine in the break room takes about ninety seconds and everybody in that office knows it, which is why the jokes happen there and not anywhere else.

Today it is Gary, and it is the usual one, and he does it well because he has been doing it for two years. Something about her praying for the printer. Somebody else adds the bit about the second coming and the quarterly figures. There is proper laughter, the good kind, the kind that means people like each other, and that is the thing that makes it complicated. They are not cruel. Nobody in that room would be cruel to her. If her car would not start they would all be out in the parking lot in the rain.

And she is standing at the counter with an empty mug in her hand doing the calculation.

Option one is to laugh along a beat too fast, which she does most weeks, and add nothing, and get out slightly early, and feel the specific small flatness that arrives about halfway back to her desk. Not guilt exactly. More like having stepped back from a door.

Option two is to say something. And she has run that one too, twice, and knows exactly how it goes: the room goes careful, Gary does the hands-up thing, somebody says all right, all right, and for the rest of the week there is a politeness around her that is worse than the joke ever was. She walks back to her desk from that one feeling worse, not better, and cannot work out why doing the brave thing left her flatter than the cowardly one.

So it is option one again, and it will be option one next Tuesday, and the ninety seconds at that machine have become the most tiring ninety seconds of her week.

Here is what nobody sees. She is not afraid of Gary. She is not even embarrassed. What she is, is tired: tired of a decision that arrives every few days and has only ever had two answers, both of which cost something, and neither of which has anything to do with what she actually believes. She has started making her drink at odd times to miss it. That is the bit she would not tell you. She is arranging her afternoons around ninety seconds.

You know that break room.

Yours might be a staff room, or a family kitchen at Christmas, or a group chat that goes off on a Friday night. The room changes and the arithmetic does not: shrink, or argue. And I have come to stand at that counter with you and tell you the thing nobody told her, which is that those two were never the only two, and that the third one has been written down in your Bible the entire time.

Unashamed is a posture, not a volume

Paul wrote a sentence about this to the one city in the world most likely to laugh at him, and he wrote it before he had ever set foot in the place.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.Romans 1:16

Read where he puts the power. Not in his nerve. Not in his delivery. Not in how well he handles a hostile room, and Rome was a hostile room, full of people for whom a crucified Jewish carpenter was a punchline before it was anything else. He says the power is in the gospel itself, sitting there, whether anybody in earshot is impressed by it or not.

Which means unashamed is not a decibel level. It is a posture, and a posture is something you hold while standing perfectly still with an empty mug in your hand.

Look at where he was writing to and what he called it: Romans 1 says the gospel is the power of God, and the same Spirit who carried that sentence to Rome is the one standing at the counter with you: you are unashamed already, and your ease in that room is evidence of it rather than a gap in it.

And notice what he does not say. He does not say I have never been laughed at. He does not say I always answer. He states a settled relationship to a thing that does not need his protection, and then he gets on with his life. There is no verse anywhere that makes the room's agreement the proof of your freedom, and His Spirit is not adding one behind the word: you have a status in that break room that Gary cannot vote on, and it did not arrive when you were brave and it does not leave when you are quiet.

Two options is one option short

Now let me name the trap, because it is beautifully made and it has been running your Tuesdays.

The trap says there are two doors: hide, or fight. And the reason both leave you flat is that both of them hand the room the same thing, which is the right to set the terms. Shrink, and the joke decides. Argue, and the joke still decides; it has simply decided that today you would perform. Either way the ninety seconds belong to somebody else.

Scripture does have an instruction here, and I want you to see how differently it is built.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.1 Peter 3:15

Ready always. Not launching always. Ready is a state, and it is the state of a woman who has something settled in her heart first, which is what sanctify the Lord God in your hearts means before it means anything about speaking. And then look at the trigger: to every man that asketh. An answer is for a question. A joke is not a question, and treating it as one is exactly how a person ends up in an argument nobody actually started.

And look at the manner, because it is prescribed and it is not the manner of the argument door: with meekness and fear. Gentle. Reverent. This is not a temperament I am recommending to you; it is written in 1 Peter 3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who decides which afternoon carries the question and which one carries only the coffee: it is already settled that you are ready, and readiness is not the same thing as owing that room a speech.

So the third door, the one that was there the whole time, is this: stay. Stay in the room. Do not laugh a beat too fast and do not go early and do not deliver anything. Finish your drink at the speed you would have finished it if nobody had said a word, and go back to your desk carrying something they cannot see, which is a woman with nothing to defend.

Their freedom is not your assignment today

One more thing, and it lifts a weight you may not know you are carrying.

You are not the reason anybody in that office comes to Christ, and you are not the reason anybody does not. That is not a lowering of the stakes; it is the removal of a burden that was never yours. The power is in the gospel, Romans 1 says so, and God has never once made a person's salvation contingent on how well a colleague handled a joke by the coffee machine. You were never made responsible for the state of that room, and the word puts the power where the power actually is, and His Spirit is the one carrying it there without your help.

And plainly, before we go on, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If what happens in that room has stopped being teasing and started being something that frightens you, or if any of this has gone somewhere dark, tell one human being today, and if there is any danger at all reach the crisis line where you live and let a real voice stay with you. Telling somebody is not a failure of nerve. It is one of the ordinary things a free woman does.