The clipboard comes down the table on the left hand side, the way it always does, past the pie plates and the coffee urn, and Wanda's pen is out of her cardigan pocket before it has reached the woman two seats up.
She has not read it yet. That is worth saying plainly. She does not know whether the sheet is for the Saturday cleanup or the hospital run or somebody's mother's move, and her pen is already out and already uncapped, held the way a runner holds herself at the line.
The sheet arrives. It is Thursday evenings, four of them, through November.
Wanda's own Thursday evening is the one night in her week that has nothing written in it. She knows that without checking. She has known it since the sheet started down the table, and somewhere under her ribs there was a small, quick, sinking thing that came and went so fast she could not have told you it happened.
She writes her name. Neat, the way she writes it on everything. Then she passes the clipboard on to her right and says something friendly to the woman beside her about the pie, and by the time the plates are cleared she has genuinely stopped thinking about it.
That is the fourth sheet this month.
And here is what nobody at that table would guess, because Wanda is famous in this hall for being the one who never says no. There was no decision. Not one. There was no weighing, no glance at a calendar, no half second where a person considers a thing and then commits to it. The pen came out on its own. Whatever came down the table, the answer was already written before the question got there.
Under it is a rule. She has never once said it out loud, and if you put it in front of her in words she would probably not agree to it as written, and she has obeyed it faithfully since she was young: a kind woman does not say no to a need that is standing in front of her.
Not a bad rule to look at. That is what makes it hard to see. It looks like every good thing she was ever taught. But look at what it does not have. No author she can name. No text under it. No exception in it, not for illness, not for a week already full, not for the one evening she keeps. And no way to obey it a little.
So Wanda goes home at nine with a plate covered in foil, and the week ahead of her is full, and every part of it is something good she chose, and none of it is something she chose.
You are the one with the pen. I am not going to tell you where the rule came from and I would be wrong if I tried, and this is not about that anyhow. But I know the sound of a pen coming out before a question has finished, and I know what a woman concludes about herself the first time she thinks about saying no and cannot make her mouth do it. So I have sat down at the table beside you, and I want us to look at one word together, in daylight, before the clipboard comes round again.
He Put Nay in the Sentence
Let me name the weight first, because it is not the Thursdays.
The Thursdays are only the arithmetic. The weight is what sits underneath them: that your worth in a room runs on your availability, so a no is not just a no, it is a withdrawal of the one thing you count on bringing. That is a heavy way to come to a supper. It is heavier than four Thursdays and nobody at the table has any idea it is being carried.
Now put the rule beside the only sentence on the subject that has an Author.
But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.Matthew 5:37
Look at what is in that line. Nay is in it. Jesus put it there Himself, in the same breath as yea, at the same length, with the same weight, and He required no reason after it. Not "nay, and here is why". Not "nay, if you can spare it". Nay, nay. You have a word that your Lord handed you on purpose, and a word He handed you cannot be an unkindness. Hear the source of that rather than taking it off me: Matthew 5:37 is where it stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a written line into something you can actually get your mouth around at a supper table.
And notice the reason He gives for the two plain words. What is more than these, He says, comes of evil. The elaborate answer, the padded yes, the promise that is really a hedge, the no wrapped in eleven sentences of justification: all of that is the part He warns about. The one who is doing the padding is not the honest one in the room. You are free to give a short answer, and the shortness is the honesty and not the coldness. That is not my judgment to hand out. It is God's, set down in Matthew 5, and the same Spirit who put it there is at the table where the clipboard is going round.
The One Who Withdrew
Now the second thing, and it is the one that settles it.
There is a scene where the need is real, present, in front of Him, and unmet. Not a manufactured need. Not people being unreasonable. A crowd of them, coming and going in such numbers that His own people had no leisure so much as to eat.
And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.Mark 6:31
He took them out of it. With the need still standing there. Luke 5:16 says He withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed, and the word there carries a habit rather than one occasion. The Lord of all that need walked away from some of it on purpose, regularly, and no one who watched Him do it has ever accused Him of being unkind. You are following Someone who withdrew from a crowd that still wanted Him, and there is no version of Him in Scripture where that was a failure of love. His word records it plainly in Mark 6, and His Spirit is not running a stricter policy over your Thursday than the one Jesus kept for Himself.
I want to be careful here, and say what I am not saying. God gives real commands and they are not up for lifting. Love your neighbor is His and it stands. Bear one another's burdens is His and it stands. This is not an argument that every rule is invented, and I am not handing you a new rule to replace the old one, because a rule that says you must say no more often is the same machine painted a different color. Scripture asks in Colossians 2 why people who died with Christ still live under ordinances after the commandments and doctrines of men, and that is exactly the question in front of you: not whether to be generous, but whether a command you cannot source has been standing in for one He actually gave.
And one thing plainly, late and quietly, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the running has gone somewhere darker than tiredness, if the thought has started that the household would do better without the trouble of you, 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. That is not a failure of anything. It is one more ordinary thing a free woman does.
Something is meant to happen at this table, and it is not that you become a woman who says no to people. That is just the old machine running backward.
What is meant to happen is that the pen slows down by about two seconds. Two seconds is all this needs. Long enough for a question to finish arriving, long enough for a decision to actually be made, long enough that the yes you write is a yes and not a reflex with your name on it. Right now, as you read this, the rule that made a short answer a sin is already finished, and it is not lifted because you outgrew it, it is lifted because it was never given. I am not putting my own preference over you. Matthew 5:37 says yea and nay, in writing, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that word to the end of the bench where the clipboard is.
And here is what comes back with it. A yes that could have been a no is worth something. You have a yes that means something again, because it is now a thing you gave rather than a thing that was taken while your pen was out.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, at the sink, in the truck, in the hall with your coat over your arm. Say them the way a person speaks who is carrying somebody else's authority: you represent the King who gave you the word, and the weight in the words is His authority, not a firmness you have to work up first. Every line stands on the written word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it, so a voice that shakes is plenty of voice. What He does with the years of the pen coming out early, and how quickly your hand learns to wait two seconds, is in His own way and His timing, and I am putting no clock on Him. But whether the word is yours to say is not in question, and you may say so out loud.
- Blank line on the sheet, you are a question and not a summons. Matthew 5 says my communication is to be yea and nay, so a nay is a whole answer with nothing owed after it, and I am reading the sheet all the way through before my pen comes out.
- Belief that kindness means never saying no, you have no author and you never had a text. It is written in Matthew 5 that Jesus put nay in the sentence Himself, and the Holy Spirit is the one telling me that a word my Lord handed me cannot be an unkindness.
- Lord, You withdrew to a quiet place while the crowd was still coming, and nobody has ever called that a failure of love. In the name of Jesus I am keeping the one evening I keep, and my yes means something again because my no does.
Matthew 5:37
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.