The Men's Breakfast, Second Table

Second Saturday of the month, half past eight, the hall, round tables of eight, eggs in a warming tray and a man named Ray who has done the eggs for eleven years and will not be relieved of it.

Six years he has been coming. He would say it is good. It is good. There is a short talk, and it is usually decent, and there is a stretch of about forty minutes afterward where nobody has anywhere to be, and there are men in that room he genuinely likes.

And this morning, somewhere around the second cup, he did the arithmetic.

Six years. Ten or eleven a year. He has been asked how he is doing, in that room, by somebody who meant it, somewhere around seventy times.

And he has said good, you? Seventy times.

Not once. Not one time in six years has he said anything in that hall that was true in the way this article means true. And the thing that has him sitting here while they stack chairs is that he cannot work out whose fault that is.

Because he has spent six years half waiting for the format to produce something. For the talk to land in a particular way, or for the conversation at his table to go somewhere, or for somebody to ask a second question after the first one, which in six years nobody ever has.

And this morning he understood that it was never going to. Not because the men are shallow, they are not. Because a room with round tables of eight and eggs and forty minutes is a room designed for good, you?, and it does that job well, and it was never designed to do the other thing, and he has been standing in a hardware store waiting for it to sell him bread.

So: is that the room's fault, or his.

And you know that table. You would rather be looked at than known, and you have been going somewhere good for years and half hoping it would happen to you, and it has not, and you are not sure whether you are owed something or have failed to do something.

So take this in before we go a step further. You are not disappointed in those men and you have not failed at six years of Saturdays. Psalm 139:1 says O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me, and it is finished and it is thorough, and the Holy Spirit is in this hall with you and is not embarrassed to be here.

The first question in the book

The Bible is a long book and there is a great deal in it, and the first question anybody in it is asked is asked by God, in a garden, to somebody who is hiding.

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?Genesis 3:9

Where art thou.

Now, He knows. That has to be got out of the way immediately, because the whole thing collapses if you read it as a search. He is not looking for anybody. He knows precisely where the man is, and He knows why he is there, and He knows what happened an hour ago.

So the question is not for information.

It is an opening. It is what you say to somebody who is in a place they do not want to be found in, when you already know where they are and want them to come out and be the one who says so.

That is the first thing God says to a human being after everything went wrong, and it is a question, and it is gentle, and it does not contain a single accusation, and it invites the man to speak first.

You are being asked by somebody who already has the answer, which is what makes the question safe. The written word puts the first question in the whole book in the mouth of God, addressed to somebody hiding, with no accusation in it, which means being asked has never once been the same thing as being investigated; and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a hall where they are stacking the chairs.

And notice what the man does with it. He answers. Badly, and with an excuse in it, and God works with that too. The answer did not have to be good for the question to have opened something.

The format is not at fault and neither are you

I want to settle the question you have been sitting with, because it has a clean answer and you will not get there on your own because both of the available answers feel wrong.

The format is not at fault. A monthly breakfast with round tables of eight is doing exactly what it is for, which is to get sixty men who would otherwise not see each other into a room on a Saturday, feed them, and give them forty unstructured minutes. That is a real good and it is not a lesser one, and the fact that it does not produce the other thing is not a defect any more than a bus is defective for not being a boat.

And you are not at fault either, which is the half you will find harder to accept. You did not fail to seize opportunities. There were no opportunities of that kind in the room. Waiting for one in a hall of sixty men on a Saturday morning is not passivity, it is a reasonable person expecting a good thing to eventually produce a related good thing, and it simply does not.

Both halves are true. Nobody is at fault, and nothing was ever going to happen.

You were not passive, and the room was doing its own job properly the whole time. Genesis 3:8 says they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden, and He is described as arriving where they are rather than summoning them; His Spirit is the one who does that arriving, and He is not grading your six years.

And here is the second half, and I want to be exact, because this is the last thing this site says to anybody.

Nothing on this page will tell you what to say, or to whom, or that it should be one of the men at your table, or Ray, or the man who gave the talk. You know that hall and those sixty men and no page does, and both the thing and the person are yours to choose and stay yours.

You are choosing both the what and the whom, and no page and no breakfast gets a vote. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says two are better than one, and it names a number rather than a candidate; the same Spirit who had that written is the one who has been at the second table for six years of second Saturdays.

Somebody has to ask the second question, and it can be you

Here is the practical thing, and it is a reversal of what you have been doing for six years.

You have been waiting to be asked a second question. Nobody in that hall has ever asked one, and they will not, and it is not because they do not care, it is because good, you? closes a topic and everybody in the room was taught the same closing move at the same age.

So ask one.

Not about yourself. That is the reversal. Pick one man, next month, and when he says good, you?, ask him something else. Anything. It does not have to be profound and it must not be intense. A second question. Just one.

And here is what happens, and it happens with a reliability that is almost funny: a man who is asked a second question by somebody who is plainly not in a hurry will very often answer it, and will then, nine times in ten, ask you one back. Not because it is a technique. Because the first question opened a door that has been shut in that room for six years and a door works in both directions.

The first question in the book was asked by somebody who already knew the answer and wanted the other one to speak. You could do that at a round table with eggs on it.

You are able to ask the second question, and that is the move nobody in that hall has made. Scripture says the LORD God called unto Adam and said, Where art thou, and the asking came from the side that already knew; the Holy Spirit is the one who has been at your table through seventy rounds of good, you?

So the breakfast is not a disappointment. It is round tables of eight and eggs by a man named Ray and forty unstructured minutes, doing precisely what it was built to do. And there is a second question that has never been asked in that room in six years, and it does not have to be asked about you.

And one plain thing. If what you are holding is heavier than a page can carry, find a real person this week. If it has gone darker than tired, call or text 988 in the United States, at any hour.