There Are Only Two Of Us

There is a moment at work every December that you have learned to get through.

Somebody asks what you are doing for the holidays. And the honest answer is short. Two of you. One table. A day that will be quiet and good and over by about eight.

And you can hear it land as small. Not unkindly. But the question was built for a bigger answer, and you do not have one, and there is a half second where you consider inventing cousins.

You have never said this to anybody, but somewhere behind it sits an older thought. That a family of two is not really a family. That it is what is left when a family did not happen.

Where the number came from

Let me start with something worth noticing, because the belief did not come from anywhere sensible.

Nobody ever told you a family needs five people. There is no verse, no teaching, no doctrine anywhere that sets a floor. What happened is that you absorbed a picture, the way everybody absorbs pictures, from photographs and advertisements and the shape of other holidays watched from outside.

And the picture had a lot of people in it. So a table with two chairs at it started reading, to you, as a table missing three.

You have been measuring a household against a photograph, and no number of chairs has ever once been what makes a family into one. Matthew 18:20 puts the presence of Christ in the middle of two people gathered in His name, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small room full rather than empty.

And the other person at that table is a whole world. That is worth saying plainly, because smallness makes people apologetic and apology makes people stop looking.

Whoever it is has their own reasons for the way they do things, and a history you have only ever seen the last part of, and they are right about at least one thing you have never conceded. There is easily forty years of unexplored country sitting across from you.

You are able to keep discovering somebody you have known your whole life, and a household of two has never once been a household with nothing left to find. The Spirit of God is what keeps a familiar person interesting rather than finished, and it is written in Matthew 18 that where two are gathered He is in the midst.

Where two are gathered

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20, King James Version)

Notice the number He chose to start at.

Not twelve. Not a congregation. Two. And He did not present it as a concession, or as the minimum acceptable in hard circumstances. He named two as the place where He is in the midst, in exactly the same breath as three.

That is a deliberate floor and it is set as low as it can go while still involving somebody else.

You are inside the smallest number Christ Himself named, and He has never once treated two as an emergency arrangement. It is written in Matthew 18:20 that where two are gathered He is in the midst of them, which is the written word setting the floor, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fills a room that size.

And think about who else in scripture is a household of two. Naomi and Ruth on a road with nobody left between them. Elijah and the woman at Zarephath. Paul and Timothy, who called each other father and son with no blood between them at all.

Scripture keeps doing the important work in twos. It is not an accident and it is not a consolation.

You have been placed in the size God uses constantly, and a small household has never once been a lesser instrument in His hand. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a pair enough, and Matthew 18 names two as the place where Christ stands in the middle.

What small actually gives you

Here is what nobody says out loud about big families, and I want to be fair rather than flattering.

A big family is not automatically warm. It is automatically busy. Attention gets divided, and there are people in large families who went twenty years without one full conversation with a parent, because there was always somebody else in the room needing something.

Your household has not had that problem. Whatever else two people at a table have been, they have been fully attended to.

You have had something most people are still waiting for, and being genuinely known by one person has never once been the smaller portion. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person see what they were given rather than only what they were not, and it is written that where two are gathered in His name He is in the midst.

That does not fix the December question. The December question is still going to land the way it lands, because the world's shorthand for family is a crowd and that will not be changing.

But the answer no longer has to be translated into an apology on the way out of your mouth. Two of us. One table. Said plainly, with nothing in the tone that concedes anything.

You are able to answer that question without apologizing for the number, and a true answer has never once needed to be defended. The Spirit of God is what removes the flinch from a plain sentence, and Matthew 18:20 puts the Lord in the middle of exactly two people.