And Yet There Is Room

“And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.” — Luke 14:22 (KJV)

You might think Bunyan was nearly there. Instead, two new fears grabbed him. The first was: “Whether I was elected?” In other words, had God chosen him at all? He read in Romans that salvation “is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy,” and it seemed to trample on everything he wanted. The tempter, as he calls it, put it simply: “It may be you are not.” And if not, “you had as good leave off, and strive no further.”

For weeks he walked around so weighed down that he felt he might sink where he stood. Then one day a sentence came into his mind with great comfort: “Look at the generations of old and see; did ever any trust in the Lord, and was confounded?” He went home sure he would find it in the Bible straight away. He couldn't. He asked his friends, and they couldn't either. It took him more than a year to find it, and when he did, it was in Ecclesiasticus, one of the books called the Apocrypha, which Protestants don't count as part of the Bible.

That rattled him at first. But by then he had learned more of God's kindness, and he reasoned that the sentence was “the sum and substance of many of the promises.” The Bible really is full of people who trusted God and were not let down. “I bless God for that word, for it was of God to me.”

Then came the second fear: what if the day of grace was over? What if he had left it too late? He imagined that the good people of Bedford were all the people God was going to save in that area, and that they had got the blessing before he arrived. He walked around kicking himself: “Oh, that I had turned sooner! Oh, that I had turned seven years ago!”

He was so worn out he could hardly take another step when, near the same spot as before, these words from Jesus' story of the great feast broke into his mind: “Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled,” and “and yet there is room.” Those last words, he says, “were sweet words to me.” There was room in heaven for him. He even believed that when Jesus first told that story, he was already thinking of people like Bunyan, who would one day be afraid there was no space left.

He still longed to be sure that Christ had called him. Reading about Jesus calling his disciples, he wished, “Would I had been in their clothes; would I had been born Peter; would I had been born John.” For months he heard nothing. But he kept asking.

Notice the shape of both fears. “What if I'm not one of the chosen ones?” and “What if I'm too late?” are really the same fear: what if there's no place for me? It's the feeling of walking into a party where everyone already has a group, and the good seats are gone. Bunyan's answer came straight from the mouth of Jesus. Whatever else is true, the host of this feast is still sending out invitations, and his servant's report is “yet there is room.”

One thing to do this week: read Jesus' story of the great supper in Luke 14:15-24. Notice who ends up at the table. Then write the words “and yet there is room” somewhere you'll see them every day this week.