Every three weeks or so, for about fourteen months, Rob's phone would go and it would be Dennis.
Never long. Never heavy. Dennis would say something about the football and something about his knee and then ask how Rob was doing, and Rob would say fine, and Dennis would say right, well, and that would be that.
He never once asked Rob when he was coming back. Rob has thought about that a lot since and he does not think it was strategy. He thinks Dennis is simply a man who rings people.
And then he stopped.
Rob can date it because it was the week after his birthday, and he noticed the gap at about five weeks, and by eight weeks he had understood what it meant, and by twelve weeks it had become a settled fact he did not need to examine.
That was three years ago in the spring.
He is forty-four.
And the settled fact is this: he gave it fourteen months and then he gave up on me, and that is fair enough, and it is what I would have done.
He has never rung Dennis. Not once in three years, and he could, and the number is in his phone under the same name it has always been under.
There is something else, and he has only let himself look at it twice.
Dennis is seventy-nine now.
Rob knows, because somebody mentioned it in the town, that Dennis had a bad year around then. Something with his wife. He does not know the details and he has not asked anybody, because asking would be the beginning of a conversation he cannot start.
So there are two possible readings of a silence and Rob picked one of them, three years ago, at eight weeks, and has built on it since.
And you may have read a silence like that. And you may not have checked.
Jesus does the inviting Himself and names who it is for
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it three years and it was never yours.
You were not given up on. You never were, and no man's phone habits have ever been the state of your standing with God. Scripture has Jesus issuing the invitation in His own voice and naming exactly who it is aimed at, and it is the Holy Spirit, not somebody keeping in touch, who draws anybody. Set it down here on this step. It is heavy and you have had it three years without examining it once.
Now hear it, and hear who He describes.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Matthew 11:28
Come to me.
He is the one doing the inviting. It is not delegated in that sentence, it does not run through anybody, and it does not lapse if the person who used to ring you stops.
And notice the description: weary and burdened. Not repentant, not ready, not tidied up. The condition He names is exhaustion, and He names it in order to say that exhaustion is what qualifies a person for the coming.
The invitation comes from Him directly and it is aimed at the worn out. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who draws a person, and He has never once let it hang on a phone call.
Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.
Nothing here says Dennis let you down. He probably did not, and there is a reading of that silence nobody has ever checked. Scripture would have me say plainly that fourteen months of ringing a man every three weeks is love and not strategy, and His Spirit is the one who put it in him.
And nothing here tells you what will happen if you ring him or walk into that building. I do not know, and I will not promise you a specific welcome from specific people, because that is a promise about people rather than about God and I have no business making it.
The point is narrower and it is about what you decided at eight weeks, and Scripture puts the inviting in Jesus's own mouth, and His Spirit is the one who has been drawing you the whole time.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. It is what I would have done is the heaviest sentence in this whole article.
You did not read Dennis. You read yourself, and then you put it on him, and you have been living under your own verdict for three years and calling it his. His Spirit is the one who has kept you awake about this and He was never delivering a verdict, because He does not work that way.
So here is the turn, and it does not start with a phone call.
Go, or eat, or pray, without waiting to be asked and without announcing it to anybody.
Take the smallest of the three tonight. Pray, on the step, without opening with three years of explanation.
That is the whole of it. Not a call to Dennis, which is yours and which may well be right and which is a separate decision. Not a Sunday, which is further down the road than tonight.
One prayer, unannounced, beginning in the middle.
The invitation is His own, spoken in His own voice, to the weary. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who draws, and neither of them ever depended on a man with a bad knee remembering to ring.
I am not going to tell you what Dennis will say or what those three years were about at his end. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is an invitation that never once ran through anybody else.
Go without waiting to be asked.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours through all three years. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Silence that started the week after my birthday, you had two possible readings and I picked one at eight weeks and built on it. In the name of Jesus I set you down on this step, because the invitation still stands, and nobody withdrew it and I do not need a new one to come.
- Verdict I have been living under and calling his, you came out of me and you were never once checked against Scripture. It is written, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and He is the one speaking and it runs through nobody.
- Lord, You name exhaustion as the thing that qualifies a man, and Your Spirit is the one who has been drawing me the whole time. You were never delivering a verdict, and I am praying tonight beginning in the middle.
Matthew 11:28
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