There are thirty-one of them on a good Sunday, and two of them have not spoken since a meeting in the spring nine years ago.
Not dramatically. Nobody outside would know. They are both there most weeks, they sit in different halves, and if you put them in a photograph together they would both smile.
They simply do not speak, and everybody in that building has known it for so long that nobody thinks about it, in the way you stop thinking about a step that is uneven.
And Duncan carries the messages.
He did not volunteer. It began because he is one of the few who is genuinely liked by both, and the first time it was practical, about the boiler, and he did it because somebody had to and it took a minute.
Nine years.
He can do it without thinking now. He knows which words to take out. He knows that one of them says tell him and one of them says if you happen to see him, and that both of those mean the same thing. He knows how to bring an answer back in a way that closes rather than opens.
He is seventy and he has been at this longer than some of the people in that building have been alive.
And in February, doing something in the shed, a thought arrived that he did not want and has not been able to get rid of, which is this.
If I stopped, they would have to speak.
Not immediately. It would be awkward and it might be worse before it was better and it might not get better at all. But the arrangement that has held for nine years holds because he holds it, and a thing that cannot survive without a man carrying messages in the middle is not surviving, it is being carried.
He has made it bearable. And bearable is exactly the condition in which nothing changes.
He stood there in the shed for a while.
And you may have your own nine years. Yours may be a family rather than a small building, and you may be very good at it, and you may have realized that being good at it is part of the problem.
What a person is told to pursue is a direction, not an arrangement
Let me take something off you before anything else, because you have carried it since February and it is not yours.
You are not what is holding that building together. You never were. Scripture tells a man to pursue a direction rather than to maintain an arrangement, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the go-between, who brings two men to speak. Set it down here on the porch. It is heavy and it has been in the shed with you all year.
Now hear the sentence, and hear the two verbs.
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.Romans 14:19
What leads to peace. Not what preserves a truce.
That is written into a chapter about people in one church who genuinely disagree about real things, and the instruction is not to arrange them so the disagreement never surfaces. It is to pursue what leads somewhere, and leading somewhere is a direction word.
And the second half is mutual edification, which is building each other up, which is a thing two people do to each other and cannot be done on their behalf by a third man with good judgment about wording.
That is the honest shape of it, and it stands written, and His Spirit is the one who does the leading, and He has never once needed a courier.
Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.
Nothing here says the nine years were wrong. They were not. That building has stayed together and two men have both kept coming, and there were probably years in there when the carrying was the only thing that made that possible, and Scripture does not sneer at a man who kept a roof on.
And nothing here is telling you to stop carrying this Sunday to force something. That is a decision with two other men's lives in it and it is not one a page can make for you, and it is not what this is asking.
The point is only that you have been treating an arrangement as the goal, and Scripture points at a direction instead, and His Spirit is the one who moves people along it.
Here is the plain part, and I will say it as you would want it. The thought in the shed is not disloyalty.
It is a man of seventy noticing that he has become load-bearing in a structure that was never meant to have him in it, and being honest enough not to enjoy that. His Spirit was in the shed and He is not accusing you of anything.
So here is the turn, and it is not about those two men.
Contact one person you have stopped contacting. His word gives you the direction and His Spirit does the leading.
That is the whole of it. Not a decision about Sunday. Not a message to either of them, which you are not being asked to make and which you may go on carrying for another nine years if that is what wisdom says. One person you have gone quiet with, one message, about nothing much.
And hear this plainly, because it matters more than any of the rest: if reaching that person would not be safe for you, do not. Choose somebody else, or say their name to God and stop there. Nothing on this page is worth harm and God has not asked for any.
You are pointed at a direction today rather than at a truce. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who moves people, and neither of them ever put a small building on a man of seventy.
I am not going to tell you what happens if you ever stop carrying, or when, or whether those two speak. That belongs entirely 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 close. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is a job with a direction in it instead of a stone under a gate.
One message. Not nine years of them.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own porch, out loud. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was true through all nine 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.
- Arrangement I have held for nine years, you have made a hard thing bearable and bearable is where nothing changes. In the name of Jesus I set you down on this porch, because unity was the whole point and I still want it, and wanting it has cost me and I am not giving it up.
- Thought that came in the shed in February, you are not disloyalty and you are not bitterness, you are a man noticing he became load-bearing. Scripture says pursue what leads to peace and to building each other up, and leading somewhere is a direction rather than a truce.
- Lord, You are the one who moves two men toward each other and Your Spirit is the one who does it, and You have never needed a courier in the middle. The direction is my size and the arrangement never was, and I am contacting one person this week.
Romans 14:19
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.