The Hinge on Mrs Bell's Gate

For the one who keeps waiting for a work party that is never going to be arranged.

It's about ten past eight on a Saturday morning and you're walking back with the paper when you hear the gate at number four drag on the path.

Mrs Bell is coming out with a bag for the postbox. The gate catches about two thirds of the way, and she lifts it with her forearm, which she clearly does every time, and goes on down the road.

You stand there on the pavement holding a newspaper, watching her go down the road toward the postbox.

The top hinge has dropped. You could see it from six feet away without stopping. It is two screws into fresh wood, or a packer behind the plate if the wood has gone soft, and the whole job is under fifteen minutes with a screwdriver you already own.

You walk home. You have been walking home from this for about two years now, and the sentence in your head each time is the same one, which is that somebody ought to organize something for the older people living on this road.

Nobody is going to organize this, and the verse never asked for anybody to organize it. The written word puts the serving directly in your hands, and the Spirit has walked you past that gate for two years.

The Sentence That Ends the Thought

Notice what that sentence does, because it feels like concern and functions as an exit.

Somebody ought to organize something. It is a true statement and it is a kind one, and it identifies a real gap in the way an ordinary street looks after its older residents.

You are not wrong about the gap either. Most streets have one, most of them have had one for decades, and a scheme would genuinely help a number of people on that road who are not Mrs Bell.

It also ends the matter entirely. Once the problem has been assigned to an absent organizer, your own part in it is complete, and you can walk home with a newspaper under your arm feeling that you have registered a concern rather than avoided a task.

That feeling is almost indistinguishable from having done something. It has the same shape and it produces the same small relief, which is why it has survived two years of Saturday mornings without ever being examined.

That's not hypocrisy. It's the leftover shape of eight years in an organization where noticing a fault and reporting it upward was exactly the correct thing to do. You were right then, and the habit is wrong on this pavement.

Assigning it to an absent organizer is what ends the thought every time. The written word gives the instruction to you, and the Spirit has been prompting you on this street for two years.

Ye Have Been Called Unto Liberty

Here's the verse, and the structure of it puts responsibility somewhere specific.

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.Galatians 5:13 (KJV)

By love serve one another. The instruction is addressed to individuals in the plural, and it describes people serving each other directly, with nothing at all between them.

There is no coordinator anywhere in that sentence. Nobody is told to establish a scheme, allocate the work, or ensure that needs are properly matched to the people willing to meet them. Paul describes believers acting on one another's behalf simply because love has directed them to.

He could have written it the other way. The congregations he was addressing had elders and structure available to them, and he was perfectly capable of assigning a task to them when he wanted to.

Paul said that to congregations who were extremely interested in who ought to be doing what, and it reaches past them to a man on a pavement with a paper under his arm.

There is no coordinator anywhere in the sentence. The written word addresses the individual directly, and the Spirit has been doing the directing for two years.

Fifteen Minutes and Two Screws

Bring the job back to its actual size, because two years of deliberation has inflated it.

The top hinge has dropped. Two longer screws, or a packer behind the plate, and fifteen minutes on a Saturday morning with tools you already have in a drawer.

Against that, consider what she does. She lifts a dragging gate with her forearm every single time she leaves her own house, probably three or four times a day. She has been doing it for at least two years, because that is how long you have been noticing.

Call it two thousand lifts. Against fifteen minutes. That's the actual arithmetic, and it has never once been difficult.

Two thousand lifts against fifteen minutes is the whole of the arithmetic. The written word asks love to do the deciding, and the Spirit has laid out the sum for you repeatedly.

I Am Not Telling You to Knock Unannounced

Be sensible, because an older woman and a man with a screwdriver requires a little thought.

Knock first, at a reasonable hour, and say plainly what you noticed and what it would take to put right. Let her say no, and mean it if she does. Some people would far rather lift a gate twice a day than owe a neighbor anything at all, and that is entirely their right.

Nor am I telling you a street scheme would be a bad idea. It'd be a good one. If you want to start it, start it, and it would help a great many people.

What I want off you is the wait. Not the courtesy. Not the good idea about the street.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Caleb This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.