The Prayer Beside the Fence Stapler

For a father and son who pray over sandwiches with half a fence still to mend.

When did you last let a prayer stand where it landed, without adding anything on the end of it?

You are sitting on the tailgate. The stapler's on the ground between your boots with the safety on, there's a roll of wire half unspooled twenty feet back, and eleven posts still to do before the light goes.

Your son hands you half a sandwich that his wife cut wrong, and you both know she cut it wrong, and neither of you says so because you've both learned what's worth saying out loud after thirty years.

You pray. Four sentences, maybe five. His work, your back, the girl who's due in November, and the fence, because a man prays about what's in front of him and there's a fence in front of you.

Then there's a pause, and you fill it. Something like, well, that's not much of a service. He laughs, because you always say it, and neither of you has noticed in years that you always say it.

Christ named two as the number He meets, and your son and you are two. Scripture's promise is written down in Matthew's account, and the Spirit carries four sentences off a tailgate as readily as forty out of a pulpit.

The Sentence You Add on the End

Everybody who prays outside a building develops one. A small line that goes on the end and takes the weight off whatever was just said.

Not much of a service, a man says, or that'll have to do, or better than nothing I suppose. Each of them performs the same work, which is to get in ahead of any judgment by delivering it first, so that nobody else has to.

It's a reflex from somewhere, and it isn't cowardice. A man who's been in a room where prayer was done well and at length can feel the difference between that and four sentences on a tailgate. He's honest enough not to pretend otherwise about it.

Honest about what, though? About the length, certainly. About whether God received it, not at all. Those are two entirely separate measurements, and you have been reporting the first as though it settled the second.

A man can be right about a fact and wrong about what the fact means. Four sentences is four sentences, and nobody is disputing the count. The question is who decided that a count of four made the difference between a prayer heard and a prayer merely said, because it wasn't the Lord and it wasn't the man who taught you to pray.

You aren't required to grade a prayer God has already taken. Scripture nowhere makes length a condition of being heard, and the Spirit carries what was actually said rather than what you wish you'd managed.

The Number He Set the Floor At

Read it slowly. The whole promise runs to one sentence.

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

He starts at two. A man and his son on a tailgate are exactly the number Jesus named first, and He named it in a world full of large gatherings where two would have looked like nothing much to anybody watching.

There's no length anywhere in the sentence. No minimum, no structure, and no suggestion that a longer version is the real one while a short one is a courtesy He puts up with.

That word went first to disciples being taught how to handle a dispute between two of their own, which is about as far from a comfortable scene as you can get. It reaches a fence line without needing to be stretched an inch.

You're standing exactly on the floor Christ set, and He set it at two on purpose. The written Word's recorded promise names no length at all, and the Spirit makes His presence real over half a sandwich.

Eleven Posts Still to Do

Say something about the fence, because it isn't only scenery.

You prayed in the middle of work, with the job unfinished behind you and more of it waiting in front. That isn't a compromise anybody should apologize for. It's the oldest shape faith has ever had in this world.

Think about what the alternative would require of a man in your position. You'd have to stop, go in, wash, sit down somewhere without wire in it, and arrange a quiet that the day doesn't contain. By the time you'd managed all that, the light really would be gone, and so would the thing you wanted to pray about.

The people in the letters were tentmakers, fishermen, and women who sold cloth for a living. Prayer happened over work, between tasks, with the light going and something still to finish before dark. The notion that real prayer needs the day cleared first is a much newer arrangement than you were ever told about.

A prayer over an unfinished fence isn't a shortened version of prayer in a cleared room. It's prayer in its working clothes, which is most of what prayer has ever worn in the history of the world.

You can pray in the middle of the work and hold nothing back from God. Scripture's accounts are full of believers meeting Him over their labor, and the Spirit doesn't wait for the eleven posts to be finished first.

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.