For the believer who can see both towers from their kitchen window and has stopped looking at either.
You can see both of them from the sink, which is either a gift or a running commentary depending on the week.
One is nearer, gray stone, the clock four minutes fast since about 2009. The other is further out past the allotments with the lead roof that catches the last of the light. You have lived in this house nineteen years and you could draw both of them from memory.
You go to one. Your husband's family went to the other, three generations of them, and there is a history between those two buildings that predates everybody currently in either.
For about the first ten years you thought about it constantly. You had opinions, then you had softer opinions, then you had a period of trying to do something about it that produced two awkward coffees and a very long silence.
Now you mostly do the washing up. The towers are there, you see them a hundred times a week, and some part of you looked away years ago because looking cost something and produced nothing.
You can look at both towers again, because closing the distance was never your job. The written Word puts that prayer in His mouth, and the Holy Spirit carries it where you cannot.
What Looking Away Actually Costs
Here's the thing about looking away, and it is worth saying plainly because nobody ever does.
It works. That's the difficulty. The ache genuinely reduces, the awkward coffees stop, and life at the sink becomes considerably more comfortable than it was during the years of trying.
What goes with it is not only the ache. You also stop noticing the light on the lead roof. You stop noticing that the nearer clock is wrong in a way that has become almost affectionate. You stop noticing that both of those buildings are full of people up early on a Sunday for the same reason you are.
Looking away is a single action. It cannot tell the difference between what hurt and what was lovely, and after nineteen years you cannot recover one of them without the other.
You know that trade. It isn't cynicism and it isn't giving up on anybody. It's what a sensible person does when caring keeps producing a bill and no visible progress.
Who Asked, and Who He Asked For
Here's Jesus on the last night, praying out loud with His friends listening in the room:
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.John 17:20-21, the opening lines (KJV)
Read who is doing the asking and who is being asked for. He asks. The eleven are in scope, and so is everybody who would believe later through what those men said, which is both of your steeples and everybody inside them.
Nobody in the room is invited to take a share of the request. They are all, without exception, in the sentence as people being prayed for.
Both towers are inside one sentence, and neither is holding the pen. The written Word puts the asking in His mouth and you in the scope, and the Holy Spirit keeps it that way.
You Were Never Standing Between Them
Here's what I'd carry off that windowsill if I could take a single thing away with me.
The geometry in your head has you positioned between two buildings, which is why the whole business has felt like load for nineteen years. A person standing between two structures is holding something apart or trying to bring something together, and either way she is in the middle of a mechanical problem.
You are not between them. You are in one of them, and the other one is a quarter of a mile away past the allotments, and the actual distance between the two is not measured in anything your body can affect.
The picture that has been costing you is a picture, and it was never the arrangement. You have been carrying the weight appropriate to a position you have never once occupied.
You have been carrying the weight of a position you have never occupied. The written Word puts the holding in Christ's hands where He put it that night, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take a picture out of your head.
Nobody Is Grading What You Have Carried
Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do you real harm and I refuse to write it.
You have not failed it, and it is not the sort of thing available to you to fail. Those two awkward coffees were not a botched assignment. They were a kind woman doing a generous thing that was never required of her.
I am also not handing you a project. Nothing here asks you to try again, ring anybody, or take the distance between those buildings on as a piece of work, because that is the same weight with better language on it.
You can look at both towers and carry no responsibility for the gap between them. Scripture keeps that request with Him, and the Holy Spirit takes the outcome rather than giving you a task.
The Window You Can Look Out Of Again
Here's the turn, and it's quieter than a decision and steadier than a mood.
The looking away was never coldness in you. It was a sensible response to nineteen years of caring producing a bill, and nobody has ever told you that the bill was for a job you did not hold. Nobody assigned it, and nobody has thought to come and take it off.
I'm taking it off now. He prayed it on the last night, out loud, and both of those buildings are inside the sentence, and you are in it as somebody prayed for rather than somebody responsible.
The prayer has you in it as somebody asked for, never as somebody accountable. The written Word puts the asking in His mouth and names everybody who would believe, and the Holy Spirit makes He is still praying it a place to stand at your own sink.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
Say this once, slowly, at the window with both towers in view.
He asked it where they could hear, and the asking continues. The Word of God puts that asking in His own mouth on the last night and names everybody who would believe through their word, which covers both of those roofs. The Holy Spirit numbers me among those asked for and never among those responsible. I have never once stood between those buildings, whatever the picture in my head has been telling me. I am not responsible for repairing centuries of Christian division before I am allowed to pray for the congregation across town. I keep caring about the distance, and I hand the closing of it back to the One who asked for it. When I look up from the sink tomorrow, I can look at both of them.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
John 17:20-23
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.
