Two Porch Lights In The Rain

For the one walking home who has been doing arithmetic instead of looking up.

It's twenty to ten on a wet Thursday and she is walking home from a hall where about ninety people just ate together.

It went well. That is the honest assessment and she keeps having to remind herself of it, because her habit on this walk is to run the evening as an audit rather than to remember it as a meal.

So she is fifteen minutes into a twenty minute walk, in the rain, tallying. Who did not come. Which congregation sent four and which sent thirty one. The conversation at the end of the second table that went slightly flat. Whether the man who left early left early.

She does this every time. Nobody has ever seen her do it, and she would be mortified if anybody did, and it has been going on for about five years.

Then she comes round the corner by the postbox where you can see both porch lights at once, one on each church, both on because both have evening meetings on a Thursday, both lit in the same rain.

The two lights are burning in the same weather whether or not anybody is auditing the evening. The written Word puts the prayer for oneness in Christ's own mouth rather than in yours, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying what that prayer asked for.

The Audit That Runs on the Way Home

Here's why the tally is so hard to switch off, and it is not vanity.

You cared about the evening. Caring makes you pay attention, attention produces observations, and observations arrange themselves into a score whether or not anybody asked for one. The whole chain is automatic and every link in it began with something good.

What the score does is quietly convert an evening among people into a piece of work with a result. Ninety people ate together. By the postbox that has become four out of one building, thirty one out of the other, one man who possibly left early.

You know that walk. It isn't negativity, and the proof is that you keep organizing these. It's what happens when somebody who cares has nobody to tell them that the evening was not an assignment with an outcome attached.

Who Is Asking, and For Whom

Here's Jesus on the last night, praying out loud with the eleven listening:

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one.John 17:20-21, the opening lines (KJV)

Read who is being prayed for. The eleven, and then everybody who would believe later through what those men said. That is both porch lights, all ninety people, and the woman by the postbox.

Nobody in that sentence is given a target. They are all named as people being asked for, which is a completely different relationship to the outcome than the one she carries home every Thursday.

Everybody in that sentence is being prayed for, and nobody in it is given a target. The written Word keeps the asking in His mouth, and the Holy Spirit keeps you inside the scope rather than outside it with a clipboard.

Two Lights, One Rain

Here's what I'd carry off that corner if I could take a single thing away with me.

Standing by the postbox she can see something that nobody inside either building can see, and it is not the attendance figures.

Both lights are on. Both are burning through the same rain, at the same hour, on the same street, for the same reason, which is that people are inside doing something about God on a Thursday night in a wet town.

That is not an achievement and nobody arranged it. It is simply what is true at twenty to ten, and it has been true on a great many Thursdays that she walked past auditing instead of looking up.

Both lights burn in the same rain, and nobody arranged that or can take it away. The written Word puts the oneness in God's hands rather than in an evening's figures, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can lift your head at the postbox.

There Is No Verdict on You in Any of This

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. Five years of organizing meals that ninety people come to is service, not a project with a disappointing result, and a prayer of Christ's has never been waiting on your attendance figures.

I am also not handing you a job. Nothing here asks you to fix the ratio, follow up the man who left early, or take the repair of Christian division on as work, because that is the same audit with a holier name.

You can care about the evening and carry none of the responsibility for the repair. Scripture keeps the asking in His mouth and never transfers it, and the Holy Spirit does the answering rather than the assigning.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.