By seven o'clock on a Thursday, Sister Yvonne had prayed for six countries by name.
She does it properly. She has a book with pages in it, and she prays for places she will never see, and she means every word, and if you sat in that front room at ten to six in the morning you would come out of it knowing you had been in a room where something was going on.
She has been doing this for nineteen years.
At about half seven the same Thursday she opened her front door and her wheelie bin was standing neatly back inside the gate, the way it has been most weeks for two years, because the woman at the house on the corner brings it in when she does her own.
Yvonne raised her hand at the window. The woman raised hers.
And Yvonne came back in and put the kettle on and stopped in the middle of her own kitchen, because a thought had arrived that would not go, and the thought was: I do not know that woman's name.
Two years of bins. Roughly a hundred small waves.
And Yvonne, who can tell you the name of a city in a country she has never visited, and the name of the pastor there, and what happened to his church in the spring, could not tell you the name of the woman on the corner who has been quietly doing her a kindness since before the pandemic.
She sat down at the table and did what she always does, which is get honest with God fast, because she has never had time for the other way.
And what came up in her was not shame. Yvonne does not do shame; she has taught too many young women out of it to keep any for herself.
What came up was a question with a bit of an edge on it. How is my arm long enough to reach six countries and not long enough to reach the corner?
She knows part of the answer already. Distance is safe. A country cannot look at you over a gate. A country does not have opinions about your singing or notice how often you go out. You can love a place fiercely and never once be inconvenient to it.
The woman on the corner will be there on Saturday.
And you may know this, and yours may not be six countries. It might be a list, or a giving, or a group you turn up for faithfully every month in a town that is not yours.
The man wanted to go far, and Jesus sent him up his own road
Take this off before we go one step further, because you have carried it into that front room and it was never yours.
You are not being sent to save your street this month. You never were. Scripture gives you a witness and a home to carry it in, never a quota, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your boldness at a gate, who does one single thing inside another person. Set it down at the kitchen table. It is heavy and it is not yours to hold.
Now hear the one instruction Jesus gives to a man who had been through something enormous.
The man had been out of his mind and living among the tombs. Now he is dressed, sitting down, in his right mind, and everybody in the district is frightened. And he asks to get in the boat and go with Jesus, which is the most understandable request in the whole Gospel.
And Jesus says no.
Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.Mark 5:19
Home. Your own people.
The one man in that story who most wanted to go far is the one man told to stay. And what he is given to say is not a doctrine and not a technique. It is what happened to him, told to the people who knew him before.
They are the hardest audience he could possibly have. They knew him when he was in the tombs. They will not be impressed, and some of them will not be pleased, and he cannot leave afterwards.
That is exactly where he is sent.
And you are sent there too. Right now, on your own road, in an ordinary week. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who has already been at work on the corner long before you learned there was a name to learn.
Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.
Those nineteen years are not wasted and God is not rolling His eyes at your book. Praying for places you will never see is a real work and heaven does not file it under distraction. Keep every page of it.
And nobody here is telling you to go and evangelize the corner house on Saturday. That is not the ask on this page. If anybody ever handed you a street as a target and made your neighbors into a project, that was wrong, and you can put it down with everything else.
The point is not less reach. It is that reach was never meant to skip the first house.
Here is the tender part, and I say it as one who has done exactly the same thing. What keeps you at the window with your hand up is not coldness. It is that a woman on a corner can cost you something, and a country cannot.
You are able for the cost. Not one day when you are more ready. Now, this week, with the same voice you use at ten to six in the morning. Scripture sends a delivered man straight home to his own people, and His Spirit is the one who carries whatever is said there, and He has never once graded a woman on how brave she is at a gate.
And the honest half, because you would want it plain. A hundred waves is not knowing somebody. You have known that for a while, and it landed properly this Thursday.
So here is the turn, and it is smaller than nineteen years of mornings and it is not a technique.
Learn her name. Then use it at the gate.
That is the whole of it. No testimony. No invitation. No conversation you have to steer anywhere. Her name, out loud, to her face, once.
If it turns into ten minutes about the bins, you have done the whole thing. If she says two words and goes in, you have done the whole thing. If nothing else happens this year, you have done the whole thing, and nothing is being withheld from you and nobody anywhere is counting.
You are able for it today. His word sends a man home to his own people to say what was done for him, and His Spirit is the one who goes with him up that road, and both of those were true this morning while your hand was up at the window.
I am not going to tell you what will come of it. That belongs to God and He does it in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth to finish a page nicely. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is your own road, which is the first place He ever sends anybody.
Learn the name. That is Thursday's whole work.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at your own kitchen table, out loud, the way you pray at ten to six. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and the sending was settled long before this Thursday. 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.
- Hundred small waves, you have been a kindness and you have never once been an acquaintance. In the name of Jesus I stop settling for you at that window, because the woman on the corner has a name and I can tell the person next to me.
- Safety of loving what cannot look at me over a gate, you have made my arm long and my road short, and you are finished setting the distance. Scripture sends the delivered man home to his own people, and his own people were the hardest room he had.
- Lord, You told him to go home and tell them what had been done for him, and Your Spirit is the one who walks that road with a woman. The nearest one is mine to greet, and I am learning her name this week and saying it out loud.
Mark 5:19
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