Every Visit On My Own

Eleven years, and he has never once worked out the number until this article made him.

It is somewhere over four hundred. Hospital, mostly. Some houses. Two prisons, years ago, which he does not talk about because of what people do with that information.

He goes alone. Every time. Not as a policy, and if you asked him he would say of course he would take somebody, and he would mean it, and it has not happened four hundred times.

Here is the actual mechanism, and it is not noble.

To take somebody, you have to ask on the Tuesday for the Thursday. Which means knowing on Tuesday. Which means somebody would have to be free. Which means a phone call, and a bit of a conversation, and possibly a second call, and by the time he has thought all that through he has already got in the car and driven there and back.

It is quicker to go than to arrange. That is the whole of it and it is completely true.

In February he came out of a ward at about half four after a visit that had gone as badly as they go, and he got into the car, and he did not start it for eleven minutes.

He was not crying. He sat with his hands on the wheel and looked at a wall.

And what he found himself thinking, which surprised him, was not about the man in the ward. It was: I would have liked somebody to be in this car.

He drove home. He has told nobody. And on the following Thursday he went to a house on his own, because it was quicker to go than to arrange.

He sent them by two and two, and that is the first thing recorded

Sit in the car a minute before you start it, because there is a verse about a sending, and the order of the details in it is the teaching.

And He called unto Him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits.Mark 6:7

By two and two.

Read the order. He calls them. He sends them by twos. And then He gives them what they are going with.

The pairing comes before the equipping. It is not an arrangement for comfort, tacked on at the end for the nervous ones; it is the first structural fact about how He sent people out, and He is the one who did it, with twelve men who could plainly have covered twice the ground apart.

Hear this with your hands on the wheel. You are not being inefficient by pairing, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture has Christ Himself halving the reach of His own team on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has gone with you on all four hundred, and the pairing was never a concession to weakness.

Now let me name the mechanism, because you named it yourself and it is completely true.

It is quicker to go than to arrange. Yes. It is.

And the thing that sentence hides is what quicker is buying. It is buying the visit, and it is spending the eleven minutes in a car park with your hands on a wheel, and nobody has ever put those two on the same page because they happen four hours apart.

Four hundred visits and four hundred drives home. You have counted one of those.

Hear this too, and let it come off. You are not failing anybody by asking, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has the Lord pairing men who could have doubled the ground, and the Spirit of God has never once rewarded a man for carrying something on his own that was designed to be carried by two.

And here is the part I want you to hold, because it is what the pairing is actually for.

The second person is not there to help you visit, and nothing written in Scripture says they are, and the Holy Spirit does not need the extra pair of hands. You are better at it than most people you could take, and both of you would know that within four minutes of arriving.

They are there for the drive home.

That is why He sent them in twos. Not for the ward. For the road, before and after, where the thing gets carried.