It Never Occurred To Me To Bring Anybody

Eleven years, every Wednesday, at the same place.

It is not dramatic. It is a couple of hours in a hall doing something practical for people who need it, and he is one of about nine who come, and he has never missed more than three in a year.

He is not secretive about it. If you asked him he would tell you.

Nobody has ever asked him.

Here is what happened in June, in a car park, and it has not left him.

His nephew, who is twenty three and at a loose end and has been at a loose end since about March, was in the car with him for some other reason entirely. They passed the end of that road. And his nephew said, idly, what is up there.

And he said: oh, that is where I go on a Wednesday.

And his nephew said: what do you do?

And he told him, in about four sentences, and his nephew said, huh, and then something about a job.

And he drove on.

It was about ninety seconds later, at a roundabout, that a sentence arrived in him with a physical force he was not ready for: in eleven years it has never once occurred to me to bring anybody.

Not refused. Not considered and rejected. Never occurred. Five hundred Wednesdays and the thought has never formed, and his nephew has been at a loose end since March and lives eleven minutes away.

He first findeth his own brother, and it is the first thing recorded

Pull over a minute, because there is a verse about the first thing the first disciple did, and it is one sentence and almost nobody notices what is in it.

Andrew has spent a day with Jesus. That is all that has happened so far. He has no doctrine, no commission, no training, and about one afternoon of experience.

He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.John 1:41

He first findeth his own brother.

First. Before anything else. And notice who: his own brother, the nearest available person, the one whose address he already knew.

And notice what he brings him. Not an argument. He brings him a sentence about where he has been and who he found, and then, in the next verse, he brings the man himself.

Hear this at your own roundabout. You have not been withholding anything, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts finding your own brother as the very first recorded act of the very first disciple, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that sentence in you at a roundabout in June after five hundred Wednesdays.

Now let me be accurate about the eleven years, because the word for this is not selfishness and using the wrong word would send you off in a direction that does not help.

You did not decide not to. There was no moment, nothing written in Scripture accuses you of one, and the Holy Spirit has not been waiting to. What happened is that a thing became a groove: you go on a Wednesday, the way you put the bins out, and things in a groove do not generate thoughts about themselves. That is what a groove is for and it is why you have not missed more than three in a year.

The strength and the blind spot are the same feature.

Hear this too, and let it come off before it turns into guilt about a nephew. You have not failed him, and Scripture is what says so. What is written records Andrew going to get his brother on the first day and never once condemns anybody for the days before it, and the Spirit of God has never charged a man for a thought he had not been given yet.

And now the thing about your nephew, because he asked you a question in a car and you answered it.

He said: what do you do. That is not a polite noise. A young man at a loose end since March asked his uncle what he does on a Wednesday, and you told him, and then you both went on to talk about a job.

There was a door in that conversation and neither of you saw it. You have seen it now, at a roundabout, which is the Holy Spirit doing exactly what the written word says He does, and the door has not closed.