My Brother's Number In My Phone

It is still in there. Under his actual name, not a nickname, not initials. He has never deleted it and he would like to know what that means.

Four years in November.

He is not going to set out what happened, because everybody who has one of these knows the shape of it: something real, and then something said about the something real, and then a period of silence that became its own separate offense, larger by now than whatever started it.

He wants it mended. He would say that out loud to anybody.

And here is what he does instead, most weeks, sometimes at the sink and sometimes at two in the morning.

He runs the sequence.

If their aunt's birthday is in March, and if he goes, and if he arrives late enough that the room is full, and if he is standing near the door when his brother comes through it, and if somebody else speaks first so that neither of them has to, then perhaps.

Or: if he says the right thing to their cousin, who talks, and knows that she talks, and if it reaches him in a certain way, then perhaps.

And then, because he is a praying man, he takes the sequence to God, and asks Him to make each piece land, and lately he has begun to notice what he is doing when he does that.

He is not handing anything over. He is submitting a plan for approval.

And he stood there last Sunday with a plate in his hand and the water going cold, and thought: I want to trust You with my brother. I have never in four years done it once.

And you know that, because there is somebody you love that you have been trying to engineer your way back to through God.

He is not a partner in your plan

Let us settle what governs this whole page. Nothing on it is being asked of you, there is no appeal at the bottom, and there are no steps in it anywhere.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in that famous sentence and it lands on Him. He is under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. It is written, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and it is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes the sentence back off the people who borrowed it.

Here it is, in its own room:

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10

Said to a nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating, and it is spoken in the voice of a father in a house that has gone wrong: come and find out whether I am who you have decided I am. The Holy Spirit is the One who takes a line spoken in one decade and makes it live in an ordinary room today.

Now the sequence, and it deserves respect rather than a telling off, because it comes out of love.

A plan is safe. That is why we build them. If the thing runs on steps, and the steps are yours, then the outcome is in your hands, and a man who wants his brother back very badly would rather it were in his hands than in nobody's.

And here is the price, which you felt at the sink: if it is your plan, then four more years are your failure, and you will carry that, and you have been carrying it since November of the first one.

You are dealing with a Father and not a partner in a plan, and He has never once been submitted to for approval. Jesus put it in ordinary family terms: which of you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion (Luke 11:11). Nothing in that has steps. A child says a thing and a father is not the kind of man who hands over a scorpion. It is the Holy Spirit, and not this page, who takes a line like that off a page and puts it beside a sink with the water gone cold.

Now the hard and freeing part, and it has to be said plainly because everything else on this page depends on it.

God will not be used as leverage on your brother, and the reason He will not is the same reason you still have your own dignity. He does not override a person's will. It is written that He stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20), which is a remarkable sentence about the One who made the door. If He would force a man to come round at a relative's request, He would have started with you, years ago, and you would not be a person any more.

So nothing on this page is going to teach you how to pray so that your brother rings. That is the sequence again in better clothes, and you were right to be uneasy about it at two in the morning. It is the Holy Spirit who does the carrying here, which is what separates a word being spoken over you from a phrase being repeated at you.

But here is what is yours, and it is not nothing.

You can bless him and hand the distance to God, and those are two different actions and both of them are open to you tonight. It is written to bless and not curse (Romans 12:14), and that you should so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all (Romans 12:18). Read that second phrase carefully, because it is the kindest clause in the New Testament for a man in your position: so far as it depends on you. Paul knew perfectly well that half of it does not. His Spirit is the one who makes that a limit you can rest inside rather than a let-off you feel guilty about.

And the wanting is not the problem, so nobody here is going to ask you to want it less.

You are allowed to want your brother back enormously and to stop engineering it, and those two are not in competition. It is written that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). A man who says that word has not stopped caring about his family. He has remembered which family he is standing in while he cares.

And one last thing.

If you find this hard, you are not failing at it. Handing over a person is the hardest thing on this site, and finding it difficult is not evidence about your faith. It is evidence that he is your brother.