The Man on the Other Shift

They meet on the half landing between the second and third floors, going opposite ways, and they have been doing it for four years.

He is going down at ten past six. The other man is coming up, in the coat with the reflective strip, smelling faintly of cold air and diesel, finished with whatever he does at night.

They nod. Both of them. Every time. It is a good nod, not a cold one, and sometimes one of them says morning and the other says it back, and then they are past each other and it is over.

Four years. He can tell you the man's front door because it is the one with the wreath that stays up all year. He does not know his name.

And the strangest part, the part that has started to bother him lately, is that it is now too late to ask. There was a window, somewhere in the first month, where sorry, I'm Amir, I never actually introduced myself would have been the most natural thing in the world. That window closed. Now the question has four years of weight on it, and asking it would be a whole event, and so he does not, and tomorrow he will nod again.

That is your half landing. That is your ten past six. And I want to talk about that window you think has closed, because it has not, and the arithmetic you have been doing is not God's.

He changed the question

A man once asked Jesus a question about neighbors that sounds generous and is not. He asked who is my neighbor, which is really a question about where the boundary is, so he could know when he had done enough.

Jesus told him a story about a road and a beating and three men who walked past or did not, and then He handed the question back with the terms changed.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.Luke 10:36-37

Look at what happened to the grammar. The man asked who qualifies as my neighbor, a noun, a category, something you can check people against. Jesus answered with a verb: which of them was neighbor, meaning which of them behaved like one.

You are already a neighbor to that man. Not one day when you have earned an introduction. Now, on the half landing, with a nod that has been kind for four years. The written word makes being a neighbor a thing you do rather than a status you achieve, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man at ten past six rather than leaving it as a parable he can quote.

Now let me deal with the arithmetic, because it is the real obstacle and it is wrong.

You believe the cost of speaking goes up with every year of not speaking. Four years of silence, you think, has made what is your name into an enormous sentence that would need explaining.

It has not. That is a sum you have done privately, in your own head, using numbers only you can see. He has not been counting. There is a very good chance he has thought, once or twice, that it is too late for him to ask you.

You have not missed anything. Go, and do thou likewise, says the written word, and the instruction is given in the present tense to a man who had done nothing at all up to that point. The Holy Spirit does not administer a window that shut in month two. He is not running a scheme with a closing date.

And I want to be careful here, because this is where a page like this usually goes wrong and I am not going to do that to you or to him.

Nothing in this message is asking you to have a conversation with a purpose. He is not a project, he is not an opportunity, and he is not somebody's target. If you ever learn his name it will be because a man on a staircase told another man on a staircase his name, which is one of the most ordinary things two human beings can do.

You are free to want nothing from him. He that shewed mercy, says the written word, and mercy in that story asked the wounded man for nothing whatsoever. The Holy Spirit gives courage for an ordinary greeting without attaching an agenda to it, and He is not going to hand you a script.