Two Years at the Same Gate

There is a spot by the second railing that is hers, and there is a spot about eight feet along that belongs to the other woman, and neither of them has ever discussed this.

Ten to nine. Every school day for two years.

They arrive within a minute of each other. Their children go in through the same door. They have exchanged, in that time, roughly four smiles, one morning, and one shared look on the day a boy was sick on the path and everybody backed up at once.

She knows things about that woman without ever having been told any of them. That her daughter is the one with the enormous rucksack. That she is often slightly out of breath. That she stands with her phone in her hand and does not look at it, which is a thing you only do when you want somewhere to put your eyes.

And every single morning, both of them stand there alone, eight feet apart, for four minutes.

Two years of that is roughly four hundred mornings, which is a lot of standing alone next to somebody who is also standing alone.

That is your railing. That is your ten to nine. And I want to say something about those eight feet, because there is a verse that thinks that gap is the saddest possible arrangement.

Standing alone together is the thing it warns about

There is a passage in Ecclesiastes that gets read at weddings, and it was not written about weddings at all. It was written by a man watching people work themselves into the ground on their own.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Woe to him that is alone when he falleth. That is not a scolding. It is a lament. The writer is not telling lonely people off, he is grieving over an arrangement that leaves somebody on the ground with nobody near enough to help.

And here is what makes your gate remarkable. There is somebody near enough. There has been, for four hundred mornings. Eight feet.

You are already standing next to the answer. Not one day, if you move somewhere friendlier or join something. Now, at ten to nine, by the second railing, with a woman who is also alone in exactly the same four minutes. The written word grieves over the gap, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that a live nudge in a woman on a pavement rather than a reading at somebody's wedding.

Now let me name what has actually kept those eight feet in place, because it is not unfriendliness and you know it is not.

It is that both of you have been waiting for a reason, and the gate does not supply one. There is no task to share, no queue to complain about, no dog to admire. There is only two women and four minutes, and starting a conversation from nothing feels like an imposition, so neither does, and that is how four hundred mornings happen.

You are not standing there because either of you is cold. The written word describes people who would help each other if they were close enough, and you are close enough. The Holy Spirit has had two women within eight feet for two years, and He is not the one keeping the gap.

And I want to be plain about the small thing, because the small thing is what actually works.

Not a conversation. A sentence. That rucksack is nearly as big as she is. Or I've stood next to you for two years, I'm Melody. That second one is a bit brave, and it also ends two years in about four seconds, and there is a decent chance she goes home and tells somebody it was the nicest thing that happened all week.

You have one plain sentence available today. Two are better than one, and the verse does not require them to have been introduced properly first. The Holy Spirit gives courage for exactly this size of thing, and this is the size that fits in four minutes at a railing.