There is a gap in the fence at the end of the street where the path comes through, and it has been there since the storm.
Not a hole. A gap. Two boards gone and one hanging, and the effect of it is that anybody walking down the path comes out into the road on a blind corner, and the school is four hundred yards that way, and every single person on this street has said something about it.
He has said something about it. He said it to the woman at number nine and she agreed with him. He said it to the man who walks the dog and the man who walks the dog said it was an accident waiting to happen, which it is.
And everybody's sentence, every time, has the same shape. They ought to do something about that. Somebody should come and look at that.
They. Somebody. And nobody has ever once said who they meant, because there is nobody to mean. It is not the school's fence. It is not the town's fence. It is the back fence of a house that has been empty since March.
He has a saw in the shed and about eleven dollars' worth of lumber would do it and it would take him forty minutes.
If there is a gap on your street, come and sit down out here. Nothing is going to be added to your list.
God hands out a title and it is not a job description
Here is where the chapter about fasting ends up, and where it ends up is a street.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.Isaiah 58:12
The repairer of the breach. The restorer of paths to dwell in.
Read that as what it is. It is a name. God is not assigning a task here, He is telling people what they will be called, and He picks two titles that are both about physical infrastructure and both about a specific place.
A breach is a gap in a wall. A path to dwell in is a road that people can actually live along. There is nothing abstract anywhere in the sentence. Nobody is called the raiser of awareness of the breach.
And notice who gets called it. Not officials. Not the people whose fence it technically is. The people who were in that chapter loosing burdens and bringing somebody into their house, which is to say ordinary people who happened to be there.
You are being handed a title rather than a task, and it is already yours before the work starts. Isaiah 58:12 is where that sits, in two names God chooses that are both about a specific piece of ground, and the same Spirit who moved the prophet to end a chapter about fasting at a wall is the one who lets a man see his own street in it.
The word they is doing a lot of work
Let me look at the sentence everybody on that street has been saying, because it is a very effective piece of machinery.
They ought to do something about that.
It is not laziness. Everybody who said it meant it, and several of them are the kind of people who do things. It works because it is true in form. Somebody ought to. That is a correct sentence.
What it does is create a person who does not exist and then assign the fence to them. And once the fence belongs to that person, everybody who walks past it has already discharged their responsibility by having noticed and disapproved, which is a complete emotional transaction that costs nothing and closes cleanly.
That is why it has been six months. Not because anybody on this street is careless. Because a fictional person has been holding the fence, and fictional people are extremely reliable about never getting round to it.
And I would say the same thing about the eleven dollars. It is not the money and everybody knows it is not the money. It is that picking up the saw means being the person who decided it was his, and there is a specific awkwardness in being that person on a street where everybody has been agreeing about it for six months.
You have permission to be the one who did it, and it is already granted, and it does not need to be voted on. He promised it, in the instruction to do good as we have opportunity, which puts it on whoever is standing there (Galatians 6:10), and His Spirit does not wait for a committee to assign a gap.
The paragraph that outranks the teaching
Before we go further, this outranks everything above it.
Some people must not go without food. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything and let their answer be the answer. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan and no schedule, and there will not be one here.
And look at where the chapter about fasting has landed. A wall. A path. Two boards. Everything in Isaiah 58:12 can be done by a man eating three full meals today, and if forty minutes with a saw is not something your body can do, then it is not your forty minutes and there is no shortfall in that anywhere.
Privacy is about audience and never about hiding, too. Telling your doctor is right. Telling your wife is right. Telling whoever cooks in your house is right and it is basic courtesy. None of it fails anything.
You are fully inside this, and you were never on its edge because of what your body allows. Scripture settled that long before you got here (2 Corinthians 8:12), and the Spirit of God is not apportioned according to what anybody can lift.
If today is heavier than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.
So here is the turn, and it does not ask your body for anything you do not have.
You are the one standing there, and it is already enough of a qualification, and the title in that chapter was never issued to an official. Scripture settled that in two names God chose that are both about a specific piece of ground (Isaiah 58:12), and the Holy Spirit is not waiting for anybody's authorization before He works on a street.
Nobody on that street is careless. That is worth saying again. This is not a page about how your neighbors have failed. It is about a fictional person who has been holding a fence for six months, and about the fact that the fictional person can be relieved of duty on Saturday by a man with a saw and eleven dollars.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice, wherever you are standing. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ and it is not issued by anybody official. Scripture is the ground under it and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely willing, and what God does on that street, and when, is His, however He answers.
- Wait for somebody official, you are over and you are not a plan. God calls people the repairer of the breach, and He gives that name to whoever is standing there rather than to whoever owns the fence. In the name of Jesus I am getting the saw out on Saturday.
- Sentence that they ought to do something, you are named and you are not responsibility. It invents a person and hands them the gap, and fictional people never once get round to anything, and His Spirit is settling that in me tonight. There is no they, there is only a blind corner and a school.
- Father, six months and a hanging board and every one of us agreeing about it. I thank You that a chapter about fasting ends at a wall, and that You hand out that name to ordinary people on ordinary streets. Here is Saturday, and I am telling nobody.
Isaiah 58:12
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