The Fence Between Us

Four feet. That is what it came to in the end. Four feet and a tree that had been there before either of them was born.

They put those fences in together in 1994. Both families. Two afternoons and a lot of food afterward, and there is a photograph of it somewhere in a box, and both men are in it, young, holding the same post.

What happened in the third year of the dispute is not going in this article. He would not want it written down and it is not the reader's business. What matters is that it was not really about four feet by then, and that a thing was said about his father, who had been dead nine years and could not answer it.

That was six years ago.

He is sixty-two. They still nod over that fence. Twice a week, easily. He mows on Saturdays and the other man is often out there and they nod, and it is a completely civil nod, and something in his chest does the same thing every single time.

And people say it to him. His wife, in a tired way, more than once. His daughter said it at Christmas: it is six years, Papa. He is right there. You have to forgive him.

And everything in him refuses. Not a maybe. It is an old, whole no that arrives before any thought does, and it is loudest during the nod.

You know that no. There is somebody you are supposed to release and everything in you refuses, and you have been told it is six years and he is right there, and nobody has ever asked what the refusal is standing guard over.

Sit down at this table. That is exactly where this starts.

What the refusal is protecting

Let me tell you what is being guarded, because once it has a name the fight usually goes out of it.

The no is not protecting four feet of ground. Nobody in that yard has cared about the ground since about the second year.

It is protecting a man who cannot speak.

Because a sentence was said about your father, and your father has been dead fifteen years now, and there is nobody in the world who is going to stand up and correct it except you. And somewhere in you, releasing the neighbor has become tangled up with letting the sentence stand. So the no comes up during the nod, and it has been coming up on a dead man's behalf for six years, which is a loyal thing and not a rotten one.

Good. Keep refusing to let it stand. Nothing in Scripture asks you to agree with a false thing said about your father, and forgiveness has never once meant accepting somebody's account of a man.

You were never asked to let a lie about your father go unanswered, and Proverbs 22 says a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to trade one to be free of the other.

Hear it plainly: releasing him is not excusing him. It does not move the fence. It is not a finding that what was said was fair, and it is not agreeing that two families simply remember it differently, which is what everybody in the street has settled on saying.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.Romans 12:18

Look at how carefully that verse is built. If possible. So far as it depends on you. Two limits in ten words, put there by a man who had been beaten in more towns than most people visit. You have a verse that already knows the other person gets a vote, and Romans 12 is where those two limits are written, and it is the Holy Spirit and not your daughter at Christmas who applies them.

Release is not reconciling and it is not trusting

Now the sentence I want you to have before another word, because men carry this to the end of a street on a misunderstanding.

Releasing him is not reconciling with him. It is not trusting him. It is not going round there, not shaking his hand about it, not agreeing to put it behind you over a beer, and not saying one word to him about any of it, ever. Not one verse in Scripture about forgiveness requires you to go and settle it with a person, and I am not going to tell you to.

You are free to release him and go on nodding over that fence for twenty more years without one conversation, and it is written that so far as it depends on you, you live peaceably with all, which is a phrase with the limit built into it, and the Spirit is what steadies a man while his hands come open.

Nothing here requires him to take it back, to remember it the way you do, or ever to know that this has happened.

Nobody is putting a clock on you

And one more, before the turn, because your daughter said six years like it was a number that meant something.

If you cannot do this today, then you cannot, and you are not in sin for it. There is no timetable anywhere in Scripture for this, and I am not going to build one out of a Christmas dinner. Six years is not a scandal, and a man who is still refusing is not a man who has failed; he is a man standing in for somebody who cannot speak, and nobody has shown him where to set that down.

You are not being accused at this table, and nowhere is it written that an unfinished release is disobedience, and it is the Holy Spirit and not the neighbor being right there who does this work in a man.