The Fence Between Two Yards

Two panels and a post, and the post is the actual job, and he could see it from his own kitchen window every day for eight months.

Her name is Dot and she is about eighty and she lives on her own and she has never once mentioned it.

He has the tools. That is the thing. He has a post hole spade and a bag of postcrete in the shed that has been there since he did his own, and he has, by any honest accounting, about an hour and a half.

Eight months.

And the reason is not laziness and he has thought about this properly. The reason is that he keeps waiting for the right version of it.

He wanted to do the whole run, not just the one post, because doing one post looks like a patch job and he is not a patch job man. He wanted to have a Saturday clear rather than an hour and a half on a Tuesday. He wanted to have the conversation first, properly, over the fence, so that it did not look like he was doing it as a comment on her.

Every single one of those is reasonable and every single one of them has been a reason not to do it since April.

And there was a wind three weeks ago and the post is now doing a thing that means it is going to go, and when it goes it will take the two panels with it, and then it is a real job and not an hour and a half.

He looked at it this morning with a cup in his hand.

If you have been meaning to do a small thing for a long time and waiting for the good version of it, you know that window. And you know that the waiting has a respectable name and a completely different job.

The word, and then what Paul means by opportunity

Let me stand at the window with the second cup and say the plain thing.

The problem is not the fence. The fence is ninety minutes and you have the postcrete.

The problem is that you are a man with standards, which is mostly a virtue, and the standards have quietly been running a delaying operation for eight months with your full cooperation and under a name you approve of.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean doing the job well. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It is on you at this window with the post doing what it is doing.

Now the verse, and I want you to look at the word opportunity, because English has flattened it.

As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.Galatians 6:10

The word Paul uses is the one for a season, a moment, a right time. It is not the word for clock time. It is the word for the particular window a thing is possible in.

So the sentence is: while the window is open, do the good.

And the whole grammar of it assumes the window closes. You do not say as we have opportunity about something that will be equally available forever. The phrase only makes sense if some of these windows shut.

You have an opportunity in the exact sense Paul means it, which is a window rather than an intention. Galatians 6:10 uses the word for a season rather than for a plan, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who makes a person notice a window while it is still open, which is what happened at your kitchen this morning.

The good version and the actual one

Now the standards, because they are real and I am not going to pretend they are nothing.

Doing the whole run would be better. That is true. An hour and a half on a Tuesday will produce a fence that is one new post in a line of old ones, and it will look exactly like what it is, and you will see that from your kitchen window for the next fifteen years.

And having the conversation first would be more respectful, and there is a genuine thing about not making a woman of eighty feel that her fence is being discussed.

Every one of your reasons is a real consideration.

And together they have produced eight months of nothing, and the post is now three weeks from taking two panels with it, and at that point Dot is dealing with a job she cannot afford and did not ask about.

Here is the plain version of it: the good version of the job is currently the enemy of the fence.

You have a job that is available now and a better job that has never once been available, and Paul's word is about the one that is open. Galatians 6:10 says as we have opportunity rather than as we have a proper afternoon, and it is the Holy Spirit who works in what is actually possible on a Tuesday rather than in what would have been ideal on a Saturday.

And the conversation. Have it while you are doing it. That is the answer and it is the only one that has ever worked. You do not knock and ask permission to be kind, because that puts a woman of eighty in the position of having to say yes to charity. You put a post in and she comes out because people come out, and the conversation happens over a hole with a spade in it, which is the easiest conversation there is.

You have a way to do both at once that does not require anybody to be asked for permission. Scripture puts the doing good in the ordinary flow of a life rather than as an arranged event, and His Spirit is the one who is at work in an unannounced ninety minutes as much as in a planned Saturday.

What this is not, and what it is not for

Now, plainly, because this site is plain about it.

Nothing comes back to you for this. Not from Dot, who may thank you at length and may say almost nothing, and both of those are fine and neither is the point. And not from God, who is not running an account in which a fence post is a deposit.

If you find yourself, at any point on Tuesday, thinking about how this will look or what it says about you or what somebody will hear about it, that is worth noticing and it is not worth agonizing over, because the cure for it is simply to say nothing afterwards.

And do not tell anybody. Not your wife as a story, not at church, not the man over the road. If Dot tells somebody that is hers to tell and it is a different thing entirely.

You are doing something for which no return exists in any direction, and the silence afterwards is what keeps it that. Galatians 6:10 attaches no outcome to the doing good in that verse, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears goodness as fruit rather than a person generating it and then needing it counted.

And do the one post. Not the run. The one post, on Tuesday, in ninety minutes.

The whole run can happen in the spring if it happens, and if it never happens the fence still stands, which it will not do in three weeks.