The Gate I Do Not Latch

It is the gate at the bottom corner, on the fence line between the two places, and it has not been latched since 2016.

There is a proper latch on it. It works. He replaced the hasp himself about four years ago because the old one had rusted through, and he put the new one on and did not close it.

His brother used to come across that way. Not for anything in particular. Just came across, three or four times a week for about twenty years, usually with a dog and usually about something that could have waited.

Nobody has come across it in ten years.

The gate swings a bit in a wind and it has worn a small arc in the grass. Twice a year he goes down and cuts the grass around it so the arc stays clear, and he has never once described that to himself as anything.

And here is what he has never said out loud to a living soul: he replaced a hasp four years ago on a gate he has no intention of ever closing, and he does not fully know what that is, and he is not going to stop.

Say what that gate is

Let me name it before anything else, because nobody has ever seen it and nobody is going to.

That is a way left open. It costs nothing. It asks nobody for anything. It has never been mentioned, never been photographed, never come up at a funeral or a wedding or a gas station, which means that in ten years it has never once functioned as a message to anybody.

It is the least coercive thing a man could possibly do about a brother, and he has been doing it since 2016.

You have kept a way open without ever putting one ounce of weight on the man it is for, and ten years of that is not weakness. That is not somebody being soft about a gate. Hebrews 6:10 says God is not unjust to forget your work and the love you have shown, which covers a hasp bought four years ago and a strip of grass cut twice a year, and the Holy Spirit is the one raising it now to name it rather than to ask anything of you.

And Hosea, in the middle of a book about a marriage that had gone as badly as a marriage can go, gives a picture that is worth sitting with.

And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.Hosea 2:15

The valley of Achor was the worst ground in that whole story. It was the place where something went wrong and was buried, and its name means trouble.

And God says He will make it a door of hope. Not a monument. Not a site to be visited. A door, which is a thing you go through, in the exact ground where the trouble happened.

Keeping a way open is not the same as waiting badly

There is a way of waiting that turns into a grievance with the passage of time. It keeps accounts. It knows the number of years to the month. It has a speech ready in case the day ever comes.

That is not what is at the bottom corner. That gate has no speech attached to it. It does not know how many years it has been. It swings in the wind and wears an arc in the grass and asks for nothing.

You are keeping rather than accumulating, and the difference is that nothing at that gate has hardened in ten years. Scripture puts the posture in 1 Corinthians 13:5, where charity is not easily provoked and thinks no evil, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps something long from turning into something bitter.

Where your part ends

Say this plainly and do not soften it. Keeping a way open is never the same as owing somebody access, and nothing here asks anybody to keep a gate open into harm. If there is a reason that gate should be latched, then latch it, and let no line on this page be used against you for it. Get yourself safe, tell one real person who can actually do something, and hold this: safety comes before peace, every single time.

And this too, said plainly. Nothing here tells you he is coming across. Nobody knows that. Any page that promised it would be lying to a man who has cut that grass twenty times.

The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.Lamentations 3:25

Good to them that wait for Him. Read the object again, because it is not a brother. You are waiting on somebody who is described as good to the ones who do it, and that is a separate account from the one at the bottom corner. Lamentations 3:25 puts the waiting on God rather than on a man crossing a field, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the sustaining in a man walking a fence line in October.