The Prayer Held Between Two Hands

For the interpreter who has been carrying a sentence and thinking she had to make it true.

You have prayed for something you could not fix. Hold that in mind, because it is the room this message opens in. He is upstairs in a borrowed house with eleven frightened men, hours from being arrested, and He stops talking to them and starts talking to His Father out loud.

That detail is easy to skim and it is the whole architecture of the thing. He does not turn to the eleven and instruct them to be one. He could have. He has spent the evening giving them instructions about feet, about a basin, about bread, about a new commandment. One more instruction would have fitted perfectly among them.

He doesn't. He turns away from the men and asks His Father for it, in their hearing, which is a completely different act with completely different consequences for everybody in the room.

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.John 17:21, the opening lines (KJV)

An instruction would have made it their work. A prayer makes it His request and their inheritance, and the eleven men listening are in that sentence as the subject of a petition rather than the holders of a task.

The night He could have commanded it, He asked His Father for it instead. The written Word puts the whole of it in His mouth as a request, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying what He asked for.

What Her Hands Have Been Doing

She interprets, which means she has held that verse in the air, in a lit room, in front of a black backdrop, more times than most people have read it.

There is a way of signing it that she settled on years ago. The oneness is carried between two hands that come toward each other and stop just short, because the sentence is a request rather than a completed fact. Her hands have always known that, even in the years when her head did not.

What she noticed in the spring, at a joint service she was working, was what happened in her body during that passage. Her shoulders came up toward her ears. Her hands got tighter than the sign needs, the thumbs pressed in against the fingers.

She was not interpreting it. She was trying to accomplish it, in the air, in front of two congregations who do not otherwise meet, with a sentence that was never addressed to her hands in the first place.

Prayed, Not Commanded

Look again at what He chose not to do on that last night.

He gave them a new commandment about an hour earlier, so commanding was plainly available to Him and He was plainly willing to use it. He had no reluctance about telling those men what to do.

For this one He turns to the Father. That is a decision, made deliberately, in front of witnesses, on the last night He had. It places the oneness of His people among the things a person asks God for, rather than among the assignments.

Oneness was placed among the requests rather than among the assignments. The written Word shows Him choosing to ask rather than to command, and the Holy Spirit keeps you inside the request rather than under an order.

A Sign Carries a Sentence, It Does Not Perform It

Here's what I'd carry out of that room if I could take a single thing away with me.

An interpreter's hands carry meaning across a gap. That is the entire job, and it is a considerable one. What those hands have never done, in any language, in any room, is make the content true.

She can sign a diagnosis and not cause it. She can sign a verdict in a courtroom and not deliver it. She could stand at the front of a church and sign a wedding vow all afternoon, and nobody would be married by her fingers.

So the tightening in her shoulders was her body trying to do something her hands have never once been able to do with any sentence, and she has been carrying that particular strain for years without ever naming it.

Hands carry a sentence across a gap and have never once made its content true. The written Word leaves the accomplishing with the One who asked, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take the strain out of a pair of hands.

Nothing Here Says You Have Failed This Prayer

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do you real harm and I refuse to write it.

You have not failed it, and it is not the sort of thing available to you to fail. He asked for it on the last night and He is still asking, and it has never been waiting on the quality of anybody's interpreting at a joint service.

You are not being handed a job here. Nothing here asks you to bring communities together, arrange anything, or take the distance between traditions on as work, because that is the identical strain with a better name on it.

You can carry the sentence without being responsible for making it true. Scripture keeps the asking in His mouth and never transfers it, and the Holy Spirit does the answering rather than the delegating.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Zariah This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.