For the coordinator holding something over a crowd it was never built to cover.
The umbrella lives in the boot of her car and it has two broken spokes on the left side.
It's the big kind, the sort meant for a golf course, bought in 2019 for standing outside at an outdoor prayer gathering. Since then it has been to eleven of these. The spokes went at the fourth one, and she has never replaced it, because she keeps meaning to and the weather keeps being fine.
At the last one it rained properly. About sixty people in a car park behind a supermarket, four congregations, and one broken golf umbrella held up by a woman who spent the entire forty minutes trying to angle it so that more people were under it.
She got wet through. Nobody else got noticeably drier. At the end a man she barely knows said, kindly, "You know you could have just stood under it yourself."
She has thought about that sentence considerably more than she has thought about anything else that happened that evening, because it is also an accurate description of how she has run the whole thing for six years.
You have been holding something over a crowd it was never built to cover. The written Word puts that prayer in His mouth, and the Holy Spirit carries it where you cannot.
The Job She Gave Herself
Nobody appointed her the coordinator. There is no such post, and if there were, four congregations would have had to agree on who filled it, which is precisely the problem.
She simply started sending the emails in 2019 because nobody else was. Sending emails turned into holding dates, which turned into managing sensitivities, which turned into a running register of who is comfortable with what, and who will come if the other group is leading.
By this year she was arriving at these evenings already tired, having pre-lived the whole thing twice in her head, watching the car park for signs that anybody felt awkward.
That isn't self importance. It's what happens when somebody starts doing a needed thing and nobody comes along to define where the needed thing ends.
Who Is Holding It
Here's Jesus on the last night, praying out loud with His friends in the room:
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one.John 17:20-21, the opening lines (KJV)
Read who is holding the request up. He is. The eleven are under it, and everybody who would believe later through what those men said is under it, which is all sixty people in a supermarket car park including the woman with the umbrella.
She is not beside Him holding a corner. She is one of the people being prayed for, in the rain, with the rest of them.
You are under that prayer with everybody else, not beside it holding a corner. The written Word puts the asking in His mouth and you in the scope, and the Holy Spirit keeps you there.
Covering Is Not a Job You Can Take On
Here's what I'd carry out of that car park if I could take a single thing away with me.
There are two entirely different relationships you can have with shelter. You can be under it, which requires nothing of you and is what shelter is for. Or you can hold it, which requires your arms, your attention, and your judgment about angles, and which means you are the one person present who is not sheltered by it.
She has been holding for six years. Not because she is proud, but because somebody had to send the emails in 2019 and nobody ever told her when to put her arms down.
And the umbrella was never big enough. That's not a failure on her part. It's sixty people and a golf umbrella, and no amount of angling was ever going to change the arithmetic.
There are only two positions with shelter, and the one who holds it is the one who gets wet. The written Word puts the covering in Christ's hands where He put it that night, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can get your arms down.
This Is Not a Report Card on You
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. Six years of emails, dates and careful sensitivity is service rather than a botched assignment. A prayer of Christ's has never been waiting on how well a car park gathering went in the rain.
I am also not handing you a project. Nothing here asks you to organize better, involve more people, or take the agreement between four congregations on as a piece of work, because that is the same umbrella with a stronger handle.
You can keep sending the emails and carry none of the responsibility for the agreement. Scripture keeps that request with Him, and the Holy Spirit takes the outcome rather than giving you a task.
The Arms You Can Put Down
Here's the turn, and it's quieter than a decision and steadier than a mood.
The holding was never self importance in you. It began as somebody doing a needed thing in 2019. Nobody ever came along to say where the needed thing ended, so it grew arms, then a register, then six years of arriving tired. Nobody assigned it, and nobody has thought to come and lift it.
I'm lifting it now. There is a covering over those sixty people and it is not the thing in your boot. You have been standing in the rain holding a broken umbrella underneath something considerably larger.
The prayer has you in it as somebody asked for, never as somebody accountable. The written Word puts the asking in His mouth on the last night, and the Holy Spirit makes He is still praying it a shelter you are standing under.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
Say this once, slowly, with the boot shut and the umbrella still in it.
He asked it where they could hear, and the asking continues. The Word of God puts that asking in His own mouth and names everybody who would believe through their word, which covers every person in that car park including me. The Holy Spirit numbers me among those asked for and never among those responsible. I am not responsible for making every group agree before His prayer can be answered. I keep sending the emails, and I hand the covering of it back to the One who asked. When it rains at the next one, I can stand under it with everybody else.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
John 17:20-23
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
