Two Towers Beyond the Night Desk

For the one awake at three who can see both buildings and has been holding both.

You can see both of them from where you sit, which is not a thing most people can say.

The desk faces the glass. On a clear night the nearer tower is lit from below, badly, so that the stonework looks orange and the clock face is the brightest thing on the street. The further one has no lighting at all and you only see it because it takes a bite out of the sky where the sky should be.

You are on this desk from eleven until seven, four nights a week, and there is a long stretch in the middle where nothing happens at all.

That's when you pray. It started as something to do with three in the morning, and it became the most honest hour of your week. You pray for the people in both of those buildings because you can see both, and it would feel strange not to.

What you have never worked out is why it makes you tired. Not the hour, which you are used to. The praying itself, which ought to lighten something and instead sends you home at seven feeling like you have carried furniture.

You have been praying for both towers as though you were holding them up. Scripture keeps that request on His lips and not on yours, and the Holy Spirit does the carrying.

Why It Weighs What It Weighs

Here's what has been happening in that hour, and you would never have described it this way.

You pray for the people in the nearer one. Then you pray for the people in the further one. Then, because you are decent and because you can see both at once, you pray about the space between them, and that is where the weight comes in.

Because praying about the space turns imperceptibly into praying at it. You start proposing. You find yourself explaining to God what would help, which is what a person does when they have quietly taken on the outcome, and the tiredness is the sound of a man carrying something on a night shift.

None of that is presumption. It comes from being the only person on that street who sees both buildings at the same time, every night, for years, and nobody has ever told you what to do with that view.

Who Holds the Asking

Here's Jesus on the last night, praying out loud with the eleven listening:

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 holds it. He does. The eleven are in the scope, and so is everybody who would believe later through what those men said, which is every person in both towers and the man at the night desk.

You are not the second voice in that prayer. You are inside it with everybody you have been praying for, which is a lighter position and an accurate one.

You are inside that prayer alongside everybody you pray for, not above it. The written Word keeps the asking in His mouth, and the Holy Spirit keeps you in the scope rather than on the outside of it.

You Are Not the Only One Who Sees Both

Here's what I'd carry off that desk if I could take a single thing away with me.

The view is genuinely rare on that street. At three in the morning you may be the only conscious human being with both of those buildings in sight, and that fact has quietly persuaded you that the responsibility comes attached to the view.

It doesn't. There is somebody who has seen both buildings continuously since before either was built, and He was not waiting for a night receptionist to notice them from a window in order to begin caring about the people inside.

The rare thing about your view is that it is rare among people on that street. It has never been rare in any other sense, and the weight you have been carrying was assigned to you by the loneliness of the hour rather than by God.

The loneliness of the hour assigned you that weight, and God never did. The written Word puts the holding in Christ's hands where He put it that night, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries what you have been carrying at three.

There Is No Verdict on You in Any of This

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. Four nights a week of praying for people in two buildings is not a project with a disappointing result, and a prayer of Christ's has never been waiting on how a night shift went.

I am also not handing you a job. Nothing here asks you to contact either building, propose anything, or take on making two traditions agree, because that is the same furniture with a better handle on it.

You can pray for both towers and take on nothing about their agreement. The written Word never moves that asking out of His mouth, and the Holy Spirit carries the outcome Himself.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

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