Four Hundred Messages

The thread is called "Mum" and it has four hundred and eleven messages in it in eleven days.

Seven people. Three of them live abroad. One is a brother-in-law who was added on day four for reasons nobody has been able to reconstruct.

And in eleven days it has produced: a photograph of a letter, taken at an angle; two links to the same article; a very long message from the eldest at half past one in the morning that everybody read and nobody replied to; a proposal about a rota that lasted eleven hours; an argument about the rota; an apology about the argument; and about a hundred and forty messages of the form any news.

Kirstie is the second eldest and she has read every single one.

That is the thing she has started to notice about herself. She is not the one posting most, she is the one reading most. She has it on silent, and she checks it, and what she is actually doing when she checks it is looking for somebody in that thread to be in charge.

Nobody is. That is the situation. It is being decided by a hospital and a local authority and a woman named in a letter who has never replied to an email, and there is not one person in that chat with any authority over any of it.

They all know that. They have all said it.

And the thread has still done four hundred and eleven messages, because seven people who love somebody and cannot help her will produce messages the way a body produces heat.

Then on the eleventh night, at about ten, the youngest posted.

He is twenty-three and had said almost nothing for a week. And he wrote: genuine question, does anybody here actually have any power over this

And nobody answered for an hour.

Which for that chat is unheard of.

Then the eldest wrote: no

And the brother-in-law, who has still not been explained, wrote: no

And then a long gap, and then Kirstie's aunt, who is not on the thread and had been forwarded it by somebody, rang her instead of typing.

And she said, "Sweetheart. What are you all doing?"

And Kirstie said, "I think we are keeping each other company."

And her aunt said, "That is lovely, and that is not what it is. You are all standing round a thing none of you can lift, and taking it in turns to strain."

Now let me ask you where yours is.

It might be a thread. It might be a room, or a set of phone calls, or your own head at one in the morning going round seven positions. And somewhere in it is a belief that if enough attention is applied by enough people, something will move.

Somebody said what would happen, and then it happened

Isaiah has God speak about Himself in a way that would be unbearable arrogance from anybody else, and it is the sentence a family in a group chat actually needs.

I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure."Isaiah 46:9 to 10

Declaring the end from the beginning. Not predicting. Declaring, which is what somebody does when the outcome is theirs to state.

My purpose will be established. And notice what is not in that sentence: any condition. There is no if My people manage it, no provided somebody keeps watch.

So hear this said over you at ten at night with the thread open. You are not the load-bearing member of your family and you never were, and the eleven days of reading every message have not moved one decision by one inch. That is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a sentence about a purpose being established and lets a person put a phone in another room, which is a different work from agreeing that they should.

Now let me guard this properly, because a message like this can be used to justify doing nothing, and I will not have it.

Nothing here says stop helping.

Ring the hospital. Chase the letter. Turn up. Do the practical thing that is genuinely yours, and if there is a rota that actually works, build it and keep it. Scripture is full of people who did every single thing within reach while trusting God with the outcome, and there is no verse that asks a family to go quiet because His purpose will stand.

And nothing here says the situation is fine or that God arranged it for a reason you are meant to identify. Those sentences get handed to families constantly and they are not in Isaiah 46 and they are not here.

What the passage takes off you is one specific thing.

The vigil.

Because that is what four hundred messages are. Not planning, because the plans were made on day two. Not information, because there is none. It is seven people keeping a watch, in shifts, out of love, over an outcome that has never once been affected by whether anybody was watching.

And the cost of that vigil is not nothing. It is eleven days of everybody's sleep, an argument about a rota, and a woman who has read four hundred and eleven messages looking for somebody to be in charge.

Somebody is in charge. That is the whole of the good news here, and it is not a person on that thread.

The written word says His purpose will be established, and it says He accomplishes all His good pleasure, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a person able to stop keeping watch without feeling that they have abandoned somebody. That is a real work and nobody manages it by deciding to.

And your aunt was right about the other half, which is worth saying plainly.

Keep each other company. Do that on purpose. Ring somebody instead of typing. The company was the good thing in that thread and the vigil was the thing wearing you all out, and they had got welded together and they can be separated.

There was a movement five hundred years ago whose people were surrounded by decisions taken by monarchs, councils and armies, none of whom consulted them. They wrote that God's purpose stands and that no power can finally frustrate it, and it did not make them idle: they built schools, argued in front of kings and organized relentlessly. It made them able to stop at night.