He Stands in the Gap for a Whole Street

Kimo came out in 2020 and the count in his head is now up to about thirty-one.

That is not an exaggeration and it is not a figure he arrived at on purpose. It accumulated. He grew up on a road with about nine houses on it and everybody on that road was in the same arrangement, in one form or another, for about three decades, and about half of them still are, and then there are their brothers and their cousins and the two families at the end and a man he worked with and that man's son.

Thirty-one.

He knows what each of them is inside. He knows which ones know it and which ones do not. He knows, with a precision that frightens him a little, roughly what it would take.

And every night, on the drive home or in bed, he goes through them. Not deliberately. He would tell you he prays for them, and that is what it is, and it is also not entirely what it is, because somewhere in five years the going-through has become an inventory and the inventory has become a weight and the weight arrives whether or not he sits down to pray.

Here is the day it caught.

His wife said, at about eleven at night, "You are doing the list."

And Kimo said, "How do you know?"

And she said, "You breathe differently."

And he lay there and thought about the fact that his own wife can identify, by his breathing, that he is carrying thirty-one people.

You know that. You came out, and the people you came out from are many, and what began as praying has become an accounting that follows you into bed.

Stand is a smaller verb than carry

Let me put down what I am not doing tonight, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you to talk to any of them. I do not know that road. I am not going to give you a method for thirty-one people and I am not going to tell you which of them will come out, because I do not know and saying it would be a cruelty.

What I will do is read you the verse everybody quotes for this and look at the verb in it.

And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.Ezekiel 22:30

Stand in the gap.

Now, that phrase gets used for a great many things, and it is worth noticing what it does not say.

It does not say carry the land. It does not say fix the hedge, singlehandedly, while also holding the gap. It does not say be responsible for the outcome.

It says stand. In a gap. Before God.

Standing is a position, not a labor. A man standing in a gap is not doing anything except being there, in that place, in front of Somebody.

You are asked to occupy a position rather than to carry a weight, and the verb in that verse is the smallest one available. Ezekiel 22:30 asks for somebody to stand rather than somebody to save, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and into a bedroom at eleven at night.

And look at the last three words of the verse. But I found none.

That is a sentence about scarcity, and it is usually preached as a rebuke, and it can be. But hear it another way tonight: what God was looking for was one person willing to be in the place. Not thirty-one solutions. One person, standing.

You have been counted as the one who stood, and the standing was the whole of what was being looked for. It is written that He sought for a man to stand in the gap, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient search a present commendation rather than a job description.

An inventory is not intercession

Now let me be careful here, because this is where somebody gets hurt.

The thirty-one names are not a fault. They are what happens to a man who loves a place. Kimo did not decide to memorize a road. He grew up on it, and he came out of it, and the knowledge is simply the shape of his life.

You are not being reprimanded for knowing your own people, and Scripture never once treats a wide love as a burden a person should have set down. Romans 9:2 has Paul describing continual sorrow in his heart for his own nation, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps a large love from being read as a failure of trust.

But here is what an inventory does that intercession does not.

An inventory has a total. It can be gone through, and it can be gone through incompletely, and a man who goes through it incompletely feels he has left somebody out. That is why it follows him into bed. That is why his wife can hear it.

Intercession does not have a total. It has a direction.

You have been carrying a number, and Ezekiel gives a position rather than a quantity. Ezekiel 22:30 asks for a man in a gap and never once counts the land behind him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an arithmetic out of a person's chest.

Say this here rather than at the end, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the five years have gone somewhere heavier than tiring, or if the nights with that list have begun to take the sleep out of you, do not carry that alone. Tell somebody this week. Your wife, a friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. And if you ever believe anybody on that road is in real danger, then the ordinary thing is to call for help where you live rather than manage it alone. That is me refusing to leave you awake with that list by yourself.