The Tree Came Down Across The Line

Harlan Estep and Wendell Prater ran a fence line together for eleven years without once saying a true thing to each other, and both of them had beautiful manners about it.

There had been a conversation, back in the fall, about a matter that mattered to both of them and does not need repeating here. It went the way those go. Neither one moved. Neither one ever moved after, either, which is the part they were both quietly proud of.

And after that they were courteous. Genuinely courteous, not sarcastic about it. Harlan lifted two fingers off the wheel when he passed Wendell's mailbox and Wendell lifted two fingers back. If they met at the feed store it was, morning, Wendell. Morning, Harlan. How is Dorothy. She is fine, thank you for asking.

They even mended the fence. Both of them, faithfully, for eleven years. Harlan did his half in the last week of March and Wendell did his in the first week of April, and if you had asked either man he would have told you that was simply when he got to it, and both of them would have known better.

That is a lot of work to do to keep from standing in a field with somebody.

Then came the ice, the kind that comes once a decade and takes the tops out of everything. And on the second morning, when the sun came out and the whole ridge was ringing and cracking, a white oak that had been standing there since before either of their grandfathers came down across the line.

Not near the line. On it. The trunk lay across the wire like it had been laid there by somebody with a level. It was the only thing on that whole mountain that belonged to both of them.

They came out at the same time. Both of them with saws, from opposite directions, the way you would if you did not want to be the second one there.

They cut all morning. Nobody planned anything. Harlan took the top and Wendell took the butt end and they met somewhere around the middle and started rolling rounds off the wire.

At noon Wendell brought a thermos down from his truck and poured a cup and handed it across the trunk.

Harlan took it and said, "I still think what I thought."

And Wendell said, "I know you do. I still think what I think."

And Harlan said, "I know it."

Then Wendell said the true thing, the one neither of them had said in eleven years, and he said it looking at the tree and not at Harlan.

"I have missed talking to you."

And Harlan said, "Me too."

And they drank the coffee and picked the saws back up, and neither one of them had changed his mind about one single thing, and there was more peace on that ridge at noon than there had been in a decade.

Peacemakers, not peacekeepers

Jesus put a blessing on a particular kind of person, and it is worth noticing which word He used.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.Matthew 5:9

Makers. Not keepers.

A peacekeeper maintains a quiet. It is real work and it costs real effort, and your manners have been doing it beautifully for years. A peacemaker makes something that was not there. Those are two different jobs, and only one of them is in the verse.

You are built for the second one, and you have been doing the first one out of kindness. That is not my read on your character. Jesus said the peacemakers are called children of God, and the Holy Spirit does not put a family name on a stranger.

Look at why the blessing lands where it does. Children of God. It is a family resemblance verse. Peacemaking gets that title because it is the family business, and we know exactly how the Father runs it: while we were still on the wrong side of everything, He came out and made peace Himself, and He did not wait until anybody had come around first.

That is the whole model, and it takes the pressure off in a way people miss.

Nobody is asking you to give up an inch of what you believe. Not one inch. The word never says the peacemakers are the ones who found the middle. It says they made peace, and the Spirit who made it with you did it without asking you to be right first.

Now let me name what is actually happening at that counter, because I do not think it is cowardice and I do not think it is dislike.

You are unfailingly polite to that person because politeness is the only way you have found to hold a strong conviction in the same room as a strong conviction. Give ground, or give distance. Those looked like the only two doors. And you would not give ground, so you have been paying in distance, in small daily installments, for years, and the two of you have gotten very good at it.

Here is the third door, and it has been standing open the whole time.

Be real without being right at anybody.

Not the argument. Not the position. You. One true sentence about your own life, of the kind you say to people you are actually in a room with. I have missed talking to you. This week has been long. My mother is not doing well. That is the peacemaking. It is not a concession and it wins nothing.

And you are free to do it today, with your conviction sitting exactly where it sits. The written word blesses the maker of peace and never once asks the maker to change his mind, and the Holy Spirit is the One who will hand you the sentence when the moment comes.

That is what those two men did over a fallen tree. Neither one gave up a thing. They just stopped keeping and started making.

You are not a person who has to choose between honesty and a truce. You are a child of the Peacemaker, and you carry His way of doing it in you. Scripture puts the family name on it, and the Spirit inside you is the same One who made the first peace anybody in this world ever got.