The Phone Call He Never Makes First

Three of them. Forty years, near enough, in one case longer.

One in the next county who he worked with for eleven years. One who moved south and rings on a Sunday. And one he has known since they were both about nine and who is the only person alive who calls him by a name nobody else uses.

He loves all three. That is not in question and never has been.

Here is what he worked out in November, sitting at that table with the phone face down beside the toast.

He has not rung any of them first in four years.

They ring him. All three of them, at their own intervals, reliably, and he is always pleased and they always talk for an hour and he always means it when he says it was good to hear from you.

But he does not make the call.

He is not avoiding them. If you asked him why he would say the usual things. Did not want to bother them. Assumed they were busy. Time gets away. Every one of those is true and not one of them is the reason.

The reason, as far as he can work it out, is that ringing first is a thing you do when you want something, and he does not want anything, and so he waits.

And they always ring, so it has never been a problem, and four years have gone by.

He has not mentioned this to any of the three, obviously.

If you have not rung anybody first in a while, sit down and have some toast. Nothing here is going to become a project.

Consider is an active word

There is a verse in Hebrews everybody quotes about turning up, and the verb at the front of it is the one that matters.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.Hebrews 10:24

The word behind consider means to fix your attention on something, to study it, to work at understanding it. It is not a passive word and it is not a feeling. It is the sort of thing you do with a problem you intend to solve.

So the instruction is: think hard about what would actually help this specific person, and then do that.

Which is a job that cannot be done from a receiving position. Nobody has ever considered how to stir up a friend while waiting for the friend to ring.

That is not a rebuke. Your three ring you because they love you and it is not a burden to them. But you have taken yourself out of the verb, and you did it out of consideration rather than laziness, which is exactly why nobody has ever pulled you up on it.

You were made to reach as well as to be reached, and doing so is provision rather than an admission that you need something. Hebrews 10:24 puts the considering on both parties, and it is the Holy Spirit who binds people into one body in the first place, which means picking up a phone is the arrangement working rather than a request being made.

Ringing first is not asking for anything

Now let me take the real obstacle off the table, because you named it yourself and it is worth answering.

You believe that ringing first is what a man does when he wants something.

Where did that come from? Not from Scripture. Not from any of the three. It came from somewhere in the way you were raised, most likely, and it has quietly turned an ordinary act of love into a request for help, and then you have been too well mannered to make it.

So notice what the actual ask is here.

Not a group. Not an arrangement. Not a confession of need, which is what you have been dreading without ever naming it.

One person. One true sentence. Almost certainly on the phone.

I have not rung you first in four years and I noticed it in November. I am fine, and I would still like you to know how the year has actually gone. I rang for no reason, which I am told is allowed.

That is the whole thing. It makes nobody responsible for you. It simply means a thing that lived only inside you now lives between two people, and from that moment there is somebody who could notice.

You have permission to reach out with nothing to ask for, and it costs your friend nothing he would begrudge. Galatians 6:2 says to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, and the one another is doing the work in that sentence, and it is the Spirit who binds a people together, so a man who rings for no reason has not asked anybody for a thing.

And here is the ground it stands on. God is the one keeping you while you keep everything else. You are already known completely, and you were never actually out of touch. Psalm 139:3 says He is acquainted with all your ways, and it is His Spirit who has been at that table every November morning, so nobody hearing from you is not the same as nobody watching.