Somebody asked you about it last year and you could not answer.
Not because it was private. Because you genuinely could not produce the reason. There was a thing about a car, and there was something at a funeral about eight years ago that you were both at the edges of, and there was a period where he did not call you back and you decided not to be the one who kept calling.
None of those is it. Together they are not it either.
What actually happened is that a lot of small things accumulated in a way that neither of you noticed, and then enough time passed that the silence became the thing, and now there is six years standing between the two of you and no incident at the bottom of it.
The wall built out of nothing
Let me describe what six years actually is, because that is the obstacle and not the original thing.
At the start there was a gap of weeks and it could have been closed by anybody with a phone call. Then it was months, and a phone call would have required a small explanation. Then it was two years, and a phone call would have required an explanation of the two years, which nobody has.
And now it is six, and the size of the required explanation has grown to the point where no available sentence can carry it.
You have been kept out by the length of the silence rather than by the thing that started it, and no gap has ever once been made of anything except accumulated time. Proverbs 18:19 says a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, which is the written word measuring the difficulty honestly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can get one sentence over a wall that has been going up since 2019.
And he is a whole man on the other side of it. He almost certainly could not produce a reason either, and he has probably been asked and has probably given the same vague account you gave.
He is right about at least one thing you have never conceded, and it is entirely possible he has drafted something and not sent it.
You are able to consider that he is stuck in the same place, and six years of silence has never once been evidence that either man chose it. The Spirit of God is what puts a second person back into a situation that has become one man's problem, and it is written in Proverbs 18 that a brother offended is a hard city and never an impossible one.
Harder to be won than a strong city
A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. (Proverbs 18:19, King James Version)
That verse is one of the most sympathetic things in Proverbs and people usually read it as a warning about being careful with siblings.
Read it as a description of your situation instead. Harder to be won than a strong city. It is telling you the truth about the difficulty. It is not saying it cannot be done, and it is not calling you weak for finding it hard.
A strong city gets won. That is what the comparison assumes. It is simply the hardest category of thing.
You are attempting the hardest category of thing in that verse, and no scripture has ever once called this easy or implied that a man who finds it hard is failing. It is written in Proverbs 18:19 that a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, which is the written word being honest about the difficulty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the winning of cities.
And look at the second half, which almost nobody quotes. Their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
Bars of a castle. Not walls. Bars, which is a thing put across an existing door. There is a door there. It has been barred, and a bar is not a demolition, and a bar is a thing that can be lifted from the inside by whoever is standing nearest it.
You have a barred door rather than a wall, and no silence between two brothers has ever once been the same as an absence of a way through. The Spirit of God is the one lifting from the inside, and Proverbs 18 chooses the image of bars on a door rather than stone.
What goes over the wall
Here is the practical thing, and it turns on a rule that will feel wrong.
Do not explain.
Every draft written in six years has tried to account for the six years, because it feels dishonest to send something ordinary as though nothing has happened. And that instinct is decent and it is exactly what has kept every draft in a phone.
There is no sentence that explains six years. There will never be one. So send the one that does not try.
You are able to send something that explains nothing at all, and one ordinary sentence has never once been a pretense that a silence did not happen. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the short version, and it is written that a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city.
Something small and true. A photograph of a place you both know. A line about a car. Something about your father that has no weight in it.
The reason that works is that it does not require him to respond to six years. It requires him to respond to a photograph, which anybody can do, and which is what makes it possible for him to answer at all.
You are able to make it easy for him rather than significant, and a message that asks for nothing has never once been a smaller thing than one that asks for everything. The Spirit of God is what makes a small door possible where a large one has been barred, and Proverbs 18:19 leaves the bars as bars.
And if there is a reason contact would be unsafe for either of you, do not send it, and take that to somebody qualified where you live. This site does not know your family.
So here is what I believe is going out over a man who could not answer a simple question last year.
You are able to go first without knowing how it lands, and reaching out has never once been a surrender of anything. Proverbs 18:19 says a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, which is honest about the difficulty and never says it cannot be done, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the business of winning cities.
And this, which is the word I came with.
You were never holding a grudge about nothing, and six years without a reason at the bottom of it has never once been a verdict on either of you. The Spirit of God is speaking over a man on a porch with the sun going down behind the trees, and it is written in Proverbs 18 that what stands between two brothers is bars on a door and not a wall.
A photograph. No message. Send it.
Declare this over yourself
- Six years with no reason at the bottom, you have no claim on my brother. Proverbs 18:19 says a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, so by the Holy Spirit I send a photograph with nothing attached to it tonight, in the name of Jesus.
- Explanation I have never been able to write, you were never once required before I could send anything. The written word calls those contentions bars, and a bar is a thing that lifts, and by the Holy Spirit I stop trying to account for the silence.
- Father, You were honest about how hard this is and You have never once called a man weak for finding it hard. Your word says harder to be won than a strong city, so by Your Spirit I go first, and I explain nothing, and I leave the rest with You.
Proverbs 18:19
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