Be Back by Sundown

You were free in that yard because it was your father’s.

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Every kid who ever had a yard grew up under one rule, and nobody wrote it down.

You could go anywhere, climb anything, build whatever, wreck it, lose, start over. The whole long gold afternoon was yours.

Just be back by sundown.

And out there you were something you’ve spent your whole adult life trying to get back to. Hours at a time, completely gone into it. Building a fort out of sticks that was never going to stand. Watching a bug cross a blade of grass like it mattered more than anything. You made nothing. You kept track of nothing. And you weren’t scared for one second of it.

What was going on out there was simpler than it looks. The yard wasn’t small to you. It was the whole world. And you could disappear into it like that because it was your dad’s.

The fence was real. Dinner was ready. Somebody was home. You could fall, lose, break the whole thing, and none of it was bigger than the house. You were loose out there because somebody had the rest of it covered.

Jesus said you have to become like a little kid to get into the kingdom. We made that into a greeting card. Hung it in the nursery and went back to running our lives like landlords.

He meant it literally. That’s what trusting somebody’s home looks like.

A kid in a yard isn’t naive. He knows he can get hurt. He still plays.

I lost this for a long stretch. I stopped being a kid in the yard and started acting like its landlord. Walked the fence at night, checking a place I didn’t even own. I treated every workday like a verdict that came down by dark, like I had to earn my way back to safe. I called it being responsible.

It was fear. I just didn’t have the guts to call it that yet.

I’m putting it down slowly, now that I remember whose yard I’m standing in. I’d like to get lighter as I get older. I know that’s backwards.

My kids never picked this up, because nobody taught them the heavy version yet. I watch them out back in the evening as the sun sets and they’re just in it. They don’t replay the day. They run around till I call them in, they come running, they sleep all night. They’ve never once doubted they’re safe.

That’s the part that gets me. Become like them was a real instruction. We filed it under sentiment because the real version costs too much.

Maybe you never got a yard like that. Maybe the house you grew up in wasn’t safe, and nobody was ever home. If that’s you, this was meant for you before anybody. The Kingdom didn’t go to the kids who owned the yard. It went to the ones left standing outside it.

And nobody says the next part out loud. You’re not working your way up to being His kid. You already are. You’re just working. All that strength you’re burning to keep the roof up got handed to you before you ever showed up.

So what do you do with it. Less than you’d think.

Walk. Once a day, twice if you can swing it (I take my dog out 4x a day now, more for me than her). Leave the phone inside. Don’t bring anything that counts or tracks or notifies or reports back. 20 minutes, anywhere, because the ground under you right now is already His.

You’re just a kid walking your Dad’s land, and nothing has ever been less urgent.

When your head runs back to the books, and it will, just say one word, quiet. Father. Just looking up at the house for a second. Then keep walking.

If you pass somebody out there, do the oldest thing there is. Wish them well in your head and let them go. You’ll never know if it did anything. Kids do it all day without thinking. One more thing they know that we forgot.

That’s it. You can’t do it wrong. The only way to blow it is to start grading yourself, and grading is just the landlord trying to get back in.

Every kid who ever played in a yard knew the rule, and not one of them was ever scared of it.

The light goes long and gold. The game ends by itself. Somebody you’ve known your whole life calls you in from the porch, and you come in filthy and worn out to the lit windows and the table and the people who kept dinner warm the whole time you were sure you were out there on your own.

So play hard today. Be good to the other kids.

And be back by sundown.

<3EKO

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Happy Father’s Day to you, and/or the fathers in your life.

If you want to share something I’ve written with them, two books come to mind. The Jesus Frequency, After Jesus, and the The Nazarene, volume 1.

P.S. I’ve been writing around the clock and finally finished volume 2. If you’d like a free advanced reader copy of The Far Country, just reply to this email.

I love you.

See you next week.