The Hole in the Fence

The Trace found that some of Florida’s worst ZIP codes for child firearm injuries sit in Jacksonville, near a former incinerator ash dump, on land shaped by redlining. The city is still debating what repair means. Keep that in view and hear a story.

There was a court at the end of a street, and the fence around it had a hole cut low in the back corner. Boys went through it to the lot behind, and everybody on the block knew what the lot was for.

The strongest man on that street could still dunk at forty-one. People made room when he walked into the store. He passed the hole every evening and said what everyone said: not my fence. He also had a speech, polished over years, about what he would do if anybody ever came at his.

A bus driver lived three houses down. Bad knee, slow walk. After his last route he carried a folding chair and a cooler to the back corner and sat by the hole. He learned names. Most nights nothing happened, and he sat there anyway. Twice he went downtown to the meetings about that lot, with the boys’ first names written on his palm so he would not lose his nerve at the microphone.

One night a boy came toward the hole walking heavy on one side. The driver said his name. Only his name. The boy stopped, and after a while he sat down on the cooler.

Which of the two was strong?

Ezekiel 22 is a roll call of men with power. Princes who used their strength to shed blood. Rulers like wolves tearing prey. People of the land squeezing the poor and the stranger. Then God says:

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.

A gap is the broken stretch of a wall, the place where the enemy walks in. God had plenty of strong men. He could not find one who would plant himself where the wall was down and take the weight.

Be honest about the speech. Many of us carry one: the scene we run at red lights where someone threatens our family and we finally get to be dangerous, and everyone sees what we are. The mind loves that rehearsal because it lets us feel like men without costing us a single Tuesday. Meanwhile there is a son waiting on a call, a meeting we skipped because nobody claps for showing up, a hole we walk past daily.

Isaiah saw the same empty wall and wrote that God “wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him.” God did not find the man. He became him. In the garden Jesus had legions at his call and told Peter to put the sword away. Then he stood in the gap with his arms nailed open, between a guilty land and the judgment it had earned, and the judgment fell on him. That is strength under control. It is also the only thing that will ever make you that driver. Trying harder will not. Union with the One who already stood there will, slowly, as his Spirit makes your rehearsed violence boring to you and your folding chair precious.

The land in Ezekiel was real dirt. So is the ground in Jacksonville, and on your street. Repair will take money and policy and long meetings. It will also take men who show up to them with names on their hands.

Bring a chair.