Mending Fences

Cowboy Church is our Sunday column — a slower, quieter read for the day of rest. Pour a cup of coffee and sit with us a while.

There's a chore on every ranch that never really ends: riding fence. You head out after a storm, or just on a slow morning, and you follow the wire. Most of it holds fine. But sooner or later you find it — a leaning post, a snapped strand, a gap just wide enough for trouble. And every rancher knows the rule in their bones: you fix it now. Not next week. Not when it's convenient. Because a small gap at sunup can mean a scattered herd by dark.

Funny thing is, we're pretty faithful about that when it comes to wire. We're a lot slower about it when it comes to people.

The Gap in the Wire

Somebody says the wrong thing at a family dinner. A deal goes sideways between neighbors. A friend doesn't show up when they said they would. It starts as a small gap — a little silence, a little distance. We tell ourselves we'll deal with it later. Then later turns into months, and months turn into a fence line so far down you almost forget there used to be a gate in it.

Jesus talked about this in a way that still stops us short:

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift." — Matthew 5:23–24 (NIV)

Think about what He's saying. In that day, bringing a gift to the altar was about the most important religious thing a person could do. And Jesus says: leave it sitting there. Walk away from the altar itself, mid-offering, and go make things right with the person first. As if to say the state of your relationships matters to God every bit as much as the state of your religion.

Go First

Here's the part that gets us. Jesus doesn't say wait until you feel like it. He doesn't say wait until they apologize. He doesn't even frame it around what you did wrong — He says if your brother or sister has something against you. Maybe it's your fault, maybe it isn't, maybe it's tangled up enough that nobody could say anymore. Go anyway. Go first.

We'll be honest — we're still learning to walk this out ourselves. Going first is hard. Pride is real. There's a voice that says they broke it, let them fix it, and that voice sounds an awful lot like justice. But nobody ever stood at a downed fence arguing about which side the tree fell from. You just get the come-along and the pliers and you start splicing wire, because the fence matters more than the fault.

Reconciliation doesn't always mean everything goes back to how it was. Some fences get rebuilt on a different line, and that's alright. Going first just means you quit waiting for the other side to ride out.

This Week

So here's the one thing we're carrying into the week, and you're welcome to carry it with us: ride your fence line. Somewhere in your life there's a gap you've been meaning to get to — a name that came to mind while you read this. You already know who it is. Send the text. Make the call. Say the simple thing: "I don't like where we've left this. Can we talk?" You don't have to fix twenty years in one conversation. You just have to walk toward the gap instead of away from it.

Worst case, they're not ready — and you'll sleep fine knowing you rode out first. Best case, you get your gate back.

Wherever this Sunday finds you — in a pew, in a saddle, or on the porch with your coffee going cold — we're glad you're here. See you down the trail.

— The Sackett Ranch Family