Two O'Clock to Five Past
The word for Saturday, August 22, 2026 is Two O'Clock to Five Past.
The anchor verses are John 17:24 and John 17:3.
In the middle of July, flyers started showing up on telephone poles around Washington.
They said, eat an apple with me.
Underneath that was a place and a time. Meridian Hill Park, at the sundial. August the fifteenth. Two o'clock to five past two.
Five minutes.
The flyer also said BYOA. Bring your own apple.
The man who made them is named Carl Endrulat. He is thirty and he writes software for a living. He and Jenny Mandl put the thing together expecting twenty or thirty people to show up, which is to say they expected their friends.
More than six thousand people said they were coming.
He had planned to buy the apples himself. Once the number moved into the thousands he gave up on that, and the flyer told everybody to bring their own.
On the fifteenth of August the park filled with people. The counts vary depending on who you read. Hundreds for certain, by some accounts more than a thousand.
They ate apples together for five minutes.
Then a lot of them stayed and talked to each other, which was the whole point.
Five minutes is not enough time to do anything. That is the design. Nobody could be impressive in five minutes. Nobody could network. Nobody could accomplish one thing that would look good on a report Monday morning.
Endrulat had a theory about why it worked, and his theory is about the city he lives in. Washington is a place organized around work. There is a great deal of fear of judgment there. The line between your job and the rest of your life is blurry, and people perform constantly.
So he built something that could not be performed at.
There was nothing to raise money for. No cause. No speaker. Nobody was selling anything. Nobody had to be interesting for very long, because the whole event was over in three hundred seconds.
A woman who came said something worth writing down. There is something about eating an apple with strangers and having that in common.
Now go to the last night, to a room where Jesus is praying out loud in front of eleven men who are about to lose everything.
HE prays for HIMSELF. HE prays for them. Then HE prays for people who have not been born yet.
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.
On the worst night of HIS life, hours from the arrest, HE spent part of HIS praying on strangers who would not exist for centuries. That sentence has your name inside it.
And when HE asks the Father to protect them, HE is specific about it. HE does not ask that they be taken out of the world. HE asks that they be kept while they are in it.
And near the end HE says what HE wants.
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.
Read the request.
HE does not ask for their performance. HE does not ask that they become impressive, or productive, or finally get it right. HE has just watched them argue about which of them is greatest and HE knows what they are going to do in about an hour.
What HE asks for is their company.
Be with me where I am.
That is the heart of the ask. It is closer to a flyer on a telephone pole than to anything a religion would design.
Earlier in the same prayer HE says what eternal life is, and HE defines it in a way most of us would not.
This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Not a location. Not a reward. Knowing a Person.
We spend a great deal of effort trying to be useful to GOD. It feels like the responsible thing to do with a life.
And most of us would rather bring HIM a result than bring HIM ourselves. A result can be measured. A result can be defended. If somebody finds fault with the work, that is survivable, and if somebody finds fault with the person, that is a different kind of morning.
So we arrive with the report and leave ourselves in the car.
GOD never asked for the report. HE has never once been short on capability, and HE does not need a contractor. What HE asked for, out loud, on the last night HE had, was that the people HE loves would be where HE is.
The invitation is a lot smaller than the one you have been preparing for, and it starts a lot sooner.
Two o'clock. Bring your own apple.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
- 🙏 To the one who has been getting ready to be worth GOD's time.
- 🙏 To the one who has forgotten what it is to be somewhere with no agenda.
- 🙏 To the one who performs all day and has nowhere to stop.
- 🙏 To the one who thinks HE wants your usefulness, when what HE asked for was you.
Grace and Peace.