Ostium Catholic

Jesus sends the seventy-two out in pairs. He could have sent seventy-two individuals and covered the same ground. He chose two by two. He also told them to carry no money bag, no sack, and no extra sandals. They went with less equipment and one other person.

Most professional advice runs the other way. Build your kit. Build your brand. Become the person who can carry the whole project. It rewards the solo operator, and it produces a lot of people who are tired and unwitnessed. Nobody sees what they get wrong until it has grown.

A pair changes the work in three ways. Someone else hears what you say and tells you how it sounded. Someone else notices when you have stopped listening. And when a town refuses you, someone is standing there who remembers that it was not only you.

The pair Jesus sends is not a mentor and a student. It is two people on the same errand. They cannot outsource the hard conversation to each other. They are both accountable for it.

Job's reading is the other side of the same instruction. He asks for a witness. My own eyes shall behold him, he says, but he also wants his words written down. He knows that a person who is misunderstood needs someone else to see what he saw.

Name the one person who is your pair in your work right now. It might be a colleague, a friend, or a spouse. Send them one honest line today about how the work is actually going, not the version you give in meetings.

Lord, you sent your disciples out two by two. Show me who you have placed beside me, and give me the humility to be seen by them. Amen.