This poem emerged from a reflection on Franz Schubert—his ability to blend structure and lyricism, sorrow and light, all within the patient spaciousness of his music. In listening to his piano and violin sonatas, especially the A minor, I began to sense not just musical beauty but a kind of invitation: to sit in the seam between resolution and rest, between form and feeling.

Schubert, in his youth, gave voice to a musical posture that feels almost Christ-like—not overpowering, but companionate. His melodies do not force, they converse. And in that gentle blend of order and openness, he becomes a signpost to the One who truly listens while He composes: Christ, the eternal Master Blender, whose cup of grace holds every sorrow, every sweetness, and all the life of the world.

Christ Listens While He Composes

Christ listens,
while He composes
in the timeless forms of the Father.

Franz Schubert—
lyricized structure,
a light-footed hinge in history.

Eternal,
not rushing resolution.
Mark, immediately this: in urgency, we too must pause—

and sit in the seam,
in the space among notes,
and turn gently to our Lord in the light—

who meets—converses—where we are,
in form and feeling,
in sorrow and sweetness,
in minor and major,
in death—
and in the spacious bloodstream of all life.

We live in an age of infinite playback. At any given moment, we can summon the Berlin Philharmonic, or a hundred interpretations of Beethoven’s Fifth from the glass rectangle in our pocket. Miraculous—but also, perhaps, numbing. In our saturation, something essential may be slipping away: the slow and sacred process of inhabiting beauty.

When I listen to Franz Schubert, particularly his A minor Sonata for piano and violin, I don’t just hear a gifted composer—I sense a young man sitting at a piano, surrounded by hand-copied scores, listening with his fingers. His originality was not a rebellion against tradition, but a reverent dwelling within it. In that, I find an unexpected echo of Jesus Christ, who did not force revelation, but revealed Himself quietly through Scripture. Both teach us something we’ve nearly forgotten: that absence can be a form of grace—not through lack, but through the space it makes for presence.

Schubert and the Sound of Presence
Franz Schubert composed in an age of silence. Not the silence of absence, but of expectant presence—a silence that required patience, attention, and participation. To experience music, Schubert had to play it. To hear Beethoven’s work, he had to live with scores, decipher their architecture, and imagine sound into being. Music was not a stream to dip into — it was a space to inhabit. This tactile engagement shaped him. As he sat at the piano, perhaps with a page from Beethoven on the stand and another from his own draft nearby, the air was filled not with playback but with possibility. His originality emerged not from novelty but from resonance — from hearing what came before and letting it breathe through him in new ways.

In this, Schubert becomes something more than a composer; he becomes a listener-creator, a vessel of structured lyricism. His music doesn’t overpower — it invites. And this quiet generativity gives his work a spiritual quality. The lack of instant access didn’t restrict his creativity — it refined it, channeling it into music that feels both timeless and tenderly temporal.

Christ and the Silence of Revelation
This same pattern—of listening as creating, of self-limitation as generativity—is magnified in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not wield spectacle to establish His authority. He rarely shouted. He wrote no books. His signs were quiet, often cloaked in secrecy, and His miracles ended with a warning: tell no one. His mastery was not in controlling the crowd but in inhabiting the Word. Every response, every rebuke, every parable — these were not spontaneous flashes, but revelations drawn from a lifetime of dwelling in Scripture.

As explored in the video Another Messianic Secret, Christ’s public reticence was not evasive; it was purposeful. He prostrated Himself before the Father’s will, expressed through the Scriptures He had come not to abolish, but to fulfill. His originality—His utterly new teaching—came not from asserting a fresh voice over against the tradition, but by inhabiting it so deeply that it could not remain unchanged. He aligned with Scripture not merely in knowledge but in embodiment. And in doing so, He revealed the eternal.

What We’ve Gained—and What We’ve Forgotten
We live surrounded by numbing abundance: recordings of every symphony, every sermon, every interpretation of Scripture are only seconds away. We do not lack content; we lack traction. And in the absence of traction, we lose formation. Art becomes background. Scripture becomes reference. The very things meant to shape us become things we scroll past.

Schubert did not compose out of boredom or distraction. He composed out of need—out of a lived musical world where to know was to touch, to read was to play, to understand was to stay. And Christ, even more profoundly, did not proclaim truth through dominance or immediacy. He lived within the limitations of a quiet life in a small town. He aligned His voice not with noise, but with Scripture—scarce, sacred, slowly memorized. And that alignment changed the world.

We do not need less access—but we do need more inhabiting. We need to dwell with music, with words, with the Word, long enough that it reshapes us. Not just to hear, but to hear again. To sit at the piano. To open the page. To let silence be the beginning of sound.

Conclusion: A Call to Inhabit
If Christ is the eternal Word, and if Schubert gave us echoes of that Word in sound, then we are invited into the same posture—not of passive listening, but of faithful inhabiting.

To live within Scripture, not just around it.
To enter music not as escape, but as encounter.
And maybe the greatest abundance still begins
in silence.

Author’s Note:
This reflection on absence, scarcity, limitation, and access is not a commentary on material systems or economic ideology. The ideas explored here are not about withholding resources or promoting austerity as an external virtue. Rather, it is a spiritual and creative posture—a voluntary quieting of noise in order to hear more clearly. It is an interior discipline, not an imposed lack. In this sense, it’s an austerity not of access, but of attention: a deliberate return to what truly forms us. Whether in music, Scripture, or the inner life of Christ, such scarcity becomes a place of resonance, alignment, and abiding presence—not a void, but a vessel.

In Isaiah 44–45, the Lord names Cyrus the Great—king of Persia—as His chosen instrument to liberate Israel. Though a Gentile, Cyrus is called “my shepherd” and “my anointed,” not for his own sake, but to fulfill God's covenant—ultimately for the sake of all peoples and all nations. This poem reflects the paradox and power of that calling: a foreign king led by the hand of Israel’s God, unknowingly participating in divine redemption for all, pointing forward to the fullness of salvation in Christ.

Of Cyrus the Great, King of Persia

Not for price,
nor for reward,
O Lord—

I hear the remnant cry
through You.

You have grasped
my right hand.
Thus says—

And thus says:
Your right hand
is the Lord.

Isaiah 45
There are moments in Scripture where the voice of God is thunderous—mountain-shaking, sea-splitting, world-forming. And there are moments where that same voice lowers, not into silence, but into something quieter still: a parenthesis.

In Isaiah 45, God names Cyrus—a Gentile king—as His anointed instrument. The passage is filled with declarations of power and providence: “I will go before you… I will break in pieces the doors of bronze… I call you by your name.”

But then, almost suddenly, the tone shifts. The prophet exclaims:

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (Isaiah 45:15, ESV)

The God who hides himself. It is one of the most sublime declarations in all of Scripture — a cry of awe, not doubt. God is hidden not because He is absent, but because His purposes transcend the surface. His glory is veiled by mercy, His acts clothed in paradox.

And it is precisely at this moment that Isaiah begins to speak in parentheses:

“(he is God!)” (v.18)
“(he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!)”

Partitioned in parentheticals, these are not editorial clarifications or narrative asides. They are the Spirit's murmurings within the text—groanings that match our own inner stammer. They speak with the urgency and intimacy of a voice overheard—a praise breaking through thought itself.

Paul echoes this dynamic in 1 Corinthians 2:10–12, where he writes:

“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

And again in Romans 8:26:

“The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

The parentheticals of Isaiah 45 are not interruptions. They are resonances—brief flashes of glory leaking out from the hidden God. They are what it sounds like when the veil lifts slightly, not fully, and the awe is too deep for declarative speech alone.

To pray with Isaiah 45 is not just to hear what God says aloud.
It is to feel what the Spirit breathes between the lines.

God speaks thunderously.
But He also speaks parenthetically.

The Psalms
And the parentheticals in Isaiah 45 are not isolated. They belong to a larger scriptural pattern—one where God meets us not only in thunderous speech but in the pauses that follow.

In the Book of Psalms, this divine pause has a name: selah.

Repeated throughout the Psalter, selah offers no direct translation, yet its presence is unmistakable. It appears where truth requires reverence, where praise needs time to settle, where a soul must breathe. It functions like a wordless bracket—an invitation to stop, to reflect, to let meaning echo.

If Isaiah gives us divine whispers in parentheses, the Psalms give us divine breath in rest.

Both are movements of the Spirit.
Both are invitations into resonance.

To read Scripture faithfully is not only to follow the line, but to dwell in the space around it.
To listen for the voice that speaks — in thunder, in whisper, and in silence.

Selah.

Invocation
I have learnt to love Schubert,
in shared hope,
hence Christ.

There are few pieces of music more arresting, more intimate, more tremulous with meaning than Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. Written in 1824 while Schubert was gravely ill, the quartet trembles on the edge of mortality—not only his own, but all of ours. The title and thematic anchor come from a song he composed years earlier, a lied (the German word for song) in which Death gently invites a young woman to rest in his arms. The quartet’s second movement—a set of variations—is based on that haunting melody.

And yet, as much as we admire this masterpiece—and we do—it must be said: Death and the Maiden, like the culture that so often celebrates it, stands poised between truth and illusion. It gets very close to something real. But it stops short of the resurrection.

The Story Schubert Tells
In the original lied, the maiden pleads with Death to pass her by. She is young, beautiful, and afraid. But Death responds not with threat, but with gentleness. His voice is slow, calm, inevitable. And so the quartet unfolds: a fierce, stormy first movement; a slow second movement where the voice of death is varied and echoed; a restless scherzo; and a final movement that presses forward with unrelenting energy, like time itself.

There is resistance. There is mourning. There is, finally, acceptance.

This is where the cultural misreading often begins: the interpretation of death as a noble release, a shadowy friend. The aesthetic of the quartet tempts us toward a melancholic surrender, toward a Romantic stoicism—noble, tragic, beautiful.

But here’s the question: Is that the whole story?

Between Stoicism and Epicureanism
The philosophical ghosts in the room are ancient and powerful—Stoicism and Epicureanism. Most people don’t name them anymore, but they live on in cultural instinct:

• Stoicism teaches us to master our emotions, to meet death with courage and internal peace. It can sound virtuous — almost Christian. But it has no resurrection. No Christ.

• Epicureanism teaches us to detach, to enjoy life and not fear death, because death is the end of sensation. No judgment. No afterlife. No meaning beyond the moment.

In modern culture, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden often becomes a vessel for these views. We are told to accept death calmly, or to romanticize it as the final chord in nature’s symphony. We are taught to “make peace” with the end, or to dissolve beautifully into the cosmos.

But these are not Gospel truths.

They are philosophical sleights of hand—resignation dressed as peace, and annihilation disguised as transcendence.

Death in the Light of Christ
Scripture is more honest—and more hopeful.

• Death is not neutral. It is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23).

• Death is not a friend. It is the last enemy to be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26).

• And yet, death is not ultimate. It is a defeated foe, one whose sting has been pulled out by the crucified and risen Christ.

When Jesus stands before Lazarus’s tomb, He doesn’t merely comfort the grieving. He doesn’t quote philosophy. He doesn’t advise them to make peace with the cycle of life.

He weeps.

He is deeply moved, even angry—not at Lazarus, not at the mourners, but at death itself.

And then, He calls forth life: “Lazarus, come out.”

This is what Stoicism can never do.
This is what Epicureanism never dares to imagine.

The Christian Counterpoint
If we return to Schubert with this in mind, the quartet becomes something else.

• The maiden’s resistance becomes valid, not something to overcome, but something to redeem.

• Death’s calm voice becomes unmasked — not as tender, but as powerless, once it stands before the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

• The final movement’s desperate momentum is not the sound of succumbing, but the sound of a cosmos straining toward the renewal of all things.

In that light, Schubert’s quartet doesn’t need to be rejected. It needs to be drawn through the veil—through Good Friday and into Easter Sunday.

The Gospel does not flatten the emotional depth of Schubert’s work. It transfigures it. It honors the ache, the longing, the fear—and then answers them.

With a name spoken at a tomb.
With a stone rolled away.
With the mocking cry:

“O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55 ESV)

Letting It Breathe
We let Schubert’s music breathe—not as resignation, but as pre-resurrection breath. We admire it deeply, but we do not canonize it as final truth. We let it carry us to the edge, and then we listen for a voice louder and gentler than death.

The voice of Christ.

He weeps with the maiden.
He meets her fear.
And then He takes her hand and says:

“Talitha cumi.” (Aramaic, Mark 5:41)
“Little girl, arise.”

There’s a kind of music that seems always on the verge of falling apart—too many ideas, too much feeling, not quite classical, not yet romantic. It stumbles forward, clutches at the hem of transcendence, and somehow—somehow—never collapses.

I heard that music recently in Schubert’s Symphony No. 2. There’s a sophisticated sloppiness to it—an almost clumsy boldness—that refuses to obey classical symmetry and yet reveals, in its very deviation, a deeper kind of grace. It’s the sound of a composer still young, still reaching, and still unwilling to tighten his soul for the sake of polish. And because of that, something remarkable happens: the symphony begins to feel… godlike. Not in the way of omnipotence or control, but in the way God seems to move through history—detouring through the margins, arriving in weakness, never missing the mark.

As I listened to Schubert’s Symphony No. 2, the story of the Gospel came to mind—not just as a theological category, but as a movement of grace: the saving story of Jesus, fulfilling the long arc of Israel’s hope. The symphony’s restless turns, its surging momentum, its refusal to stay predictable—all of it seemed to echo that singular Gospel. But then something strange happened. As I followed the flow of the music, the word Gospel in my mind quietly morphed into the word Psalms.

And that transformation felt right.

Because if the Gospel is the story that completes Israel’s longing, the Psalms are the very breath of that longing. They lurch and leap with emotion — grief, praise, trust, rage, awe—and in doing so, they teach us how to inhabit the story before we can fully understand it. They are the soundtrack of a people who walk by faith and not by sight. And in Schubert’s symphony, I heard that same spirit: bold, vulnerable, seemingly unstable, yet always held.

And perhaps that’s what this music revealed to me—something I’ve long felt but can rarely explain…

There is a clarity that comes in dreams, but which cannot be remembered upon waking. And yet, somehow, that clarity re-emerges—not through reason, but through moments of interaction. Not merely interaction with ideas, or with words on a page, but with Scripture as a generative environment—a place where God’s fire still flickers, where the Spirit still broods, where the Midrashic imagination is not a relic but a rhythm.

The Midrashic mode isn’t a genre or a doctrine. It’s more like a way of walking through Scripture—with your eyes open, your ears attuned, and your imagination baptized.

Rooted in Second Temple Judaism and richly developed by rabbis in the generations surrounding Jesus, Midrash is what happens when faithful people meet sacred text not as a closed system, but as a living world. It asks not just what does this passage say, but what else is it whispering? What happens if we tilt it in the light? What stories echo behind the silence?

In Midrash, nothing is “just filler.” A missing name, a strange repetition, a surprising verb tense—all of it becomes a door. And behind that door is often a question, a reversal, a paradox, or a poetic retelling.

But it does not end there.

That same interaction—if we are willing—extends into all of creation. Into a clumsy symphony. Into a bent psalm. Into a sunrise, a stumble, a silence. And suddenly, we see it:

The Gospel has not fallen.
The Gospel cannot fall.

It moves through all things like music—not because it avoids misstep, but because it transfigures every misstep into grace.

This is what Schubert, in a way, does—and not as fully as Scripture. Schubert does not allow me to move more than an inch without being arrested by the Spirit. It is more true of the Psalms. It is even more true of Isaiah.

And someday, when all of it is peeled away, that arrest will be complete.

“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”
— Dr. Amelia Brand, Interstellar

In a universe defined by entropy, distance, and unknowable scale, what holds?

This is the question pulsing at the heart of Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar. More than a film about space travel, it is a meditation on time, trust, and the enduring power of abiding love—a power not merely emotional but relational, sacrificial, and redemptive.

And it’s here—in the longing between parent and child, in the silence between worlds, in the signal sent across black holes—that Interstellar becomes more than speculative fiction. It becomes, quietly but unmistakably, a Christocentric story. Not just a tale pointing toward Christ (Christotelic), but one that, in its very structure and heart, centers on the kind of love only found in the gospel.

And perhaps even more unexpectedly, it resonates deeply with three prophetic chapters from Isaiah—three theological bodies orbiting a center they do not name, but toward which they also unmistakably bend.

The Three Bodies: Isaiah’s Theological Orbit
In Isaiah 41, 49, and 55, we find Israel not triumphant, but exiled. Not certain, but waiting. Not solved, but sustained. These chapters speak not of human achievement, but of divine presence—of a God who does not shout over the chaos, but enters it.

Isaiah 41—God Who Enters the Orbit
“He pursues them and passes on safely, by paths his feet have not trod.” (v.3)

God does not remain distant from the chaos of history. He moves within it, treading unfamiliar paths. He calls the coastlands to silence first, not speech—a call to listen, to draw near, to stop striving after predictive control.

This is the narrative condition of Interstellar: the systems we understand no longer hold. The gravitational pull is off. The familiar paths no longer work. Yet even here, something—or Someone—still moves.

Isaiah 49—The Covenant Kept in the Silence
“Can a woman forget her nursing child? …Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (vv.15–16)

To the exiled, it seems God has forgotten. But Isaiah offers a deeper truth: the covenant holds, even when the voice goes silent. God’s remembrance is not based on feeling, but on fidelity—on the engraved promise.

In Interstellar, the silence between Cooper and Murph becomes unbearable. It feels like abandonment. But it is precisely in that silence that love abides. Not passively—but covenantally, waiting to break through.

Isaiah 55—Love That Transcends Return
“My word… shall not return to me empty…” (v.11)

The arc of Isaiah’s prophecy resolves not in collapse, but in fruitfulness. What God sends forth—His word, His promise, His love—will return. Not void. Not lost. But fulfilled.

In the film’s final act, Cooper enters a space where communication is impossible—and yet, a word is sent. A signal. A truth. Not to the world, but to one person. And that message—like God’s Word—does not return empty. It saves.

Moments That Matter
In Interstellar, time is not linear. It folds, circles, recurs. But every moment is not the same. There are moments that matter—when the silence must be broken, when love must act, when the signal must be sent.

In Isaiah, in the gospel, and in our lives, there are moments that are weighted with divine presence. They are not random. They are covenantal. And they become inflection points in both narrative and theology.

From Christotelic to Christocentric
Much of modern biblical theology embraces a Christotelic reading: that the Hebrew Scriptures reach their fulfillment in Christ. This is faithful and true—the story of Israel does indeed find its goal in Him.

But Interstellar invites us to go further. It asks: what if Christ is not merely the telos? What if He is the center—the one already inhabiting the story, already present in the silence, already sustaining the moments that matter?

To consider Interstellar theologically is not just to see a pattern that reminds us of Christ. It is to witness, in cinematic metaphor, a world that cries out for a mediator, and for a love that acts from within.

The Mediated Center: Christ in the Tesseract
In the film, the Tesseract is not a place of power. It is a place of mediation.

Constructed by unknown beings (perhaps future humans), it exists for one reason: so that Cooper can see across time, find the moment that matters, and send the message that saves. He does not control time—he enters it, navigates it through love, and sends his word not through force, but through gravitational resonance—a message bound to the one he loves.

In the Gospel, it is in Peter that we first encounter a profound epistemic transformation. One that does not deny science or history, but—like Cooper—integrates them into a new paradigm: a new creation, where love (and faith, and hope) become not merely virtues, but ways of knowing.

Science and history, on their own, can only carry us so far—epistemologically, ontologically. But rarely in cinema has a braver traveler been portrayed. Cooper does not remain fixed within the limits of what he already knows, or how he knows it. He crosses a boundary, impassable to reason alone.

Like Peter stepping onto water, Cooper enters a new epistemology—not anti-science, but transfigured. A dialectic done rightly: not either/or, but both/and—transcending and including.

In this light, faith, hope, and above all, love become not retreats from knowledge, but its fulfillment.

“Do you love me?” This becomes the question that shifts the cosmos. Cooper succeeds not through detachment or data alone, but because agape abounds—a love so enduring, it bends gravity itself.

And through this love—through Cooper’s meticulous stewardship, his attention to detail, his faithful presence in the Tesseract—we glimpse not Christ Himself, but the kind of space Christ creates through the New Covenant:

A space where time and eternity intersect,
Where the impossible becomes communicable,
Where a message is sent not by force, but by love.

Abiding Love and the Gospel of Time
In the end, Interstellar is a film about abiding love. A love that waits, that remembers, that sacrifices, and that returns. It is a love that transcends dimensions not because it ignores reality, but because it inhabits it more fully than fear, power, or data ever could.

This is the love of the New Covenant—not a force of feeling, but a force of Christic action:

A love that descends,
A love that mediates,
A love that abides across time, not just as memory, but as Word made flesh.

The story of Interstellar, when placed in conversation with Isaiah’s prophetic imagination and the Gospel’s redemptive center, becomes more than science fiction. It becomes a parable of the Christ at the center of time.

And through Him, the orbit holds.

“Listen to me in silence, O coastlands; let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak; let us together draw near for judgment.” — Isaiah 41:1

The three-body problem, in physics, is deceptively simple: place three celestial bodies in space and try to predict their motion under the pull of gravity. If you only have two, the dance is elegant and solvable— ellipses, parabolas, predictable precision. Add a third, and the dance turns wild. Unpredictable. No general equation can describe it. What begins as clarity collapses into mathematical chaos—deterministic unpredictability.

And yet, this isn't just a problem of the stars. It's also a parable of human relationship, of moral systems, of historical forces. Of brothers.

In Genesis, we meet the first three-brother system: Cain, Abel, and Seth. Cain, the restless striver; Abel, the beloved and silenced; Seth, the remnant—a third orbit into which God pours a future. Their interactions destabilize more than a family. They inaugurate a pattern: that when three forces—or persons—or wills—begin to pull on each other, we can no longer predict what comes next.

So too in The Three-Body Problem, the science fiction novel by Liu Cixin, where an alien civilization, trapped in a three-sun system, lives through endless cycles of collapse and rebirth. No stability. No predictability. Even their scientific progress is stalled by a world that won’t hold still. Human characters, too, are caught in the wake of this chaos, seeking clarity in technology, survival in control—but always missing the deeper thread.

And then we come to Isaiah 41, a transitional text so easily overlooked, but which—once listened to—holds the gravitational center of all this chaos.

The Call to Silence in a Swirling World
“Listen to me in silence, O coastlands…” — Isaiah 41:1

The coastlands—scattered peoples at the edge of the known world—are not summoned to action. Not to war. Not even to belief. First, they are called to silence. To cease their calculations. To stop trying to stabilize their own systems.

Only then: let them speak. “….let them approach, then let them speak…”

This order matters. In a world ruled by striving and noise, silence is not absence—it is space for revelation. Silence is the pause between gravitational pulls. It is what allows for a voice not our own to be heard.

God’s Motion Through Chaos
Then comes the striking image:

“He pursues them and passes on safely, by paths his feet have not trod.” (v.3)

Even God moves through unfamiliar paths. Not because He is lost, but because He chooses to enter the system. He steps into the swirling, unstable reality of human motion—and walks where no foot has walked.

This is the God of covenant: not distant, not immobile, but willing to move through the unpredictable, to enter the chaos, to inhabit the orbit.

Just as Christ would later enter time, and womb, and cross, the God of Isaiah 41 walks paths He had not yet trod—not because He had to, but because love moves.

Three Brothers, Three Bodies, No Solution?
In Genesis 4–5, the story of Cain, Abel, and Seth introduces more than family drama. It presents a moral three-body problem:

• Cain strives toward dominance,

• Abel is taken before his life fulfills,

• Seth is the unexpected continuation.

What begins as a two-body crisis (Cain and Abel) becomes something more complex—and from that complexity, God does not offer a formula, but a promise. The line of Seth is not predictable, but it is faithful. It carries the possibility of restoration, the hidden gravitational pull of covenant.

In Isaiah 41, we see echoes of this:

• The nations strive like Cain.

• Israel mourns like Abel — called a “worm,” seemingly forgotten.

• But then God says: “You are my servant… I have chosen you and not cast you off.” (v.9)

This is the Seth-moment: when in the middle of chaos, God chooses to bind Himself again to the broken orbit.

Idols Collapse, But Love Remains
The latter part of Isaiah 41 stages a courtroom drama. God calls on the idols to speak—to predict, to explain, to stabilize history.

They fail.

“Behold, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing…” (v.24)

The three-body system of human striving—political, philosophical, technological—cannot stabilize itself. It collapses into violence, despair, betrayal.

Only one force remains: the steadfast love of the covenant God.

And this is where Isaiah 41 reveals its true brilliance: it doesn’t explain the chaos. It doesn’t fix the equations. Instead, it shows us a God who enters the orbit, and loves us within it. A God who says, “Fear not, for I am with you” (v.10), not because the orbit is now clean, but because presence is greater than prediction.

The Quiet Arrival of Love
Faith moves. Hope reaches. But love abides. It is the only force that does not decay under complexity. It is not disturbed by unpredictability, because it is volitional—not reactive.

And it is not abstract.

This abiding love takes on form—not only in Isaiah’s assurance to the exiles, but in the arrival of the Servant who will come in the very next chapter of Isaiah: the one in whom God’s soul delights, the one who will bring forth justice not by crushing, but by faithfulness. This Servant moves through history not as a distant answer but as a present embodiment.

He is the one who, in the fullness of time, steps into the orbit—not to hover above, but to be drawn into its gravity, its violence, its suffering. And yet He is not overcome. The Christ, crucified and risen, becomes the gravitational center of a new cosmos: the fulfillment, the resolution of the three-brother orbit, and the firstfruits of new creation.

Through Him, the already-chaotic world begins to shift into the already-and-not-yet of the New Kingdom—where love is not merely what remains, but what reigns.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
That which was to be demonstrated has been shown.

Not through calculation, but through covenant.
Not through prediction, but through presence.
Not through dominance, but through a crucified and risen Christ.

This is not a God who explains the equations from afar.
This is the God who enters the orbit, walks unfamiliar paths, and redeems the system from within.

This is love, and this is what remains.
Christ is risen—the orbit holds.

A Christ-Centered Judaic Embrace

For many, the thought of embracing Christianity raises a quiet, difficult question—especially for those with Jewish ancestry. Does following Christ mean turning away from the heritage of Israel? Is Christianity a break from Judaism, or could it be its deepest fulfillment?

This tension isn’t always spoken aloud. It lingers in quiet questions, internal hesitations, or even subtle comments from others. But behind the question lies a story—a story that begins with promise, continues through exile, and finds its fulfillment in a crucified and risen Messiah.

Fulfillment, Not Rejection
Christianity is often misunderstood as a rejection of Judaism. But if one reads the Scriptures through the lens of fulfillment rather than replacement, a different picture emerges. The story that begins with Abraham—the covenant, the promises, the prophetic anticipation—is not discarded in Christ. It is fulfilled.

Jesus was not an outsider to Israel’s story. He was born into it, shaped by its Scriptures, steeped in its worship. As he said in Matthew 5:17:

“I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them.”

In him, the Law is embodied, the temple is reimagined, the covenant is kept. This is not a rupture in the narrative. It is its resolution.

A Midrashic Reading of Fulfillment
Approaching Scripture as a unified, unfolding witness to God’s self-revelation invites a posture not of severance, but of synthesis. One might call this a Midrashic imagination—not in the strict rabbinic sense, but as a reverent, reflective mode of reading. It allows the old and the new to echo across time, for symbols to stretch, for paradox to resolve in a Person.

This mode of reading, deeply rooted in both Jewish and early Christian traditions, welcomes patterns, fulfillment, and the quiet whisper of continuity. It allows the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets to speak forward—not just to Christ as a doctrinal endpoint, but to Christ as the living thread who runs through it all.

This way of reading also helps us understand something essential:

Jesus was not launching a new religion.

As N.T. Wright has carefully emphasized—especially in The Day the Revolution Began—Jesus was not offering a break with Israel’s story, but its long-promised renewal. His parables, in particular, reflect this. They are steeped in the oral and literary traditions of Second Temple Judaism, shaped by Aramaic idioms, folk wisdom, and storytelling forms passed across generations. His teaching does not reject the Jewish tradition—it awakens it. His voice resounds with the tone of the prophets, the rhythm of the Psalms, and the clarity of covenantal wisdom.

In Christ’s parables, we hear the natural language of a King and Messiah rooted in his people’s story, even as he draws that story to its promised fulfillment.

Theology That Holds Paradox
Many who come to Christianity from Jewish backgrounds—or even from other faith traditions—may find themselves working between tension and integration: distinguishing where necessary, but also drawing connections where faith invites synthesis. This is not a weakness of mind; it is a strength of vision.

Certain streams of Christian theology, particularly in the Lutheran tradition, model this well. The paradoxes at the heart of the faith—law and gospel, sinner and saint, already and not yet—form a theological rhythm that mirrors the scriptural one. Far from flattening the differences between Judaism and Christianity, this perspective gives space to appreciate their dynamic relationship, while recognizing Christ as the telos—the fulfillment—of the covenant.

A Covenant Completed, Not Cast Aside
In the person of Christ, the promises to Abraham are extended to the world—not by canceling the covenant, but by fulfilling its deepest intent: that through Abraham’s seed, all nations would be blessed.

The Psalms become the prayers of the Messiah.

The prophets become the foreshadowing of his mission.

The covenant becomes the vessel of God’s global embrace.

This is not a rejection of heritage. It is a homecoming.

The Invitation of Fulfillment
For anyone who has ever wondered whether following Jesus means walking away from their ancestral story, the answer may be more surprising—and more beautiful—than expected. It does not require abandonment, but recognition. Recognition that the same God who called Abraham, who spoke through Isaiah, and who sang through David has now spoken definitively in Christ.

To embrace him is not to discard the story, but to realize it. Not to leave behind one's roots, but to let them grow into what they were always meant to be: a tree grafted and flourishing, rooted in covenant, and reaching toward the renewal of all things.

Prelude: On Mirth, Means, and the Messiah
The following piece is offered in a spirit of lightheartedness and imaginative joy, in recognition of Jesus Christ—our Lord and Messiah, the Word made flesh, who—as Scripture attests—carried within His incarnate life not only divine wisdom, compassion, and authority, but also a holy and knowing sense of humor.

For the One who turned water into wine at a wedding, told stories of camels and needles, and paid taxes with a coin from a fish's mouth—He who healed a man’s blindness using spit and dirt—was not without laughter. Nor was He without irony, delight, or surprise.

And so, what follows rolls forth in His wake.

The Forgiveness Bike Shop
And it came to pass that a man, bearded with years and bearing the quiet confidence of someone who once owned BMX pegs, entered a bike shop filled with anodized potential.

He walked between the displays of oversized 29ers and featherlight race frames…
and spoke to the staff, saying:

“Your sins are forgiven.”

The staff froze. The assistant manager looked up from adjusting a derailleur. A young mechanic with grease on his nose dropped a torque wrench in disbelief.

“Who is this man who speaks such things?” they muttered among themselves.

“Who does he think he is—to forgive sins in a retail environment?”

But the man, perceiving their thoughts—perhaps by intuition, or perhaps from having worked in customer service himself—said to them:

“Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier—to say ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to place an order for a Haro Master 24 with full chromoly frame, front and rear U-brakes, gyro detangler, and tires treaded with grace?”

And he stepped forward to the register, laid a hand upon it as one might an altar, and said:

“But so that you may know about the Son of Man, who has His Father’s authority to forgive so that we may ride…”

He gestured toward the backroom and declared:

“Bring forth the Haro.”

And lo! The shop bell chimed, and a courier entered with a box glowing faintly. The staff looked on, astonished.

“We have never seen anything like this,” one whispered, “not since the freestyle prophets of the ‘80s walked the earth.”

And the man opened the box, cradled the frame like a long-lost relic, and smiled.

“Rise,” he said to the bike. “And roll.”

And it did.

Postlude: Grace Through Chrome, Mercy Through Means
This story, though spoken in mirth, follows the deeper pattern of Scripture:that our God delights to work through means—through water and word, through bread and wine, through spit and dirt, through fish and coins, and yes, even through chrome and childhood dreams remembered.

Jesus does not need tools. But He uses them anyway.

Not for efficiency, but for intimacy.

Not for spectacle, but to remind us that grace often comes wrapped in the ordinary—a coin, a touch, a muddy eye, a bicycle.

That, through the means of our vocations, we can channel the image of God, in and through Christ, in service of one another.

And in that, we are healed.

And in that, we ride.

At a recent high school track meet concession stand, I paid $5 for what I believed might be a hipster-style street food experience—a “walking taco,” no less. Sounds inviting. At $5, it already sounds hip! I like things that move—I’m at a track meet after all, where hopes, and a casting about of faith, abound. My imagination—under the cooling sky and within my springtime, pollen-fogged brain—began, itself, to walk!

What I received was a fun-sized taco travesty with a forked tombstone—a vague, multi-textured gruel in a chip bag with a plastic utensil already standing vigil.

This is not a food review. It is a monologue of disillusionment. A cautionary tale about misplaced trust, and the subtle ways even our smallest cultural rituals can carry the scent of something much larger—and much hollower. Inspired by nothing more than Dorito dust and the slow death of optimism, I offer this as a dramatic reckoning with the taco that walked straight into my lungs.

In a world shaped by flash and filler, sometimes you only need two bites to taste Babylon.

Two Bites from Babylon: A Dramatic Monologue
[Spotlight fades in on a lone folding chair beside a trash can. Enter

TEACHER, clutching a chip bag, fork protruding like a weary mast. The aroma of ground beef lingers with menacing resolve.]

TEACHER (gazing outward, solemnly):
I came in peace.
Five dollars folded tenderly in my palm—
not for sustenance,
but for a glimmer of something artisanal,
a whisper of cumin-scented grace.

They called it the “Walking Taco.”
And I, foolish in my faith,
thought perhaps it would walk—
hand-in-hand
with dignity.

[He pauses. Looks at the bag.]

Instead—
Taco barf.
Soggy despair ladled
into the cadaver of a Doritos bag,
its foil skin crinkled like the hopes I once held.
A 14-year-old stood nearby,
silent, solemn,
holding a plastic fork upright
like a tombstone.

I did not yet know
that fork was for me.

[He sits slowly.]

First bite:
confusion.
Second bite:
rebuke.
A wayward puff of Dorito dust
slipped into my bronchioles,
a subatomic orange shard of shame
detonating
deep in the cathedral of my chest.

And so I stopped.

Not at five bites,
not at four—
but at two.
Because when the taco fights back,
you don’t press on.
You repent.

[He gently places the chip bag in the trash. The fork remains upright.]

They say
faith is the evidence of things not seen.
But this I have seen.
And I believe no more.

[Blackout.]

"The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again." — Revelation 18:14

In the unfolding drama of divine revelation, the question of who belongs—and how the story continues—has often turned on a single tension: supersession. It is a term burdened with pain, rooted in the idea that one people, or one revelation, replaces another. For centuries, this has complicated the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. And more recently, it has become a contested lens through which broader interfaith engagement must be navigated.

Yet perhaps the better question is not whether one tradition replaces another, but whether fulfillment must always mean erasure.

The Gospel of Christ does not cancel the story of Israel—it completes it. The crucified and risen Jesus does not sidestep the covenant, but embodies it. In Him, the promises made to Abraham, the law given through Moses, and the prophetic cries of justice and mercy find their long-awaited resonance. This is not a narrative of replacement, but of transfiguration. Christ does not uproot the tree of Israel; He is its firstfruits.

Still, it must be acknowledged that even within Christianity, the temptation toward a hard-edged supersessionism has existed—one that forgets Paul’s stern warning in Romans 11: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches.” This arrogance often results not only in theological pride, but in cultural and historical harm. Judaism, the root and trunk of our shared covenantal story, has been subjected to both neglect and caricature. Yet Scripture insists: “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

Today, that distortion takes on new forms. Some modern ideologies, even those wrapped in the language of reverence or tradition, frame earlier revelations as fundamentally corrupted or invalid. They position themselves not as the next verse in the melody, but as a new score entirely. Whether explicit or implicit, these perspectives deepen the displacement of Judaism and obscure the covenantal arc that runs from creation through Israel to Christ and, ultimately, to the renewal of all things.

In light of this, the Christian calling must be reframed not as conquest or correction, but as vocation and reflection.

We are invited to reflect God’s wisdom into the world and return the world’s praise to God—just as ancient Israel was called to be a light to the nations. The resurrection of Christ is not the end of that light, but its radiant center. Through Him, the covenant expands, not collapses.

This is why defending the dignity and ongoing vocation of ancient Israel and Judah is not merely an ethical task—it is a theological necessity. It is also a form of doxology. In honoring the covenantal history through which God has chosen to act, we offer praise to the faithfulness of God. And in bearing witness to Christ as its fulfillment, not its negation, we allow the whole story to sing.

To move beyond supersessionism, then, is not to water down the claims of Christ. It is to deepen them. It is to proclaim that in Him, the story of Israel does not end—it flowers. And in that flowering, we are called—not to dominate or displace—but to serve, to reflect, and to praise.

There is, perhaps, something worth pondering in the structural fact that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam form a triad—three faiths bound by a common claim to Abraham, a shared reverence for divine revelation, and a profound entanglement in one another’s histories. Like the threefold cords spoken of in Ecclesiastes, this triadic structure suggests not only tension but potential strength. Each tradition, in its own way, reaches back to a singular root and stretches forward with distinct vision.

That shared root does not imply identical fruit. Nor does it collapse difference into bland unity. Rather, it invites the deeper work of interfaith reflection—not as competition for theological ground, but as cultivation of soil already sown with covenantal intent.

This structural triad offers a symbolic frame for mutual engagement: not to relativize Christ, nor to deny difference, but to acknowledge a shared framework through which theological, historical, and moral resonance can be explored. It is within this resonance—not erasure—that a meaningful witness to truth can emerge.

Of course, significant theological divergences remain. One such divergence is eschatological: while Judaism and Christianity share a vision of embodied resurrection and the renewal of creation, other traditions envision a more sharply divided cosmology—heaven, earth, and judgment held at greater remove. These differences matter. But they need not prevent us from recognizing a shared impulse toward justice, reverence, and covenantal response.

Indeed, this triadic structure may offer not only a metaphor for mutual recognition, but a form of resilience—resilience against the great unravelings of the human condition: evil, injustice, violence, and sin. Though each tradition names and addresses these realities differently, they all seek to bear witness against them.

And in a cultural moment where consequences for wrongdoing are increasingly downplayed or unevenly applied, this shared moral witness becomes vital—not only as theological conviction, but as civic necessity. A society that grows lax toward crime and disorder does not become freer; it becomes more vulnerable to the rise of harsher, ideologically rigid alternatives.

For Christians, Christ’s atoning work does not remove the call to righteousness; it deepens it. Grace is not an exemption from the covenantal life, but the ground on which it is now walked—toward the restoration of all things.

Such a reflection does not preclude dialogue with other traditions, religious or otherwise. The world is vast, and the Spirit moves where it will…

But for those drawn into the long story of Abraham and its branches, the triadic structure can serve not only as a map of past divergences, but as a kind of architectural metaphor: a structure that, at its best, holds tension, reveals strength, and invites habitation.

Postscript

This essay offers no resolution—nor should it. The questions it raises are not problems to be solved but tensions to be inhabited, with reverence, humility, and hope. What it does offer is a path: one shaped by covenantal memory, Christic fulfillment, and the vocational call to reflect God's wisdom into the world.

Yet even that path can be distorted when we forget who we are and who we are not.

Across centuries, the temptation to claim divine authority has recurred—sometimes in the form of supersessionist pride, sometimes in the rigidity of ideology, and sometimes in the quiet erosion of moral clarity under the guise of neutrality. Whether theological or political, religious or secular, the impulse is the same: to stand in the place of God rather than before Him.

But we—all of us—are not the Author. We are image-bearers, not originators. The story of covenant, fulfillment, and justice is not ours to redefine but to receive—and in receiving it, to be shaped.

Christ fulfills the story not by replacing what came before, but by transfiguring it. In Him, the glory of God does not bypass creation; it passes through it. The call is not to possess that glory, but to reflect it.

And in that reflection, we find not resolution—but the beginning of wisdom.

Post-Postscript

If this essay resists resolution, it also resists naivety. The call to covenantal clarity and interfaith witness must include vigilance—not only against theological pride, but against the cultural conditions in which justice is softened into irrelevance, and power becomes the only remaining truth.

When societies lose the will—or the coherence—to apply consequence, they do not remain empty. Into that vacuum, ideologies rush. And not all ideologies are content with conversation.

Some, in their most extreme forms, bring with them codes of law that are likewise extreme—claiming divine mandate while silencing dissent by fear. While such expressions often emerge from within specific theological frameworks, the broader danger transcends any single tradition. These are not anomalies. In some systems of belief, they are the execution of a script—one written with absolute certainty and enforced without mercy.

This is not a call to paranoia. It is a call to discernment: to uphold moral order not as an imposition of power, but as a safeguard of peace. Lawlessness—whether in the name of tolerance or revolution—does not birth freedom. It births chaos. And chaos, unresisted, invites domination.

In this light, it is worth acknowledging a quiet yet important counterbalance in the religious landscape: traditions whose internal metaphysics resist theological absolutism. Among these, Hinduism stands out—not as an alternative theology, but as a civilizational current that tends to absorb rather than conquer, to reflect rather than enforce. Its tolerance for paradox, its regional elasticity, and its spiritual plurality create a kind of ballast against the rise of ideological extremism—religious or secular.

Justice, rightly applied, is not cruelty. It is covenantal stewardship. It is part of what it means to bear God’s image in the ordering of creation. And if we do not bear it well, others will bear it for us—in ways we did not choose.

The world, we are told—rightly—is round. And for centuries now, we have taught this truth as a triumph of scientific knowledge over myth and superstition. The idea of a flat earth has become a shorthand for error, backwardness, and ignorance. It is mocked with a kind of reflexive superiority, the symbol of a mind unwilling to accept progress.

And yet, what if the old belief—wrong though it may be in physical terms—carried within it a symbolic longing we have too quickly dismissed? What if it gestured, in its limited understanding, toward something Christic, something fulfilled rather than corrected?

The flat earth of the ancients was not simply a misunderstanding of physical shape. It was a worldview—a sense of horizon, of place, of direction, of coherence. People stood within a world that felt spread before them: where North, South, East, and West extended like the corners of a great tent, a covenantal expanse. In that worldview, one could imagine walking from one end to the other—not escaping the world, but inhabiting it fully.

Perhaps that was never meant to be replaced, only transfigured.

The Geometry of Fulfillment
Christ does not discard the old; He fulfills it. The Law is not abolished, but transfigured. The Temple is not preserved, but replaced with something better—not by erasure, but by elevation. Likewise, the geometry of the cosmos may itself be caught up in this process of transfiguration.

In the vision of New Creation, Isaiah tells us:

“Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” (Isaiah 40:4)

This is not a flattening in the pejorative sense. It is a leveling for glory—the kind of “flatness” that makes way for doxology. The topography of strife and separation is made smooth for the coming of the Lord. In this sense, the idea of a “flat earth” becomes a symbol—not of ignorance, but of hope.

What if, in New Creation, geography itself is made permeable to praise? What if the four cardinal directions no longer pull us outward into isolation, but draw us inward into universal communion? A redeemed horizon where the edges do not divide but echo the voice of God?

Resonance in the Physics of Strings
This redemptive geometry does not oppose science—it opens space for it. In fact, within string theory—the leading theoretical framework in modern physics—there is profound harmony with this vision.

String theory imagines that the most fundamental units of reality are not particles, but vibrating strings. These strings trace out two-dimensional surfaces—called worldsheets—as they move through spacetime. And these worldsheets, often modeled as flat surfaces, hold within them the mathematics of resonance, tension, and song.

Many string theory models begin in flat ten-dimensional space. These "flat" spacetimes are not simplistic—they are elegant. They form a canvas for deeper laws to unfold. Vibrational patterns, encoded in the hidden dimensions of creation, become the building blocks of reality. In that sense, the universe is not only built but played—sung into being.

So while the Earth is physically round, the fundamental reality, as modern physics describes it, is one of woven, vibrating unity—a cosmic music stretched across flat dimensional frameworks. Not unlike the flat expanse of covenantal prophecy, preparing the way of the Lord.

This doesn’t resolve cosmology into eschatology, but it does reveal how science, when properly framed, can echo doxology. For the God who incarnates in Christ is not threatened by knowledge; He is the Logos in whom all knowledge coheres. The elegant mathematics of strings, the leveling poetry of Isaiah, and the square-shaped city of Revelation all whisper the same promise: a cosmos brought into resonance.

Against the Mockery of Small Knowledge
To be quite clear: the earth is not flat. Yet the mockery against so-called “flat-earthers” grates—not because the science is in doubt, but because the dismissal itself is shallow. It reveals a kind of reductionist thinking that not only misunderstands others, but also flattens the complexity of human belief, with a reflexive disdain that resists deeper reflection. Mockery always reveals a kind of smallness—the inability to see symbolic meaning in imperfect understanding. The early flat earth models were wrong in shape, but maybe they were right in intuition—right in their hunger for a world that made sense, where space stretched meaningfully from one covenantal end to the other.

In our modern “spherical” knowledge, we’ve gained precision, but perhaps lost a kind of sacred shape. We see curvature, but miss coherence. The round earth orbits through space, yet we drift through meaning.

But the Gospel is not curved. It is radiant and radiant outward. Christ is not a globe, but a cornerstone.

And the City of God, in Revelation, is not a sphere. It is foursquare—length and width and height in harmony (Revelation 21:16). Not a planet, but a temple. Not a globe, but a mosaic.

The Shape of Hope
We will never go back to believing the earth is flat. Nor should we. But perhaps we can go forward into seeing that the old longing—flattened landscapes, reachable ends, unified space—was not simply wrong, but incomplete. Like the Law before Christ, it awaited its fulfillment in glory.

The flat earth, in all its supposed foolishness, now becomes a symbol of that final geography—a redeemed, radiant cosmos where every place is connected, where distance no longer divides, and where the horizon is not a boundary, but a song.

And in that New Creation, we will not fall off the edge.

We will walk—together—across the flat and shining expanse of God’s everlasting praise.

Schubert’s Eighth threads even among the blood that pulses through one’s ear.

There are few works in Western music that inhabit the listener so gently, yet so irrevocably, as Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. It begins not with assertion, but with a murmur—a tremble in the low strings that feels less like the start of a performance and more like the surfacing of something long hidden, already alive inside you. It’s not a piece that asks to be heard, but one that reveals itself as having always been there, softly echoing in the chambers of the soul.

This is not the music of arrival, or conquest, or triumph. It is the music of presence. Of ache. Of grace so delicate it must be received rather than seized.

And there is something like this of the indwelling of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, as described in Scripture, rarely announces itself with fanfare. It moves like breath, like whisper, like thread. It abides within, often unnoticed—until one day you are still enough to hear it, and you realize it had been accompanying you all along. This is the kind of presence that Schubert somehow intuits and transmits—not through doctrine, but through tone; not through proclamation, but through patience.

When Schubert writes, he does not impose. He abides. His melodies do not carry you forward so much as sit beside you. They do not orchestrate your catharsis but offer a space where sorrow and wonder can be companions. Like the Spirit, his music weaves into your being, from without, but also from within.

To say that Schubert’s Eighth Symphony threads among the blood is not metaphor alone—it is a kind of confession. A recognition that what we often call “art” can also engage in revelation. And that what we often hear as music is sometimes a whisper from the Spirit, softly reminding us: I am with you, even here.

Preface
This short essay is purely speculative. It is an exercise in imagination—yet one rooted in scriptural truths and theological reflection. I do not claim certainty regarding the existence of extraterrestrial visitors, and in fact, I remain highly doubtful of many of the popular claims. However, if we allow for the possibility that such beings are real, and if their behavior aligns with the general pattern reported in credible accounts—marked by advanced capability and conspicuous aloofness—then this essay offers one potential explanation.

It is not a scientific hypothesis, nor a defense of faith. Rather, it is a theological thought experiment.

Creation Waits
Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the stories are true. That the grainy footage, the whispered disclosures, the now-official declassifications—all of it—are not mere misinterpretation. Suppose we really are being visited by extraterrestrials: beings from beyond our solar system, bearing technologies far beyond our own, arriving quietly and vanishing just as mysteriously.

Suppose it is true.

The most striking aspect, then, is not their existence—but their restraint. Their aloofness. Their refusal to engage in any open or enduring way. Why would a civilization capable of crossing interstellar distances—an inconceivable feat even by our most optimistic projections—choose to remain, for the most part, invisible?

To some, the answer might lie in fear, disinterest, or the classic "zoo hypothesis": that they watch us as one watches a walled garden, out of anthropological curiosity or ethical hesitation. But this essay offers another possibility—one drawn not from science fiction, but from the pages of Scripture.

What if they are not aloof out of disdain, but awe?

According to the biblical witness, humanity is not merely a biological species but a covenantal creature—formed in the image of the Creator, destined (in Christ) for a resurrection unto incorruptibility, glory, and renewed stewardship over all creation. The Apostle Paul writes that “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19). Not just Earth, but the entire cosmos, holds its breath.

In this framework, the human story is not merely tribal nor terrestrial—it is cosmic. In Christ, humanity is to be raised (in the “life after life after death”), transformed, and sent forth as incorruptible image-bearers into the fullness of a renewed creation. And in that moment, we are to become what we were always meant to be: not dominators, not manipulators, but stewards, priests, and co-regents.

So what if these extraterrestrials—assuming they are real—somehow know this?

What if they, too, have encountered the strange gravitational pull of biblical revelation? What if they, through observation or spiritual intuition, have come to sense that something decisive has happened—or is about to happen—through this bruised and battered species on Earth?

Some will object, of course. Isn’t this just another form of species-chauvinism, cloaked in religious language? But the objection misunderstands the nature of the claim. This is not triumphalism—it is teleology. It is not humanity declaring itself supreme, but Scripture declaring that God will one day raise His children to be what Adam never fully became: caretakers of a cosmos made whole.

And if so, then the restraint of alien visitors might not be indifference at all. It might be reverence. A kind of cosmic deference.

They may wait because they believe.

Or they may wait because they’re not sure—but they are cautious, discerning that something about this human story, though marred by violence and chaos, carries the scent of sacred unfolding.

And so they remain aloof.

Watching.
Waiting.
Perhaps, even, hoping.

Not to conquer.
But to partner.

When the sons and daughters of God are revealed, and creation—every far-flung star, every hidden watcher—is gathered into the new creation.

And here we can reflect on Revelation 22:1-2
Out from the heart of the New Jerusalem, a river flows. Along its banks grow trees of life, not one but many, bearing fruit in abundance and in season. Their leaves carry healing, not just for a people, but for all nations and all creation—offering renewal, restoration, and peace to a creation long fractured.

I’ve returned from a journey across the sea—Italy, a cruise, winding canals, stone alleys. Now I’m home again. And yet… not entirely.

Each morning I wake early, hours before dawn, still tethered to another time zone. My body, no longer sure where it belongs, drifts somewhere between continents. And last night, in that strange space between dreams and waking, I felt it: the sensation of being rocked—not violently, but gently, as if stirred awake by invisible hands. A presence, almost. Not frightening. Just… there.

Later, I felt a subtle vibration through the bed—an echo of ship engines, or perhaps memory itself pulsing through my nerves. I wondered for a moment if we’d had an earthquake. But no. The earth was still. It was only me who wasn’t.

And yet, I woke not disoriented, but sharpened.

Yesterday, while cutting the grass—tired and eager to be done—I noticed something unexpected. I began weaving between trees with unpracticed agility. Reversing downhill along a fence with precision I didn’t know I had. Maneuvers I’ve never tried before came easily. It felt natural, almost trained.

And I realized: my body still remembered the balance it needed on boats. The small adjustments, the internal calibration, the way you must move with the rocking rather than fight it. The sea had rewired me, at least for a while. And somehow, that tuning translated to everything else.

There’s a kind of wisdom hidden in this.

We often think of transitions as disruptions. But sometimes, disruption is a teacher. The rocking of the sea—the loss of equilibrium—can awaken new kinds of equilibrium. Sometimes being unsteady for a time is what trains you to move more freely.

Maybe that’s how the Spirit works too.

God doesn’t always anchor us where we are. Sometimes, He puts us to sea—not to disorient us, but to recalibrate us. To teach our inner ear to hear again. To train our footing not just for where we’ve been, but for where we’re going next.

And when we return, we’re different. Still ourselves, but slightly more agile. More alert. More tuned to presence. We carry the memory of the sea not as dizziness, but as a quiet skill.

I wonder if that’s what grace feels like sometimes.

The Spirit rocks us gently, unsettles us slightly, not to scare us—
but to wake us.
To make us move differently when we return to ordinary ground.

I think I’m still rocking.
And I think I’m grateful for it.

This poem offers a quiet reflection on how resurrection may sometimes appear—not in thunder or spectacle, but in the stillness of the everyday. It is a meditation on presence, memory, and the subtle ways grace reveals itself along the way. Written following the death of a friend, it seeks to glimpse resurrection not only as a future promise, but as a present whisper—something already stirring beneath the surface, in the fragile bloom of a yellow flower, or in the hush that follows a long-held gesture of love.

The Resurrection
The resurrection
is also a present whisper—
an aged woman,
in reverence with a yellow flower,
memory both swift and motionless.

No trumpet, no stone rolled with thunder,
just the stillness of a gesture held
beneath the bloom—of something golden.

The wind of the already
glimpsing the
not yet.

And hearts formed
to an eternal resonance
received.

The Devil Cites Scripture
False Christianity, Fanaticism, and the Witness of the Real

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written…”
—Satan, quoting Psalm 91 (Matthew 4:6, ESV)

Not All Who Claim Christ Know Him
One of the stranger accusations you hear in moments of cultural unrest—sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted—is that Hitler was a Christian. The implication, of course, is that Christianity itself is guilty: of authoritarianism, of cruelty, of genocidal violence. And since it’s true that Hitler used the word “God” in speeches and invoked Christian language, isn’t the whole tradition tainted?

Let’s begin here, plainly:

To name Christ is not to know Him.
To quote Scripture is not to be shaped by it.
And to invoke God is not to bear His image.

The devil himself quotes Scripture, after all.

Satanic Fluency: Quoting Psalm 91
In the wilderness, Satan tempts Jesus not by denying God—but by misusing His Word. “It is written,” he says, before twisting Psalm 91 into a dare, urging Christ to weaponize divine promise into spectacle. But Christ—rooted in the Spirit, faithful to the Father—refuses to fracture the Word from its Source. He replies not with raw power, but with obedient clarity: “It is also written…”

This is how evil works: not always by erasing the Word, but by detaching it from love. By citing Scripture with a lie in the heart. By turning a psalm into a slogan, or a covenant into a cudgel.

And that is what Hitler did.
That is what every false Christ-claimer has done.
That is what continues in distorted corners of political and digital culture today.

Fanaticism in Christian Garb
Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer, made a sharp observation: fanatical movements are not born from deep conviction, but from deep emptiness. People, too often, do not give themselves to truth, but to cause—to identity, control, and absolution. They join mass movements not because they believe in the good, but because they long to escape the burden of self.

Hoffer noted that such movements thrive in periods of dislocation—economic, cultural, spiritual. In those moments, the craving for certainty grows desperate. And the most seductive certainty of all is moral superiority: the belief that one's group, party, or faith holds exclusive truth, and all opposition is evil.

Into that hunger, Hitler spoke.
Into that void, fascism surged.
And tragically, some churches—instead of resisting the tide—rode it.

But that was not Christianity.
It was a counterfeit, draped in crosses.

What Is a Christian?
In a time when many invoke Christianity—often as a tribal marker, a cultural banner, or a political claim—it is necessary to ask: What, actually, is a Christian?

The answer is not complicated, but it is profound:

A Christian is one who trusts in the person and work of Jesus Christ, loves God, and loves their neighbor.
A Christian is one who follows Christ not merely with words, but with the shape of their life—bearing the cross, not wielding it.

Lutheran theology has long held the paradox of the Christian life: simul iustus et peccator—at once righteous and a sinner. This doesn’t dilute the call to holiness; it intensifies it. It reminds us that being in Christ is not about declaring our own purity, but about clinging to the mercy of God, living under grace, and being transformed by it.

A true Christian reflects Christ—not just in name, but in form.
This means cruciformity: humility, mercy, truth, and sacrificial love.

The Rabshakeh and the Twisted Word
This distortion of the divine word is not new. We see it chillingly embodied in the Rabshakeh, the Assyrian emissary sent to threaten Jerusalem in Isaiah 36.

He does not mock God outright. Instead, he mimics God’s voice—misquoting, reinterpreting, and casting doubt on the very promises that had sustained Judah. He says, in effect:

“Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you with his talk of trust in the Lord. Haven’t other nations trusted their gods—and fallen? The Lord Himself told me to come and destroy you.”

It’s theological gaslighting.

The Rabshakeh uses Judah’s own language of covenant and trust—but strips it of context, twists it toward despair, and wields it on behalf of the empire. He weaponizes sacred language to crush the very people it was meant to sustain.

It is not unlike what Satan does in the wilderness.
It is not unlike what Hitler did in Germany.
It is not unlike what modern voices do when they cherry-pick Scripture to justify power, exclusion, or domination.

And it stands in stark contrast to the vocation of a true image-bearer of God.

True Image-Bearing
To bear God’s image is to reflect His wisdom into the world—and to return the world’s glory and praise back to God. This is humanity’s priestly role, fulfilled ultimately in Christ and extended through His body, the Church.

When Scripture is used not to illuminate but to dominate, not to convict but to control, it ceases to be light. It becomes shadow. And the people who wield it that way are not bearing the image of God—they are distorting it.

A false Christian is not merely someone who sins. We all do.
A false Christian is someone who invokes Christ’s name but rejects His way.
Who quotes His words but denies His form.
Who wears His title but would never walk to Calvary.

This Cultural Moment: Discernment and Witness
We live in a time when Scripture is frequently cited—but rarely obeyed. Verses are isolated, slogans are elevated, and the name of Christ is invoked for causes that bear no resemblance to His heart.

In this cultural moment, the temptation is not to burn the Bible, but to bend it. To use holy words for unholy aims. To claim Christ without following Him. And so, like the Rabshakeh outside Jerusalem’s gates, like the tempter in the wilderness, like false prophets throughout history—many now shout in the language of faith while acting in the spirit of domination.

But the Church must discern.
The Christian must witness.
Not all who say “Lord, Lord” know Him.

We are not called to be loud. We are called to be faithful.
We are not called to win. We are called to love God and neighbor.
We are not called to rule by fear. We are called to serve by grace.

The Word Rightly Spoken
The devil cites Scripture. So do tyrants. So do those who long to cloak their cruelty in credibility. But the true Word—the Word made flesh—cannot be twisted without cost.

Christ does not merely speak the Word. He is the Word. And to follow Him is to be shaped by that Word—down to our very form.

The Scriptures are not ammunition for argument. They are revelation for transformation. They are not the private property of partisans. They are the voice of a covenant God calling us back to Himself.

And so we bear witness—not as proof-wielders, but as image-bearers. Not as those who seek to win debates, but as those shaped by the cross.

To quote Scripture is easy.
To live it—by the Spirit, in Christ—is the real mark of a Christian.

Let those who have ears, hear.
And let the Word be rightly spoken.

Cobra Kai and a Parable at the Post Office
(with a nod to Frederick Buechner and Jacob at the Jabbok)

Today I mailed a a check by certified mail to the IRS — a long weight lifted with a single signature.

And wouldn’t you know — I was wearing my Cobra Kai t-shirt.
Not planned. Just what I dimly reached for that morning.
Sometimes grace dresses in irony.

At the counter stood the same clerk I’d met before,
again with that measured condescension —
a tone of belittling precision,
a slow erosion masked as routine.

But this time, I didn’t let it settle in my bones.
I named it. Calmly, without fury.
Just truth spoken where silence had lived.

And to my surprise, he apologized.
Not dramatically — just plainly,
as if maybe something shifted, even slightly.

And here's the thing:
The shirt I wore said, Strike First. Strike Hard. No Mercy.
But Christ said, Stand still. Speak clearly. Show mercy anyway.

Frederick Buechner might say this is where to listen hardest:
in the errand, in the ordinary,
in the comic absurdity of Cobra Kai meeting the IRS,
grace brushing up against grievance at the post office window.

But grace — real grace — doesn’t grow in calm soil.
It doesn’t rise in rooms where nothing aches.
Grace and mercy grow only where the blood boils,
in the moment just before the tongue lashes out,
when justice curls its fingers —
and Christ, in us, chooses to open the hand instead, and speak mercy into fire.

And maybe this is Jacob, too —
the one who wrestled God through the night
and would not let go until he was blessed.
He didn’t walk away with clean robes and clarity.
He walked away limping, renamed, changed.
Because grace is not given to the peaceful —
it’s given to the ones who hold on through the ache,
who speak truth in the tension,
who walk forward not with triumph,
but with a mark — a memory — of mercy chosen instead of vengeance.

Because if Christ is anywhere,
He is here too —
between the payment and the tone,
between what we owe and what we forgive.

Benediction:
May you wrestle honestly in the places where the blood still boils.
May you speak truth without malice, and mercy without fear.
May you walk away from the struggle not with answers,
but with a mark —
a limp that reminds you you’ve met God there.

And when the moment comes again —
in a line, in a tone, in the quiet injustice of an ordinary day —
may Christ steady your hand,
still your tongue,
and open your heart just wide enough to choose grace once more.

Go in peace —
not peace that denies the wrestle,
but peace that rises through it.

Amen.

Introduction
The Kingdom of God, Jesus said, is like a mustard seed—small, overlooked, tucked into soil. But what grows from it is nothing less than a rooted and reaching life, sheltering others, spreading through unseen channels. It doesn't arrive with spectacle or domination. It travels instead in the hidden pockets of the faithful—through ordinary lives shaped by an extraordinary love.

This Kingdom is a society, but not of status or power. It is made of those who love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength—and who, in response to that love, love their neighbors as themselves. Not as a performance, but as a way of being re-formed by the one who came not to be served, but to serve. That’s how the Kingdom moves: not by force, but by presence; not by conquest, but by communion.

If it came today, it might not land in a capital or on a stage. It might begin in a place like Kermit.

Poem: The Kingdom in Kermit
Kermit,
Not the frog,
just a nowhere town in Texas.

If Jesus were born today—
Incarnate God—
yeah, in Kermit.

A mustard seed,
tucked in a pocket,
place-rooted, person-shaped.

Let it grow,
let it leap,
from pocket to pocket.

Postscript
I remember, many years ago, driving in Texas and passing a road sign for a town called Kermit. There was little to see from the nondescript intersection—just a name, a population number, and the wide flat fields stretching to the edge of sky. In my imagination, shaped by the bigness of Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Kermit felt like a glitch in the map.

But now, decades later, I find it again—alive in imagination, speaking into Christic poetry. What seemed inconsequential has become a signpost. That’s how the Kingdom moves: quietly, persistently, sometimes buried for years, until the time is ripe. And then suddenly, what felt like mundane memory flares with meaning. A seed you forgot you carried begins to grow.

Even now, the Kingdom stirs—not only in what is visible, but in what waits.
From pocket to pocket.

Karl Marx famously called religion the opiate of the people, a phrase that has echoed through generations as a rallying cry against what he saw as the narcotic effects of spiritual belief. But what Marx critiqued was not Christianity as it truly is—it was a shadow of it, a distortion. What he condemned was not the Gospel proclaimed by Christ, but a Platonized or Gnostic caricature: a belief system that sees the world as disposable, the body as irrelevant, and salvation as escape into a disembodied beyond.

That is not the Christian faith.

The Gospel, as preached by Christ Himself—fully divine, fully human, and rooted in the story of ancient Israel and Judah—is not a doctrine of retreat, but of covenantal fulfillment. It is the culminating moment in the long covenantal narrative of God's people, a story transfigured rather than discarded. In Christ, the promises made to Abraham, the cries of the prophets, and the longings of exile converge and take on flesh. Christianity, in this light, is not a brand-new religion but the revelation of what the story of Israel always pointed toward: the resurrection of the dead, the renewal of creation, and the reign of God on earth as in heaven.

This eschatology—the Christian hope—is not about drifting off into the clouds. As Paul proclaims in Romans, especially in chapters 5 through 8, the resurrection is bodily, the future is embodied, and the Spirit is at work even now renewing creation from within. N.T. Wright refers to this as a collaborative eschatology: God’s ultimate victory has been secured in Christ, but we are drawn into the story, empowered by the Spirit to anticipate that final renewal in our lives and vocations. This is not works-righteousness, as is sometimes mistakenly alleged. Rather, it is the gift of freedom: to serve, to create, to heal, to build—in short, to love with purpose.

Scot McKnight has similarly emphasized that the Gospel is not a mere transaction but a story: the story of Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s hope and the Lord of the world. And this Lord does not call us to passivity. He calls us to live into our vocations—not to earn salvation, but to participate in the work of God, to reflect His image, and to bear witness to a coming kingdom that has already broken in.

And here lies a modern irony: many who today espouse a quasi- or fully Marxist worldview—often quite openly—end up reinforcing the very caricature Marx himself perpetuated. Whether knowingly or unconsciously, they describe Christianity not as it actually is, but through the distorted lens of Marxist critique. In doing so, they construct a convenient straw-man: a Christianity of passive piety, private comfort, and escapist fantasy.

But this straw-man is not drawn from Scripture. It is a reflection of Marxism’s own project—one that must distort in order to replace. It critiques a Christianity of its own making and declares victory over a phantom.

Yet Christians themselves have not been immune to promoting this distortion. The widespread belief in a rapture—a sudden evacuation of the faithful from the earth—represents a theological error both in metaphor and in literal reading. Though rooted in isolated interpretations of 1 Thessalonians, the concept collapses when viewed in light of the full scriptural witness. Through intertextual reading—from the Hebrew prophets to the Gospels, from Paul’s letters to the apocalyptic vision of Revelation—the picture is not of escape from the world, but of God’s faithful return to it.

The Christian hope is resurrection, not removal. Restoration, not rapture.

Marx, though intelligent and historically aware, misunderstood not only Christianity but arguably his own religious inheritance. Raised within a Jewish cultural framework, he nonetheless missed the central drama of that story: that the arc of Israel’s history finds its meaning not in negation or revolution, but in Christ. This is not a sweeping claim about Judaism or those who faithfully live within its tradition—entirely to the contrary. It is a specific critique of Marx himself, whose reductive analysis—so common to postmodernist thinking—flattened religion into mere sociopolitical utility. In doing so, he overlooked the richness of his own heritage and failed to see how the Gospel fulfills, rather than erases, the story of ancient Israel and Judah. The Gospel is not an opiate; it is an awakening—not to fantasy, but to the world as it truly is and will be. As C.S. Lewis rightly asserted: the lion will not be tamed.

But ask most people today—even many Christians—what happens when they die, and the answer often drifts into vague spirituality. However, the earliest Christian confession is far more tangible: He is risen—and so too shall we be. In that light, we do not wait passively.

We rise each day to participate—vocationally, communally, and doxologically—in the renewal God has begun.

In an age crowded with distortions—some ancient, some modern, some disguised as intelligence or activism—the Gospel calls us to remain rooted, not in abstraction or escapism, but in the living, resurrected Christ. He is not merely a symbol or an idea, nor a projection of our needs, nor a myth to be deconstructed. He is the fullness of God dwelling bodily, and the fulfillment of the story. To lose sight of that is to lose the thread—not just of theology, but of truth itself.

"See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." — Colossians 2:8–9, ESV

Introduction
In the long arc of modern thought, few figures have held such lasting sway as the one who claimed that meaning hides in repression, that freedom lies in analysis, and that the soul—if it exists at all—must be measured in drives and dreams.

He taught us to mistrust what is sacred, to decode love as pathology, and to speak endlessly of the self without ever learning how to live. And though he claimed to liberate, he more often bound—leaving a trail not of healing, but of sanctioned despair.

He and those who followed him cast long shadows.
They promised new frameworks, new emancipations, new truths that would liberate us from illusion.
But often, these new truths proved to be cages—elegant, articulate, self-contained, but closed, and cleverly accusatory.

And we? We’ve reaped what was sown:

• not freedom, but fragmentation,

• not peace, but endless commentary,

• not healing, but hollow self-reference.

We have inherited systems that explain everything but resolve nothing.
They stare into the absurd and declare it final.
They disassemble the sacred and wonder why we cannot feel joy.

But there is another way.
Not a system. Not an abstraction. Not an ideology dressed in pastoral tones.
But a person. A presence. A pierced hand extended in mercy.

The Christic path does not deny suffering, absurdity, or the complexity of the human heart.
It simply insists they are not the final word.

It offers no disembodied theory of meaning, but meaning itself, embodied.
It does not explain away the ache; it meets us in it.
It does not chart escape from the world, but instead speaks, walks, abides—here, in the world.

This poem is written from that intersection—between the ruins of psychological prophecy and the slow, radiant dawning of grace.
It names the voices that promised healing and gave us hell.
And it points, however quietly, to the one who still calls us home.

Poem: Freud and Other False Prophets
Freud, icon
Of everywhere dime-store
Psychologo-bully,
And the post-modern nowhere
That is always somewhere—here.

And reaping what
He sowed—the key:
To disbelief,
To self-hate.
Or even self-love.

The hell of all things—
An all-ishness, all for none.
And yet another self-fulfilled prophecy.
(Aren’t they all?) And the Accuser?

Not to freedom.
Not to cure—
No—not really.
Not for most.
And the sacred?

Yes, yes—
In the all-in,
Relational,
Like the bud to branch.

Free.
Light.
And just—right here.

Selah.

Nietzsche’s Power and Error
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote with a flame-tipped pen. He did not merely argue—he declared. He summoned. And in doing so, he ignited the imagination of many who felt, and still feel, disillusioned by the church, by cultural hypocrisy, by the hollowed-out rituals of a world once sacred.

In my twenties, I devoured his work. I read nearly all of it—not as an opponent, but as a captivated reader. His voice rang out with clarity and conviction. His style was electric. And much of what he observed about the sickness of institutions, the dead forms of faith, and the creeping mediocrity of modern life struck me as devastatingly true.

But even then, I sensed something else at work.

Nietzsche, in his most furious passages—especially in The Anti-Christ—is not critiquing Christ, as many—maybe even himself—imagined. He is critiquing the collapse of witness, the decay of institutional Christianity, and the weaponization of religion. These critiques are not without merit. They still echo today.

But what Nietzsche does next is where the rot sets in:

He takes aim at the distortion, and declares the original corrupt.
He mistakes the abuses of men for the way of Christ.
He holds up a mirror and calls it a gospel.

Paul Misread, the Gospel Misnamed
Central to Nietzsche’s argument is his disdain for Paul. In The Anti-Christ, he paints Paul not as the apostle of grace, but as the architect of a new form of control—a man who twisted the message of Jesus into a theology of guilt and obedience. Nietzsche pits the supposed purity of Jesus’ life against what he calls Paul’s invention: Christianity.

This is not just misreading. It is a fundamental failure to see the arc—the covenantal, prophetic, Jewish arc of Scripture that Paul is completing, not corrupting. N.T. Wright and other theologians have made this case clearly.

Paul does not preach weakness. He preaches strength in Christ—the kind that does not puff itself up but pours itself out. Romans is not a manifesto of submission, but a declaration of God's righteousness made manifest for the world, not against it. The Gospel is not an ethic of domination nor a system of shame—it is a summons to become fully human in Christ, through love, faith, and the Spirit, as God intended, as his image-bearers.

Nietzsche sees only chains, where Paul actually offers a vocation of freedom.

The False Charge of Resentment
Perhaps Nietzsche’s most famous (and most quoted) critique is his claim that Christianity is born out of ressentiment—a spiritualized envy of the strong by the weak. In this reading, love is disguise, humility is cowardice, and forgiveness is a covert weapon of the oppressed. Nietzsche saw this not just as unfortunate, but as decadent. Rotting. A rebellion against life itself.

This is, again, powerful. And again, it is wrong. Genius is not immune from distortion.

To claim that Christianity is rooted in resentment is to have never truly heard the Psalms. It is to misread the prophets. It is to miss the broken hallelujah of Job, the radiant joy of Mary’s Magnificat, the covenantal passion of Jesus at table, in the garden, on the cross.

Christianity is not the elevation of weakness. It is the transfiguration of it. Not resentment, but reconciliation. Not passive pity, but active love.

Nietzsche’s rejection of “pity” as corrosive betrays a tragic misapprehension. Christianity does not teach pity—it teaches compassion, which is not superiority but kinship. Love of God and love of neighbor is not rooted in condescension—it is self-giving, mutual, joyful, and unearned.

It is not the weak masking their failure. It is the living God choosing the cross to reveal His glory.

The Mirror and the Christ Who Steps Through
What, then, is Nietzsche doing?

He is not building a philosophy. He is not systematizing a worldview. He is doing something far more ancient and far more personal:

He is crying out.

His writing, especially in The Anti-Christ, sounds like the Psalms—but inverted. It is psalmody without trust, lament without direction, fire without altar.

He does not destroy Scripture—he parses it without love, and so misreads it. As with Marx and Freud, the text is not erased—it is distorted.

And perhaps the most tragic irony is this:
The very ground from which Nietzsche wrote—intellectually, morally, culturally—was made fertile by Christ Himself.

The Western emphasis on human dignity, on interiority, on vocation, on the conscience of the individual—all of it grows from the deep roots of the Gospel. Nietzsche exercised a profound kind of vocational freedom: to critique, to create, to serve culture—as he thought—through piercing thought. But this very freedom was bought and cultivated by the Christian imagination—a moral and theological legacy that preached the dignity of all, the servant-heartedness of power, and the binding of truth to love.

But his despair was not born of Christ, but of distortion. And, as I believe, Nietzsche’s distortion was not born of deliberate malice, but—almost certainly—of an honest misunderstanding of Scripture, of Paul, of Christ Himself. That honesty and absence of malice is not necessarily true of many post-modernists.

Still, Nietzsche mistook the failures of those who bore the name of Jesus for the person of Jesus.
He confused the apostles’ bold witness and hard-won development of doctrine with a mere institutional power play.

As with Marx and Freud, Nietzsche’s critique does not touch the real Christ. It touches the wreckage of human sin dressed in religious language—and in that confusion, he exiles himself from the only love that could answer him.

In the end, Nietzsche’s project is not the death of God. It is the projection of a Godless wound. His “God is dead” is not triumph—it is mourning. And perhaps, at some level, he knew it. This is why I still admire Nietzsche.

Where he went astray: he saw the Church’s failures, but instead of returning to Christ, he held up a fun-house mirror and called it Christianity. Then he shattered the mirror—and imagined himself free.

But Christ cannot be contained in the mirror of human rage.
He does not flinch at Nietzsche’s critiques.
He does not argue.
He simply steps through the glass, bearing wounds not of weakness, but of voluntary love.

Conclusion: Beyond Pity, Toward Glory
Nietzsche is right to hate falseness, pettiness, and decay.
He is right to long for strength that is real, for life that is unafraid, for meaning that transcends.
But he never saw that the Gospel is not the denial of those things—it is their homecoming.

He saw decadence where there was actually death and resurrection.
He mistook pity for love.
He mistook resentment for the seedbed of grace.
He mistook the Accuser’s distortions for the voice of Christ.

But the true Gospel?
It is not a morality tale for the weak.
It is a Song of Songs for the broken,
a Psalm for the God-haunted,
a light for those who groan not because they are cowards—
but because they have heard a call from beyond the grave.

Nietzsche’s cry still echoes.
But it is not the final voice.

The final voice is Christ’s:
not the cry of pity, but the call of love.

Selah.

Coda: The Silence and the Sacred
In the final estimate, Nietzsche—regardless of neurological deterioration or tertiary syphilis—did not merely die a broken man.
He became a broken man.
Spiritually. Existentially. Humanly.

His final years were not defiant, but collapsed.
The one who warned us against pity became wholly dependent.
The one who called God dead fell into a silence so total, it echoes louder than his aphorisms.

And yet, the final irony is this:

In his brokenness, Nietzsche once again depended on the sacred.

He became, in a profound way, what he could never quite see—
sacred: set apart, dependent, wounded, in need of healing, tethered by grace whether he believed in it or not.

We do not know how the final moment passed.
We only know that Christ does not despise the broken—even the brilliant, bitter, blazing ones.
He steps through the shattered glass,
into the hospital room,
into the silence,
into the exile—
and He calls the prodigal by name.

The Nietzsche who could not see Christ,
was still seen by Christ.

And that is the end of all philosophy,
and the beginning of all healing.

Benediction
God is not dead.
And neither is Nietzsche.
He is loved—still.
He will rise—still.
And when he stands again, it will not be before the thunder of the God he misunderstood—
but before the eyes of mercy,
the One he never stopped searching for.

This is the Gospel.
Not resentment.
But resurrection.

This piece began as a lighthearted reflection on the loss of a backyard chicken, and—like most things in life—spiraled quickly into a meditation on absurdity, scripture, and the unexpected dignity of daily vocation. It is part Beckett, part Luther, part Birkenstock. All of it, I believe, is true.

The Problem with Existentialism: A Parable in Three Acts

CAST
YOU – weary poultry steward, philosopher of the mundane
DOG ONE – the barking bard, speaks in simple declarations
DOG TWO – the silent mystic, communicates via bodily signs
CHICKENS (Moe & Tiny) – jittery survivors, non-verbal but ever-present
THE VOICE – offstage presence
EVERYMAN, SECONDMAN, THIRD – individuals waiting in Act III
POWERWASHER – silent, working presence

ACT I: The Coop at Twilight
(The Absurdist Premise)

Scene: Late afternoon. A scruffy backyard. A coop tilts slightly off-plumb. Two chickens pace at a distance. YOU stands center, brow furrowed, arms crossed. DOG ONE lies at feet, alert. DOG TWO nearby, still as a monk.

YOU (to no one, and everyone)
Once I had fifteen.
Now I have two.
And Beauty Queen, she’s gone—
no feathers, no fight.
Just... vanished.
I suppose she died how she lived:
Too delicate for the world.
Probably dropped dead at the sight of teeth,
and was quietly ferried away
by a fox surprised by his own luck.

(Pause.)
Moe and Tiny endure.
Skittish, unsociable, paranoid—
but alive.
Maybe that’s the secret:
Don’t trust. Don’t engage.
Just flinch and flee and make it
to the final frame.

(Looks toward coop.)
I’m saddened...
But not overly saddened.
I think—
I’m quite ready to be done with tending chickens.

DOG ONE (with noble timing)
Ruff. Ruff.

(Beat. Deep silence. Time holds its breath.)

DOG TWO
(without prelude, without emotion, VOMITS beside the coop)

(Long pause. YOU looks down. Then out.)

YOU
...And so it is written.

DOG ONE (quietly, with reverence)
Ruff.

(The chickens cluck nervously offstage. A breeze moves a single feather across the ground. Sunset begins. Lights slowly dim.)

BLACKOUT.

ACT II: The Soft Fall of Destiny
(The Height of the Absurd)

Scene: The same backyard, now dusk. Moe and Tiny perch in silhouette. The coop stands solemn, silent. The dogs are asleep. YOU steps back outside, holding a broom, perhaps to tidy… or perhaps out of muscle memory.

YOU (to himself, softly)
Well, this is it, isn’t it?
The chickens are winding down.
The fox has eaten his fill.
And I—
I am strangely at peace.

(He tilts his head upward. The sky blushes orange. A sense of grace descends.)

YOU (almost smiling)
I wonder—
when all the tending is done,
when the feathers have flown,
what waits for the keeper of birds?

(A beat. A shift in the wind. A SMALL SHAPE ARCS DOWNWARD FROM ABOVE—graceful, deliberate, croc-like in motion but unmistakably…)

SOUND EFFECT: THUD.
A single, well-worn Birkenstock sandal strikes YOU squarely on the head. He freezes. Eyes widen. Knees buckle.

YOU (collapsing slowly, softly)
…It was the left one.

(He falls. Silence.)

DOG ONE (sits upright. Whisper bark.)
...Ruff?

DOG TWO (sniffs the sandal. Sighs.)

MOE and TINY (in unison, at last)
Bok.

BLACKOUT.

EPILOGUE: The Scriptural Turn
(The Revelation Beyond the Absurd)

Scene: The stage is dark, save for a small light over an open Bible. The dogs sleep beside the body. The chickens perch, still. From offstage, a voice is heard—not booming, but gentle. Timeless.

THE VOICE (offstage, calm)

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

“Consider the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

“Even the very hairs on your head are all numbered.”

DOG TWO (lifts head slightly)
...Ruff?

THE VOICE
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

YOU (slowly sits up, dazed, sandal still resting on his head)
I thought this was all nonsense.
I thought the absurd was final.
But maybe...
maybe even the absurd has an Author.

FADE TO LIGHT.

ACT III: The Bus Stop
(The Quiet Call of the Ordinary, to a Quiet Redemption Through Vocation)

Scene: Around the corner from the coop. A modest bus stop. A wooden bench. Faded paint. Late morning sun.

Three individuals sit waiting. No names are given. Perhaps they are EVERYMAN, SECONDMAN, and THIRD. Perhaps just people like you and me. They are dressed plainly. Each holds something vocational—gloves, a clipboard, a stethoscope, a spade. Their callings are unknown but present.

Near the shelter, a man is powerwashing a storefront window. He wears headphones. He works with care.

EVERYMAN (shielding eyes, watching the water arc)
He’s been at it all morning. That same set of windows. Back and forth.
It gleams now.

SECONDMAN
I think he’s doing more than washing glass.
I think he’s polishing a little corner of the world.

THIRD (leaning forward)
Do you think he’ll invite us?
Say, “Come—help me with the frame,” or “Hold the hose”?
Something?

EVERYMAN(shrugs)
He may not.
Or maybe he already has.
By doing it this well, this quietly.

SECONDMAN
I heard the bus is late.
Someone said it might not come today.

THIRD
Maybe it won’t come at all.
Maybe we’re not meant to ride.
Maybe we’re meant to start walking.

(Silence. The sound of the powerwasher. The rhythmic hiss. A hymn of water and work.)

EVERYMAN (softly)
Luther said we’re called to our neighbor.
That our work is God's mask.
That washing a window can be holy.

SECONDMAN (nodding)
And waiting can be faithful—if it’s waiting to serve.

THIRD (sits up straighter, squints at the man)
He just looked over.

EVERYMAN
Did he nod?

THIRD
I don’t know.
But I’m going to stand anyway.

(He stands. The others hesitate. The powerwasher turns off the machine. He unwinds a coil of hose. He does not speak—but he gestures, open-handed, toward the glass.)

SECONDMAN(rising)
Is that an invitation?

EVERYMAN (rising last)
Or a test?

(All three step forward, toward the window. Toward the work. The bus stop remains behind them—empty now, but not forgotten.)

FADE TO LIGHT.

CODA
We waited for the bus.
But the call came from the man with the hose.
In the world of Godot, we wait in futility.
In the world of God, we wait with purpose—
and sometimes, we rise.

Because vocation does not always come with a trumpet.
Sometimes, it comes with the sound of running water
and a quiet gesture
toward a window that needs cleaning.

EASTER EPILOGUE: Beauty Queen Returns
(The Previously Unwritten Scene That Happened Anyway and Transfigures the Rest)

Scene: Early morning. A window above the driveway. A child’s face pressed against the glass. The coop, out of sight. The burial has already taken place—in the mind, in the story, in the solemnity of the script.

And yet—

CHILD’S VOICE(from offstage, astonished)
She’s here!
Daddy—she’s back!
It’s Beauty Queen!

(Lights rise on the driveway. Beauty Queen mills quietly, preening one wing. No sound but the soft breeze and the rhythm of a child’s footsteps rushing down stairs.)

THE VOICE (offstage)
We had already mourned her.
Already written the scene.
Assigned her a cause of death—
dignified, poetic, absurd.
We said she had fainted.
We said the fox had come.
We said she was too delicate for the world.
And then—
She reappeared.

YOU (stepping into the scene, quietly)
There is no way out of the run.
Not really.
Except for one impossible gap—
One unseen door in the roof of things.
But even that...
Even that doesn’t explain it.

(YOU kneels beside her. Beauty Queen looks up—no drama, no resurrection glow. Just the same feathers, the same eyes. And yet—everything has changed.)

YOU(softly)
You’re not supposed to be here.
But you are.
And I don’t need to understand why.

THE VOICE (offstage)
We don’t write the ending.
We don’t always see the escape hatch.
But sometimes, grace slips through anyway—
Not in thunder,
but in feathers.
She was seen
by the eyes of a child—
watching when no one else was.

She did not return with answers.
She did not proclaim the absurd defeated.
She simply returned.

CHILD(gently, lifting Beauty Queen)
Come home.

(Light swells. The coop reappears in the background. Moe and Tiny look on. Not startled. Not afraid. Just—ready.)

FADE TO WHITE.

FINAL PROGRAM NOTE:

Existentialism tells us that absurdity reigns, that death is final, and that meaning must be carved by the will alone.

But Scripture tells us something stranger: that the world is not closed. That the dead are not always dead. That the child—from a hidden grace—may see what the adult has written off. And that grace does not wait for permission. That grace humbles the absurd.

“…unless you turn and become like children…” — Matthew 18:3 (ESV)

We do not explain resurrection.
We witness it.
And sometimes, it returns with feathers in a driveway.
He is risen.
And so, apparently, is Beauty Queen.

Let the world have its Godot.
We have Beauty Queen.
We have the Gospel.
We have Christ.

A Reflection on Indirectness, Limitation, and Christlike Clarity

There is a kind of relational ache that doesn’t arrive through open conflict, but through persistent indirection.

It is the silence after a reasonable question. The detour after a genuine offer. The moment when truth is not spoken plainly but rerouted through sideways logic, thin justifications, or—perhaps hardest of all—through someone else entirely.

These patterns are more common than we often name. They emerge especially in people who learned early in life that directness could be risky. For some, it was through growing up too fast, shouldering burdens too soon. For others, it was the formation of clever emotional maneuvers that "worked"—that allowed them to manage relationships without vulnerability. But what once passed for quasi-maturity calcified into avoidance. Over time, a person’s ability to speak openly was replaced by a kind of brittle cleverness, a theater of implications and deferrals.

And for those on the receiving end—especially those who have grown into a clearer emotional language—it can feel like being ghosted in slow motion. Not with malice, but with a slow corrosion of mutual trust. The one who sidesteps may believe they’re preserving peace. But what they’re preserving, more often, is power—or at least the illusion of control.

Yet even in this ache, there is an invitation.

Christ calls His followers not only to receive grace but to extend it. And one of the most powerful ways to extend grace is not by excusing another’s evasiveness, but by refusing to replicate it. Grace can take the form of clarity. A clarity that names what is real without bitterness. That opens space for honesty, even if the other cannot—or will not—step into it.

In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly encounters indirectness—both passive avoidance and subtle manipulation. Whether it's Pilate’s evasive questions or the Pharisees’ disingenuous traps, Jesus responds not with flattery or fury, but with piercing clarity wrapped in invitation. "Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil" (Matthew 5:37, ESV).

His words don’t collapse the person—they reveal them, and in doing so, offer them back to themselves.

We are called to something similar: to bless others' limitations—not by justifying them, but by graciously unveiling them. Not with condescension,but with Christ-shaped courage.

This kind of grace doesn't always yield recognition. Often, it’s met with silence. Sometimes it’s misunderstood. But that’s not failure. It’s faithfulness.

To speak gently and truly, to offer space without coercion, to leave room for growth without demanding it—that is the work of someone who has been formed not by fear, but by love. It is the fruit of abiding in the One who said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32, ESV).

And in this freedom, we discover that even when others cannot meet us directly, we are not diminished. We can bless what is—without bowing to it. We can love what is broken—without becoming it.

For grace, after all, is the most faithful delivery system for truth.

A Reflection on Hardship, Vocation, and the Dawning Kingdom

In our attempts to make sense of the world’s sorrow, we often confuse suffering with evil. But while they are certainly intertwined in the tapestry of the fall, they are not always the same thread.

Evil is rebellion. It is the willful distortion of the good, the defacing of God’s creation. Suffering, on the other hand, is not always chosen or inflicted. It often simply is. A shadow cast by the brokenness of a world out of joint. And yet, in the mystery of God's providence, it is precisely there, in that shadowed soil, that something deeply redemptive begins to grow.

God, in Scripture, does not often eliminate hardship. Instead, He works through means and through the mysterious symmetry and better dialectic afforded by the Word. He works through people. Through stories. Through history. Through hardship itself. The ancient Israelites, chosen not for their strength but for God’s promise, were not spared suffering. In fact, it was through the furnace of Egypt, the wilderness of Sinai, and the exile of Babylon that their identity as a covenant people was forged—and through which the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, was ultimately born.

This is not to say God authors suffering. Lutheran theology is clear: God is not the author of sin, nor does He take delight in suffering. But He does not waste it. As the reformers often reminded us, God hides His work under its opposite. Sub contrario—under the cross, not the crown; in weakness, not strength; in apparent defeat, not triumph. Christ is crucified, not enthroned. And yet through that crucifixion comes the very life of the world.

The parables of Jesus reflect this deep truth. They do not flinch from the presence of suffering. The prodigal son starves in a foreign land. The good Samaritan finds a man beaten on the side of the road. Workers sweat in fields, debtors plead for mercy, brides wait in the dark of night. These are not sanitized stories. They are drenched in the dust of real human life. And yet, in every case, the Kingdom of God is breaking in—not despite the suffering, but often through it.

In this, we begin to see the deeper purpose of hardship—not as punitive, but as vocational.

We are called not only to endure, but to participate, in this way: Christ has inaugurated the new creation, but He invites us into the already-and-not-yet of that unfolding work. We are not passive observers. We are image-bearers, re-formed in Christ, called to serve our neighbor in love—even, and often especially, through our wounds. As Paul writes, we are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:10, ESV).

As is so often misconstrued, this is not a justification of hardship or suffering. It is a sanctification of it—a vocational invitation into the redemptive work of Christ. For though God does not need us to bring about the new creation, He loves us—and in that love, He calls us to participate. Our suffering does not earn us a place in the kingdom, but it becomes, in Christ, a vessel of service and love. As we pass through the seasons of hardship in this already-and-not-yet world, we are not left empty-handed. We are given faith to trust, hope to endure, and love to act. And as Paul reminds us: “So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13, ESV). Faith will one day give way to sight, hope to fulfillment—but love will remain. Because love is not only the commandment of the present—it is the language of the age to come. To love God as He has first loved us, and to love our neighbor in Christ, is not just the path through hardship. It is the very shape of the kingdom we await.

And so we do not glory in suffering. But neither do we dismiss it as meaningless. Instead, we see in it the strange and tender work of a God who does not stand apart from our pain, but who enters it—who works through it—and who promises that one day, it will be fully redeemed.

This is the mystery of the cross: that what appears to be the absence of God is, in fact, the deepest revelation of His love. And that through such weakness, new creation dawns. Christ in his own ministry often gave sight—not just to correct vision but to restore the truly human, even as He reordered how we all see. Indeed, in and through Christ, all paradoxes resolve by transfiguration. For you.

We live in a world where food so often dominates us — by craving, by marketing, by shame, by trend. But food was never meant to rule. From the beginning, it was given as gift — seed-bearing plants, fruit from trees, daily bread in the wilderness, fish roasting by morning fire.

Food is not a master. It is a servant.

And like all good servants in the kingdom of God, food serves best when it points beyond itself — when it nourishes the body without stealing the soul, when it strengthens the bones without dulling the heart. There is wisdom in asking not, “Is this clean?” or “Is this allowed?” but rather:
“Does this serve?”

Does it serve vitality, strength, clarity of mind, gentleness of gut?
Does it serve long days of movement and stillness alike?
Does it serve the freedom to forget your body — because it is working well?
Does it serve your neighbor — or is it built on harm?

This is not a legalistic question. It is a liberating one. To take in what serves, and to leave what doesn’t, is not to diet — it is to discern. And discernment is the quiet art of the Spirit-filled life.

Jesus knew hunger. He fasted. He feasted. He broke bread. He multiplied it. He was accused of eating too freely, and He was known for whom He ate with. But nowhere do we find Him ruled by food. And when He gave us His body and blood, it was in the form of a meal — humble bread, shared cup — a food that serves eternally.

To eat with attention, to drink without domination, is to receive with gratitude. It is to live Eucharistically — taking, blessing, breaking, and giving, even in the smallest breakfast.

And if you, at age 52 or 72 or 92, find your joints strong and your step still light — perhaps it is not just what you’ve avoided, but what you have welcomed: food that serves.

Let it be said, then:
We eat not for image, but for service.
We eat not for control, but for strength.
We eat to move, to laugh, to tend, to love.

Let our food be humble and whole.
Let it be simple, but sustaining.
Let it prepare us not for indulgence, but for offering.

And above all, let it serve.

"Enough" Is a Holy Word
A RubinRed Reflection

Not everything.
Not more.
Just enough.

“Enough” is the hush after a psalm,
the warmth of one glass in one hand,
the rustle of carpenter ants in sacred procession.

It is not the banquet.
It is the table set quietly,
for two—maybe three—
maybe a winged guest
who lands without invitation
and is swallowed without offense.

“Enough” is how Christ comes.
Not as spectacle,
but as presence.
Not as empire,
but as Emmanuel.

Manna did not overflow.
It arrived with the dawn
and melted with the sun.
But it was enough.

The widow’s flour did not multiply in heaps.
It simply did not run out.

The wine at Cana was more than expected,
but still it came
when the cup was empty,
when Mary let go.

And so tonight—
with a RubinRed in hand,
Schubert playing like grace,
and ants weaving their unseen liturgy
at the edge of my vision—

I say:
This is enough.
Because “enough” means
Presence.
He is here.

The Savior who drinks the cup I could not.
The Son who bore the name Reuben never fulfilled.
The Carpenter greater than Jacob
watching over even these little builders
as they dance in dust and mystery.

A drink not made for many,
but for the one who shows up.
A bug, a tune, a prayer needlessly corrected.
A moment not manufactured—
received.

So no, I do not need everything.
Not a jubilation,
Not a totalizing.
Not now.
Not in the new creation.
Not even then.

Because “enough” is a holy word.
And He is enough.
He is present.

And present,
He is not diminished—
It is to serve,
It is to receive.

Love comes closest
In “enough”.

And I am here.
And so are you.
And the glass is not empty.

Not yet.

Jesus Christ is enough.
His yoke is light.

A reflection on how spiritual intake can become delay, how study can interrupt love, and how Christ still calls us to walk with Him, not just learn about Him.

At some point in the journey, more input isn’t growth—it’s delay.
More books, more voices, more theological arguments, more five-step strategies for spiritual maturity.
There’s a season for seeking, for learning, for deep digging.
But then there comes a moment when it’s time to walk it out.

Not in haste. Not in pride.
But in faith.

In trust that what’s been planted—through Scripture, through the Spirit, through suffering, through prayer, and through hard-won clarity—is already enough to begin living out the gospel.

Because if we’re honest, perpetual intake eventually becomes spiritual procrastination.

A refusal to trust that the living God is already at work—in us, through us, and before us.
Even the best theology can become noise when it crowds out the still small, but true, voice.

We tell ourselves we’re preparing. But often we’re postponing.
Waiting for one more confirmation, one more book, one more voice—when the One we follow has already spoken, and continuously speaks.

We are limited repositories, and that’s no accident. God made each of us finite. We’re not designed to endlessly fill ourselves with commodity-Christianity, as if spiritual maturity were a race to consume more than we can ever hold.

We are not cisterns. We are sieves.
And the point of a sieve isn’t to hoard—but to pour through.
We’re meant to be poured out, shaped by the Word, formed by grace, guided by love.

But let’s speak plainly: much of the modern theological landscape is structured like a quiet competition.
A kind of spiritual arms race built on who’s read the most, who can name the most authors and thinkers, who traces the most nuanced frameworks.
Beneath it lies a subtle hierarchy, often unspoken but deeply felt.

And in that climb toward credibility, the actual Christ—the risen One—is often rendered functionally dead.

Commodified, footnoted, absorbed into systems and structures that draw our gaze past Him, rather than to Him.

This is not formation. It is inversion.
And it dulls the heart, even as it claims to enlighten the mind.

And let’s be clear: the author-driven books we buy, on our bookshelves, and on our night stands, are commodity-Christianity. All of them.

They become part of the fallen network of idols.

Here’s a simple but serious litmus test:
If, while reading books in this genre—books on discipleship, formation, theology, Christlikeness—you find yourself thinking, let alone telling, a friend, a family member, or someone in need:
“I can’t talk right now.”
Or, “I can’t help right now—I’m in the middle of reading this,”
then it’s time to stop. Immediately.

Because what may feel like formation has become something else.

The very books meant to point us toward Christ have become an interruption—an obstacle—between us and the ones we’re called to love.

And the irony cuts deep: we resist being interrupted by others while reading about how to love them better.

But in truth, these books, themselves, are often the interruption—the delay, the detour, the buffer between us and Christ, between us and neighbor.

The Word made flesh is not disturbed by the knock at the door.
He is already on His way to answer it.

The pith of Christ
is already present,
ever surfaced,
ever revealed.

And walking it out is NOT walking alone.
We walk with Christ, and in Him, we walk with Scripture. With the essential tools we've come to trust—not just the Bible, but a good study Bible. Whether it’s the ESV Study Bible, the NIV Study Bible, the Lutheran Study Bible—what matters is that they help anchor us in truth, not distraction.

And along the way, we bring with us those few trusted voices from the crowded room—those rare authors, friends, or teachers who don’t clamor for attention but companion us well.

They don’t replace the Word; they help us hear it more clearly.
They don’t crowd the Spirit; they make space for His breath to move.

You don’t need to walk it a cappella.
But you also don’t need a choir of noise.

What you need is already near: the Word, the Spirit, and the sacred work of loving God and neighbor.

This is what “walking it out” means.
Not merely knowing Christ—but following Him.
Not merely studying grace—but extending it.
Not merely observing the road—but walking it—step by faithful step.

So gather your tools.
Hold fast to what is true.
And listen for the Three-in-One voice that matters most—
God, in and through Christ, given to us in the Spirit.

And walk.

It happened in the mouth.
A green grape, cold and taut with tartness.
An apricot, soft and sun-warmed, its flavor more rounded—fuzzy, even, in both texture and tone.

I bit them in the same moment, expecting some blend.
But they would not blend.

Even after chewing, the two flavors held.
Not in opposition. Not in conflict.
But each in its own flavor pocket, distinct—refusing absorption.

Side by side, but never confused.
Together, but not entangled.
A harmony of nearness without fusion.

And it made me think—this is no failed pairing.
This is a parable.

Because there are things in this world that are meant to coexist without merging.
Meant to be together but not diluted.

Like marriage—where two become one flesh, but never one flavor.
Where true love doesn’t erase difference, but makes room for it.

Like Christian unity—not as sameness, not a dulling of voices,
but a body with distinct parts, each offering its own fruit.
The eye is not the hand. The grape is not the apricot.
And yet, they belong together in one mouth, one meal, one purpose.

Like Scripture itself—where paradoxes share space.
Where command and promise, law and gospel, justice and mercy—
each retain their edge, and yet point to the same God.
They don’t merge.
They resonate.

And most profoundly—like the Trinity.
Father. Son. Spirit.
Not three flavors blended into bland abstraction,
but three Persons—each wholly God, wholly distinct, wholly one.

This is the eternal harmony of oneness without flattening.
This is the divine mystery tasted in a bowl of fruit.

So maybe next time you reach for the green grapes and apricots,
you’ll notice it too:

A small theology in the mouth.
A reminder that difference isn’t always meant to be resolved—
Sometimes, it’s meant to be revered.

And tasted.

A reflection on strange loves, passing meaning, and the grace of letting go

There it stood, framed like a museum piece: a solitary, bulbous root—red, veined, and ambiguously beet-like—hovering in darkness as if painted by a Rembrandt with a nutritional agenda. Sprouting upward from its crown, not leaves, but several solemn stalks of golden wheat, as though the artist couldn’t decide if it was dinner or a divine offering.

The composition was stark, solemn and reverent even. No background scene, no context. Just the root. Floating. Eternal. A beatified beet.

And… my wife bought it.

At an estate sale, no less. Which means somewhere out there, someone once chose this image not only to be painted—but to be kept. Perhaps proudly. Perhaps in a kitchen. Perhaps, and here I confess this is now canon in my heart, as the result of a conversation something like this:

“Hey Mom,”
a college student says over the phone,
“I’m taking an art class this semester. Want me to paint something for the house?”

“Oh! Sure,” she replies, delighted.
“Maybe something for the kitchen?”

The son nods, hanging up, thoughtful. He sits at a dorm desk strewn with snack wrappers and coffee stains, flipping through a borrowed textbook:
Genre: Still life. Subject: organic. Medium: oil. Lighting: dramatic. Emotional resonance: sacred, contemplative.

Still flipping. A pear? Too obvious. A cheese wedge? No gravitas.
And then—something strikes. A beet.
Humble. Red. Rooted.
Like family.
Like home.
Like Mom.

So he paints. With care, even reverence. He adds stalks of wheat, maybe inspired by a Renaissance still life in the back of the book, or maybe just from the granola bar he was holding. He signs the back with Roman numerals—MMVII—because that’s what artists do. And he frames it, solemnly.

And she hangs it.
In the kitchen.
Next to the bread box.
Where it remains for years—silent, sacred, loved.

And now, here it is again. In my house. Because years later, at an estate sale, my wife—perhaps moved by some deep intuition or cultural memory of roots and maximized nourishment—chose it. And it came home with us. And it stayed.

For a while.

Now it rests in a quiet corner, part of the to-be-taken-to-the-thrift-store pile. Whatever it once stirred in her has faded.

But I can’t help feeling there’s is something holy in this strange object.

Because we all bring home things that don’t make sense later.

Ideas we thought were profound. Beliefs we clung to without weight. Symbols we mistook for substance. Relationships, projects, ambitions—root-like things we held as sacred, only to find they no longer feed us.

And still, that doesn’t make them meaningless.
It just makes them passing.

Not all fruit nourishes forever.
Not all roots are meant to stay planted.
Some are signs—brief, strange signposts—of where we were, or who we hoped to be.

Christ told stories about seeds and soil, about what grows and what doesn’t. He made bread from grain and fed thousands. He called Himself the vine and us the branches.

Now, granted He never painted a close-up of a beet floating in the darkness of space—but He knew what it meant to take something earthy and offer it with love.

Even the strange things.
Even the things we outgrow.
Even the gifts we no longer need, but still choose to release kindly.

Because meaning doesn’t always come from mastery.
Sometimes it comes from heart.
From intention.
From a son trying to bless his mother’s kitchen in oil and pigment.

So we’ll send this one on. To a thrift store shelf. To its next brief chapter. And perhaps someone will see it—not as a joke or a mistake—but as provision, in their own strange season.

Because the sacred isn’t always beautiful.
And beauty isn’t always sacred.
But love—love can make a root float amid darkness.

And maybe—just maybe—
I will go ahead and hold on to this one after all.

How Doubt Can Be the Midwife of Faith

The Flattening of Thomas (and Ourselves)
We’ve all heard it: “Don’t be a Doubting Thomas.” The phrase has become shorthand in sermons, Sunday schools, and devotional guides for a failure of faith—someone who needed proof, who hesitated, who stumbled where others believed. It’s meant as a cautionary tale, a theological elbow-nudge toward a more ideal form of trust.

Even in more generous readings, where Thomas is treated with compassion rather than criticism, he often remains a symbol rather than a person. A device. An archetype for the struggling believer. In such framings, Jesus becomes the gentle corrector, Thomas the reluctant follower—and we, the readers, are meant to find ourselves somewhere along the same spectrum, ideally on the “more blessed” end: believing without seeing.

But something vital is lost in this approach:

When we reduce Thomas to a trope—when we enlist him as an object lesson rather than encounter him as a disciple—we begin to flatten not only him, but ourselves. And perhaps even worse, we risk catching only a partial glimpse of the full heart of Christ.

Because the moment between Jesus and Thomas in John 20 is not, at its deepest level, a lesson about belief vs. doubt. It is a moment of encounter—of grief, longing, and love. A moment charged with presence. If we let it breathe, we may find in it a richer truth: that doubt is not always a sign of faith’s failure. Sometimes, it is the very space in which faith begins to stir.

Thomas in Context: More Than a Symbol
Before he was a trope, Thomas was a man.

He was one of the Twelve—called by name, chosen by Christ, shaped by the road they walked together. When news came of Lazarus’s death, and the other disciples hesitated to return to Judea for fear of violence, it was Thomas who said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16). That’s not the voice of a weak-hearted skeptic. That’s the voice of a fiercely loyal disciple, one who understood the cost of following Jesus and was ready to pay it.

Thomas was not afraid of dying with Jesus. But he was unprepared to live without Him.

So when the others claimed to have seen the risen Christ, and Thomas had not, his response was not some abstract resistance to belief. It was the wounded voice of someone who loved deeply and lost deeply—and who could not bear a secondhand resurrection. He needed to see—not because he lacked faith, but because he ached for presence. He needed to touch the wounds, not to test Christ, but to be reunited with the One he had followed into danger, into doubt, and into devotion.

To reduce this moment to “doubt” is to miss its heartbeat. Thomas wasn’t demanding proof to satisfy an intellectual argument.

He was longing for the One his soul had known. His cry—“Unless I see…”—is not the voice of a cynic. It’s the voice of a disciple reaching toward a promise, aching to trust again.

His doubt, then, is not the opposite of faith. It is faith’s unfinished sentence.

A Faith That Waits to Be Quickened
We often speak of doubt as if it were the shadow side of belief—as if its presence automatically dims the light of faith. But what if doubt, in certain forms, doesn’t threaten faith at all? What if it awakens it?

There’s a kind of doubt that doesn't arise from hostility or hardness of heart, but from the deep tension between love and loss. It emerges in the silence after God’s voice seems to fall away. It surfaces in the space where presence used to be—where Christ once walked beside us, tangibly, and now feels just out of reach. That kind of doubt doesn't try to undo faith. It quickens it. It compels us to reach, to wrestle, to long. And sometimes, in that very longing, faith takes on new weight, new shape, new fire.

I’ve seen this happen in myself, in other but not unrelated ways.

Sometimes it begins with the smallest moment—an offhand remark, a subtle tone, a passing suggestion that maybe I'm not quite up to the task. Whether real or imagined, these perceived doubts can sting, especially when they touch on something that matters deeply—my ability to lead, to care for others, to walk in faith with quiet strength. And something in me responds—not in anger, but in resolve. Not in defensiveness, but in a deeper centering. A kind of inward anchoring begins. I double down—not to prove someone wrong, but to step more fully into what is right. The doubt doesn’t diminish what I know to be true. It activates it.

That movement, subtle but profound, is not unlike what happens in the life of faith.

Some of us, from the moment of our first real encounter with Christ, carry within us a kind of spark—a touch, however mysterious, from Jesus Himself. We may not always feel it clearly, but we know it was real. And when doubt stirs in the soul, it often doesn’t extinguish that spark. It fans it. It calls us to live more fully into what we have already received—to reawaken the memory of Christ’s touch, and to reach again.

This reaching is not mere reaction. It is relational. It is the aching act of one who still believes in the presence of the One who first called him.

It’s not unlike the woman in the Gospels—the one who reached out to touch the hem of His garment. Her act was desperate, yes—but it was full of faith. She reached, and in reaching, she believed. And Jesus—God in flesh, perfectly aligned with the heart of the Father—responded not just with power, but with presence. With recognition. With love.

“Who was it that touched me?”

Who? It is surely the same already-knowing presence as in the Garden: “Where are you?” Adam only needed to reach out—even if unsure, even in doubt.

Faith, in that light, is not always serene assurance. Sometimes it’s an aching reach through the fog. Sometimes it’s the silent prayer that doesn’t resolve but still persists. Sometimes, it begins with a passing comment that wounds our pride, but ends with a fire rekindled in the heart.

That, too, is faith.

And Thomas lived there. Not the new Adam, but a healed echo of the first—a man who, when called, did not flee, but witnessed.

The Wounds and the Word
When Jesus finally appears to Thomas, it is not with rebuke, nor with a lecture about believing without seeing. It is with wounds.

He doesn’t say, “Why did you doubt?” He says, “Put your finger here… reach out your hand… stop doubting and believe.” And though translations often frame that final line as a command, the moment is soaked in invitation, not reprimand. Jesus meets Thomas exactly where he is—within his ache, within his longing, within the very conditions of his uncertainty. He does not stand at a distance and demand faith. He draws close and offers Himself.

The body of the risen Christ still bears the marks of crucifixion. He is not polished or sanitized. He is risen, yes—but still wounded. And those wounds become the very place where Thomas’s faith is reborn. His confession—“My Lord and my God!”—is not a grudging acceptance, nor merely a relieved affirmation.

It is the highest, clearest Christological confession in all four Gospels. It is the eruption of covenantal love rekindled, of hope reawakened, of presence restored.

In that moment, we are not witnessing the end of doubt. We are witnessing what happens when doubt, held in tension with longing, is met by grace.

Jesus then says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” But this, too, is not a contrast meant to shame Thomas. It is an expansion. A blessing spoken forward—to those who would later believe without the gift of touching His side or seeing His face. And even then, that future faith is not summoned by argument or certainty, but by the witness of wounds, by the Word made flesh, still scarred and still reaching.

Beyond the Binary: Toward a Fuller Christ
So often, we’re offered a binary: faith or doubt. Belief or unbelief. But Scripture rarely deals in such clean divisions. It moves in layers, tensions, paradoxes. And so does the soul.

Many of us do not live our lives in the crisp light of unshaken belief, nor in the shadow of hardened doubt. We live somewhere in between—in that gray and often quiet space of waiting, wondering, reaching. We long for assurance but often walk through fog. We remember past encounters with Christ but ache for His presence again. We’re not faithless—we’re wounded, weathered, waiting. Like Thomas.

But if Christ’s response to Thomas tells us anything, it’s this: He does not shame the longing. He honors it. He steps into it. He meets us not at the polished edges of belief, but in the middle of our fear, our absence, our unfinished sentences.

And this is not a lesser version of Jesus. This is the full heart of Christ. The One who does not wait for perfect faith before showing Himself. The One who offers His wounds, not as proof for the head alone, but as healing for the heart. The One who receives even faltering hands, and lets them rest in the place where death has been defeated.

When we flatten Thomas into a cautionary tale, we risk flattening Jesus too.

We risk making Him into a God who stands apart from our struggles, rather than one who steps inside them. But the Christ who met Thomas is the Christ who still meets us—not with disapproval, but with presence. Not with cold instruction, but with the warmth of a hand extended and a voice that knows our name.

The journey of faith is not a clean ascent. It is a movement marked by returning, remembering, relinquishing. It is not always confident. But it is covenantal. And Christ is faithful in that covenant, even when we’re gasping for air.

When Doubt Is an Opening
Doubt, for many of us, is not an enemy. It is a companion on the road. It walks beside faith—not to mock it, but to press it deeper. To clear away the brittle imitations of certainty. To make space for something truer, something tested, something alive.

When held in covenant—when carried honestly toward Christ—doubt does not destroy faith. It prepares it. It opens a space that only Christ Himself can fill. It becomes, in the truest sense, a midwife: attending the birth of a faith that is not naïve, but witnessed. Not inherited, but encountered. Not clean, but Christic.

Thomas was never meant to be a trope. He was a disciple. A man who had walked the roads with Jesus, had given his loyalty, had tasted hope—and then lost it. His cry was not one of arrogance but of absence. His reach was not a rejection of faith, but its aching expression.

And Christ came.

He came with wounds still visible. He came not just to be seen, but to be touched. To be known. To be worshiped.

So if you find yourself in a place of delay, or disorientation, or deep yearning—if your belief stutters or your heart waits for Christ to speak again—remember this:

The risen Christ still bears wounds. And He still meets us in ours.

Thomas and the Hermeneutic of Presence
The story of Thomas does more than restore the dignity of one disciple—it offers us a way of seeing the whole biblical narrative. In his longing, in his reach, and in his response, Thomas invites us into a hermeneutic of presence—a way of reading Scripture not as a flat moral map, but as a living, relational drama where God calls, waits, reveals, and draws near.

From the garden where God walks and asks “Where are you?”, to the Gospels where Christ asks “Who was it that touched me?”, to the upper room where He shows His wounds, the thread is the same: God comes close. And He comes not with coercion, but with invitation—calling image-bearers into recognition, restoration, and witness.

This lens reshapes how we approach all of Scripture. We begin to look not merely for lessons and episodic narratives, but for the One who speaks through silence, who reveals Himself not only in declarations but in questions, wounds, and presence. We come to see that the truest mark of faith may not be perfect belief, but a willingness to be met.

And in this, Thomas is no longer a warning or a weak point in the narrative. He becomes a guide—for how to reach, how to wait, how to be found.

When Silence Is Stolen – The Misuse of Thomas
It is no accident that Thomas’s presence in the New Testament is restrained. He appears when needed, speaks when it matters, and vanishes into the silence after bearing witness to the risen Christ. That silence is not neglect. It is not erasure. It is Scripture’s way of allowing presence to resonate long after the voice has fallen quiet.

But that restraint—the very thing that protects Thomas’s dignity as a disciple and preserves the integrity of his encounter—has not always been honored. In the centuries following the apostles, a range of Gnostic and Gnostic-leaning texts began to exploit Thomas’s limited mention as an opportunity. They filled the quiet with secret dialogues, mystical cosmologies, and esoteric teachings—none of which bear the marks of the risen Christ he once touched.

Where the Gospel of John offers Thomas the witness, later writings present Thomas the revealer of hidden knowledge. Where the canonical Gospels speak with theological and historical restraint, these apocryphal accounts indulge in speculative imagination, recasting Thomas not as the disciple who reached into Christ’s wounds, but as the mouthpiece for a disembodied ascent away from the world Christ came to redeem.

In this sense, the silence around Thomas was not a flaw. It was a form of narrative humility—a mustard seed waiting to bear fruit in those who listen with reverence. But Gnosticism, by its nature, resists such humility. It seeks to collapse mystery into mechanism, to turn presence into secret. And in doing so, it doesn’t just misuse Thomas—it violates the very restraint that made his confession possible.

The Church’s canon preserves the dignity of that moment—“My Lord and my God”—by letting it ring out unencumbered, without commentary, without exposition. It leaves space for the reader to stand beside Thomas in the upper room and be drawn into the same confession.

In a world eager to over-explain or overreach, such restraint is itself a form of faith, as discussed on the following Postscript. It trusts that presence speaks louder than speculation, and that some wounds are not meant to be decoded, only touched.

Let’s also think about it this way, in cultural shorthand:

• Through The Gospel of John, we encounter the restraint of a Dorothy—through whom the Word unfolds and evil is undone by love, humility, recognition, and presence.

• Through the misdirected “Gospel of Thomas”, we are offered the skyward noise of flocks of flying monkeys—lifted toward spectacle, but away from the wounds.

One leads us toward a risen Lord who still bears scars.
The other carries us far from the ground He once walked.

Postscript: On Doubt, Witness, and the Full Heart of Christ
In my experience, many of the arguments raised against Christianity—especially in contemporary postmodern discourse—are not as complex as they first appear. They are often acts of reduction: attempts to flatten the vast mystery of faith into narrow critiques, to reinterpret love as power, sacrifice as myth, and resurrection as metaphor. But these moves, for all their confidence, often ring hollow. And I believe part of the reason is this:

We Christians have sometimes done the reducing first.

When we simplify the biblical story—when we present figures like Thomas as moral warnings or tidy examples, when we make the Christian life sound like a formula—we offer the world a faith far smaller than the God we follow. We create a version of Christianity that invites rejection, not because it is too costly or too holy, but because it is too thin.

Reductionism, when used against the faith, is ultimately a form of control. It tries to collapse Christ into category, to dismantle the grandeur of God into something manageable, debatable, dismissible. But it fails—gloriously fails—because the heart of Christ is not a proposition. It is a Person. And He cannot be boxed, diagrammed, or explained away.

Yet when we engage on reductionist terms—when we let ourselves get pinned down in abstract arguments far removed from the living Christ—we risk mirroring the very strategy we’re resisting. We start defending systems rather than bearing witness. We argue ideas instead of revealing presence.

And when that happens, we shrink not only our message, but also our imagination—and perhaps even our worship.

Sometimes, though, the wisest thing we can do is not step onto the field where those arguments want to lead us. This is not evasion. It is restraint.

And restraint, rightly understood, is not the denial of truth but the opening of space for the Word to move. It is not silence born of weakness, but silence born of trust. It was restraint that Adam failed to keep in the garden—a refusal to let God’s Word be enough, to wait, to worship through limitation. And it is restraint that Christ recovers, not only on the cross, but in every moment where He could have overpowered but instead revealed.

In this way, restraint becomes a form of image-bearing. It is our way of letting God imbue the world with meaning—not through our frantic clarifications, but through His gracious presence.

To defend the faith, then, is not to win a point. It is to open a door—to let the fullness of Christ’s heart be seen. To hold forth His wounds. To honor the complexity of doubt and the beauty of grace. And above all, to let others see that the Christian faith is not about being right—it’s about being reconciled to a God who still says, “Peace be with you,” even in rooms filled with fear, silence, and waiting.

A reflection on a quiet departure from performance toward truth—and the deeper orbit of Christ.

There are moments when the truest confession and witness comes not in grand declarations but in understated refusal. A simple phrase, spoken without hostility or apology:

“I’ve kind of moved away from all of that.”

It may not sound like much. But in certain rooms, in certain climates, it closes doors more decisively than a shout. And it opens others—though often not right away.

For years, I walked among thinkers—like Nietzsche and the later postmodernists—and frameworks that prized suspicion, irony, and the performance of depth.

For those interested, I suggest my essay Nietzsche and the Mirror. I admired their seeming brilliance for a time. I studied them earnestly. I even wore their language for a time. But something in me shifted—slowly, imperceptibly at first. A deeper hunger awakened. Not for cleverness. Not for systems. But for truth. For wholeness. For Christ.

And so, when someone recently offered me an invitation back into those old halls—framed in the shared code of “high intellect” and cultural critique—I answered honestly, and with a strange peace:

“I’ve kind of moved away from all of that.”

It was not a rejection of the person. It was not even a debate.
It was just a marker.
A quiet, resolute sign that I no longer orbit the same center.

And here is the thing:

To move toward Christ often means moving away from something else.

Not with scorn. Not with drama. Just… away.

This movement can be lonely. You may feel others subtly reassessing you, or withdrawing their unspoken approval. But let it be.

The center you now orbit doesn’t demand performance. It asks for truth.

It welcomes the whole person—not just the sharpest part.

So if you too have found yourself quietly distancing from circles you once called home, know this:

You are not lost.
You are not alone.
You are being realigned.

Sometimes the holiest moments come not in what we run toward, but in what we no longer need to defend.

Christ is enough.
And we—imperfect, discerning, still becoming—move toward Him.

To live in faith is not merely to receive truth, but to inhabit and integrate it within the actual entanglements of life.

It began with a flicker. The engine light blinked on in my Ford—a small symbol, orange and opaque, neither alarming nor benign. It was the sort of warning that demands attention without giving detail. A vague signal in a highly technological system. And like many signals in life, it came not with clarity, but with tension: is this serious or ignorable? Is this real or misfire?

What followed was a multi-week journey across shops and systems, codes and converters, logic trees, and a vehicle recall notice received midway. A catalytic converter was replaced. A code reappeared. Ford performed a reprogramming fix tied to a little-known recall—false code alerts. And in the midst of all of it, the question loomed: was the converter ever faulty? Was the repair necessary? Or was this entire episode a drama of misdiagnosis, false thresholds, and institutional silence?

The experience became more than an inconvenience. It became a kind of parable.

We live surrounded by systems—informational, mechanical, ecclesial, political. They alert us. They manage risk. But they also obscure. In most of these systems, the problem isn’t malice. It’s fragmentation. One technician reprograms a module without asking why it matters. Another replaces a part because the software said so. A third shrugs and hands back the keys. Each person acts in partial knowledge.

No one narrates the whole.

This is not so different from the Church, or theology, or even our own spiritual lives. We get signals: moments of conviction, discomfort, loss, or strange reassurance. And we often react like the technician. We “clear the code,” or we replace a part.

We do something. But we don’t always ask, narratively, what it means.
We don’t step back to build the bridge between insight and interpretation, cause and covenant.

But faith is not a code reader. Faith is a builder of meaning. It is the trust that embraces Christ—so that, in the words of Frederick Buechner, we might listen to our lives.

To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means—to use the diagnostic metaphor—engaging with life not as consumers of interpretive outputs, but as co-creators of meaning in Christ.

Christ does not simply decode us. He enters the very system, walks the circuitry, bears the misfires, and speaks a fuller logic. He is the divine recalibration—not just of thresholds, but of how we perceive truth. And in Him, we are called to become narrators. Not passive recipients of doctrine, but active storytellers. Builders of meaning. Image-bearers who listen not only to Scripture, but to life itself—and ask, gently and faithfully, what it is revealing.

And so, the check engine light becomes a Christic reflection. A sign not just of mechanical error, but of the ongoing invitation:

Will you read the signs of life narratively?
Will you follow the threads, seek coherence, and refuse to settle for the first output?
Will you co-labor with Christ in the patient re-narration of reality?

The catalytic converter may or may not have needed replacing. That’s almost beside the point. What matters more is that even there, in that tedious, procedural, bureaucratic incident, Christ was present—not as an interruption, but as the very thread running through it.

And I, as I walked through the days of calls, codes, and recalibrations, was given the chance to narrate. To turn scattered data into testimony. To step beyond the technician’s shrug and into the builder’s story.

That is the calling of the disciple in a diagnostic age: not to bypass the systems, but to dwell in them with a Christic posture—attuned, integrative, patient, and alive to meaning.

Even when all you get is a light.
Because Christ walks even in the diagnostic fog.

Broken Handles, Pipettes, and the Grace of Letting Be

It began with the broken-off handle of a stainless steel one-quarter measuring cup, which I found delicately placed in the upper tray of our dishwasher. Assumed, I think, by my wife—whose sensibilities are simultaneously practical and exquisite, wrapped in a piquant, if occasionally stringent, leaf of fairness—to be some kind of avant-garde kitchen tool. Perhaps a minimalist dough scraper. Something Scandinavian, with a name like Scræpa, wrapped in linen and etched with branding that whispers form is function.

I imagine she found it while tidying one of our kitchen drawers—those sedimentary layers where rubber bands sleep beside antique garlic presses and loose coins now with no nation. She is rarely mistaken. But this time, I knew it at once: not a tool of rising design, but entropy—remnant of a measuring cup set gifted in the early years of our marriage, now worn down by time, gravity, and the sacred chaos of a well-used kitchen. We’d misplaced the third-cup, bent the half, and now the quarter had given way at the weld. And yet even severed from its body, the piece bore itself with purpose. Its stamp remained clear: ¼. Its edge was smooth, even artful. It felt almost... meant.

It reminded me of something I’d done two decades earlier—bringing home a disposable lab pipette to water my houseplants. I had tried teacups, soda bottle caps, even an empty soy sauce vessel—but they always sloshed, splashed, spilled. Then came the pipette: deliberate, focused, merciful. A single drop at a time. The soil drank rather than choked. What was designed for titration became a tool of life. And in that simple gesture I learned more than I expected—about control and surrender, about design and grace, about how tools, like people, often outlive their categories.

Both the pipette and the measuring handle were rescued not by repair, but by recognition. Someone looked again—and saw not what was missing, but what remained.

And isn’t that what grace does?

It doesn't rewind us back to our factory settings. It names us where we are, and gives us to the world as we’ve become—sometimes cracked, sometimes re-formed, always repurposed. In Christ, nothing is wasted. The broken handle becomes the Scræpa. The pipette, a quiet steward of growth. The scars, even His own, become the invitation.

And so it is that Christ calls us: not merely to return to what was, but to sing something new.

Sing to the Lord a new song.
Not because the old song was wrong, but because the music is still unfolding—composed through our lives, broken pieces and all.

The world hands us tools and categories. Some break. Some never quite fit. But in the hands of the Carpenter, even fragments become instruments. Even drops become rivers. Even silence becomes song.

Of course… not everything needs to be reused or repurposed. Some things, and some people, simply need to be.

In fact, just this morning, my older daughter—sun-kissed and full of summer defiance—scolded me gently: “Let me be.” She was right. I had been nudging, correcting, worrying. Trying to shield her from a little too much sun, and perhaps from the longer arc of my own parental uncertainty. But children have a strange way of knowing the wisdom of the moment before we do. Let me be.

And isn’t that also the whisper beneath grace?

Before repurposing, before reframing, before renewal—there is permission. There is presence. There is being.
Not as escape, but as trust.

It was Mary, after all, who said, Let it be to me according to your word (Luke 1:38, ESV). Not passivity, but faith. Not resignation, but readiness. And from that letting-be came the greatest becoming the world has ever known.

So yes—sometimes Christ is in the reclaiming.
Sometimes Christ is in the reimagining.
But often, quietly, Christ is in the letting-be.

In the odd happenings of a household.
In a quarter-cup handle mistaken for design.
In a pipette cradling water like mercy.
In a daughter beneath the sun, becoming who she already is.

And now, the Scræpa is known—and redeemed—too.

Somewhere between recklessness and avoidance lies a space where grace can breathe. I call it the Goldilocks Principle of Risk—not too much, not too little, but just enough courage to leave the door ajar for what God might do.

Professionally, relationally, spiritually, we know what closed doors feel like. Sometimes they are locked out of necessity, discernment, or simple human limitation. But often, the risk-avoidant instinct shuts them tighter than they need to be, pulling the air of grace out of the room. It feels unfair. The Psalms know this ache well: “How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?” (Psalm 89:46, ESV). It is the cry of a heart seeking not certainty, but the chance for covenantal connection.

Yet this middle ground is not boundaryless. Grace does not demand reckless exposure or unguarded availability. As Henry Cloud reminds us, boundaries are essential—they are the healthy gates and fences that define where our responsibility begins and ends. Courageous risk does not mean saying “yes” to all; it means discerning when to open the door and when, in love and wisdom, to keep it closed.

Still, the pathway to grace often begins with a small, brave risk: the risk of listening, the risk of answering, the risk of being wrong yet remaining open. The Psalms teach us that God honors the risk of the open heart, even when people do not. And in that middle space—bounded but not barricaded—we glimpse something closer to the kingdom.

In our careers, a continual “yes” is the currency that buys goodwill, exposure, and—if you’re fortunate—advancement. Every invitation, every committee, every initiative promises some vague share in a future benefit. And yet, often what’s traded away in those moments isn’t just time—it’s the very heart of vocation.

The psalmist prays, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12, ESV). To steward our calling faithfully means remembering that our days are not endless. They are a gift, to be invested where God has truly sent us. To scatter ourselves thin across another’s platform, another’s showcase, may look productive, but it risks spending the currency of our calling on a cause not fully ours to carry.

To say no can feel like failure. It can feel like forfeiting opportunity, or worse, stepping out of line with those who hold the institutional keys. But “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21, ESV). True faithfulness is not measured by how many initiatives bear our name, but whether we are tending the field entrusted to us by God.

Saying no—and saying it plainly, without bitterness, without apology—is a form of vigilance over the wellspring of our work: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23, ESV). It keeps space for those before us, the words we are to write, the care we are to offer. And sometimes, a no itself—whether by what it frees in us or what it quietly redirects in others—becomes one of the greater gifts we give, a blessing only revealed in God’s time.

Even Jesus faced relentless expectations. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed... And he said to them, ‘Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out’” (Mark 1:35, 38, ESV). He did not meet every demand placed on Him. He said no to good things in order to say yes to the Father’s will.

So it is for us. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1, ESV). The One we report to is not impressed by how many projects we join, or how many titles we accumulate. He looks instead at whether we have been faithful with the work He has given us, in His timing, for His glory.

Sometimes that faithfulness sounds like yes.
Sometimes—and perhaps more courageously—it sounds like no.

And sometimes, in the mystery of grace, that no will bear fruit far beyond what we can see today.

For Jesus Himself lived free of every fear of missing out (FOMO) except one: the longing never to miss the Father’s love, never to step outside His being as the beloved Son (John 5:19; John 15:9–10). Our no finds its courage there—in the greater yes to abiding in Him.

True courage to say no is only possible when our deepest FOMO is to not abide in the Father’s love and calling. Every “no” Jesus spoke flowed out of that singular yes to His Father’s will

Tide and Kingdom
In the liminal film of tide on sand,
Spirit soaked,
the beat of psalms,
in overlap,
drenched,
and neither in the
surf nor sand,
but in the actual of shimmer,
feet sink—
embrace,
anchored where
patterns swell and fade—
and swell,
into a word
finally felt,
a vibration in the feet,
as keys,
to an ungarische
melodie.

Postscript:
The shimmer we glimpse is not imagined.
It once had weight and breath—
it was God stepping into dust and tide, it was heaven touching earth in actual history.

And though the world is not yet whole,
the tide keeps returning,
each swell a signpost of the new creation,
each step a call to follow.
Resurrection is not far off,
but already moving beneath our feet,
the promise that one day
the tide will not recede.

Because our Lord and Messiah rose to walk again, eat again, laugh again, dance again—and to invite us not into abstraction but into a heaven and earth being made new.

Psalm 1 says, blessed is the man whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he mediates day and night.”

That’s a tall order for blessedness. Day and night?!

But in the already-and-not-yet new kingdom, we often we reduce law to a list of dangers to avoid—like warning signs about riptides and undertow, placed in moralistic eddies. These warnings are important to notice, yes—but they mark only the smallest edge of what Torah means. The law of the Lord is more than fences; it is God’s way, His living order—spoken in Scripture and echoed in the patterns of creation itself. Even a cursory glance at biochemistry reveals just how much law—more widely understood—is woven into our being.

And so, psalm 19 continues: “The heavens declare the glory of God… day to day pours out speech.” Meaning, even through warnings of riptide and undertow, and through moralistic eddies, we can delight in the tide’s rhythm, the sweep of horizon, the shimmer of light on water. These too are words in God’s language, revealing His wisdom and goodness—and revealing His law.

In the fullest sense, Psalm 1 points to Jesus Christ Himself—the one truly Blessed, who walks perfectly in the Father’s way—in his living law. By grace, He draws us into that blessedness.

And here is the Christ key: to meditate on His law is to join His story, the story of all of creation. Not only reading His Word but listening to the whole of creation as it sings back to its Maker. This is how we learn to bear His image well—as stewards and worshippers, participants in His renewing kingdom. Through the variety of individual vocation, and through the Shema—now renewed with bursting meaning in and through Christ—we step into our calling.

Too, part of bearing God’s image is our capacity for narrative thinking—this uniquely human gift to see time not just as moments, but as story. We weigh evidence, trace causes, imagine futures, discern meaning from the fragments of life. It is this gift that lets us participate in what some theologians call collaborative eschatology—living in the already and not yet, helping the world lean toward its promised renewal in Christ, as builders of meaning, as narrative thinkers. All the more energizing that the resurrection will be on Earth.

Because here is how we extend—as God intended—into and through the law: we are not just processors of data, but participants in a divine story. We reflect on His law not to remain on the shore counting dangers, but to step into the tide of His creation, listening for His story, walking in the way of Christ, and joining Him in making all things new.

And this is not limited to the soft edge of metaphor. For even the first making—the origin of all things—speaks in story. Of that first making, outside of which He stands but into which He makes Himself known? The Big Bang as science tells us—absolutely. And of His covenant? That is Genesis. Are the Big Bang and Genesis interwoven? In God’s time, yes, of course.

For us, the march of science—biochemistry, cosmology, ecology—helps us behold the intricacy of creation. But not only science, so laden with its limitations. The more we see, the more we realize: to reflect on God’s law is to live in wonder, not just to measure—but to mean.

As one poet once said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
Perhaps that’s not literally true. But spiritually, vocationally—it rings with the deeper truth.

Because to be human is to be called not only to understand, but to interpret, to create, to build toward meaning. This is the narrative gift we’ve been given—not in place of God’s Word, but as a way of bearing His image in the world He so loves. To join the psalm of creation, as it sings back to its Maker. To walk in the Word, as it walks among us. To build toward the new creation, one story at a time.

On the Occasional Dead-End Pathways in Our Walk with the Spirit

Some time ago, I reflected on simplicity, sufficiency, and the quiet power of settling into what is “enough.” That piece was titled “Enough” Is a Holy Word, and in it, I invoked—though did not describe in detail—a drink of my own making: the RubinRed.

The RubinRed is nothing elaborate. Just gin and cranberry juice, stirred in such proportions that clarity and bite meet in a sort of covenantal balance. The gin sharpens, the cranberry deepens. It is a drink that, like the Psalms, holds together tension and brightness, petition and praise. Simple. Sharp. Honest. Like a psalm with a twist.

But in the spirit of improvisation—and possibly hubris—I recently attempted a variation: gin, cranberry juice, and beet juice. Let the record show: I will not attempt this again. Remarkably.

Because beet juice, noble though it may be in nutritional circles, has that uncanny way of turning everything it touches into something that tastes like the earth remembering its own roots a little too vividly. Mixed with gin and cranberry, it produced what can only be called an agricultural cocktail—more garden confession than refreshment.

And yet: isn’t that how the walk with the Spirit often unfolds?

We try things. We test. We reach. We infuse the simple with a little ambition, sometimes led by curiosity, sometimes by compulsion. And occasionally, we find ourselves sipping something that—while well-intentioned—was never meant to be consumed.

This is the strange grace of dead-end paths in spiritual formation. Not every attempt to deepen or enrich leads to fruit. Some lead to bitterness, or confusion, or simply a strange, mineral aftertaste of “no.” But even in these moments, the Spirit is present—not to shame, but to guide. These missteps, these over-mixed concoctions of our hopes and efforts, are part of how we learn the shape of sufficiency.

Sometimes, returning to the original is not regression, but maturity. To recognize that the RubinRed needed nothing more. That what had already been given—was, in fact, enough.

So here’s to the RubinRed. To the things that hold. And here’s also to the misfires, the beet-laced detours that remind us how sensitive the palate of discernment really is.

Because the walk with the Spirit is not always forward. It is not always upward. It is often lateral and looping, punctuated by strange drinks and stranger lessons. But it is always accompanied. And grace is often found not just in the perfect mix, but in the quiet recognition of when it’s time to set the glass down—and start again.

We often hear that our closest five friends shape who we become. But what if our truest formation comes not from human circles, but from Father, Son, Spirit, Home, and Church—the five who hold us in grace before expectation ever sets in?

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
— John 15:4 (ESV)

There’s a saying in the self-help world that we become the average of our five closest friends. It’s a maxim that seems plausible enough—after all, the habits, attitudes, and expectations of those around us shape us more than we realize. But if we stop there, we remain in a purely secular calculus, as though the highest hope for our lives is simply to rise to the level of our chosen companions.

For those in Christ, the true five closest are not primarily human peers but covenantal presences, forming us not by mere expectation but by grace, communion, and divine faithfulness.

1. Father — We are children of God, adopted through Christ’s work (Romans 8:15–16). His presence defines our identity before anyone else can speak a word of accusation or approval.

2. Son — Jesus calls us not servants but friends (John 15:15), shaping our life through His teaching, His cross, His resurrection power. We become like Him by being with Him, not merely trying to emulate Him from a distance.

3. Spirit — The Spirit convicts (John 16:8), yet never accuses. Conviction leads to repentance and life; accusation binds us to shame. The Spirit forms Christ in us (Galatians 4:19), reshaping our hearts from the inside out.

4. Home — In marriage and family, love abides in daily rhythms. Paul calls marriage a reflection of Christ’s own love for His church (Ephesians 5:25–32), and even imperfect family life is meant to echo God’s faithfulness.

5. Church — The body of Christ exhorts and restores one another in gentleness (Galatians 6:1), stirring up love and good works (Hebrews 10:24–25). Healthy fellowship lifts burdens rather than adds them, creating space to return to grace.

From these fantastic five, an ecological unfolding of other relationships flows—friendships, communities, workplaces. But discernment begins here: who truly holds the closest, most formative space in our hearts? If we place that space in human hands alone, we risk living under shifting expectations, often veering toward accusation. If we dwell first with Father, Son, Spirit, Home, and Church, expectation is transformed into grace, conviction into hope, and influence into sanctification.

The secular saying invites self-optimization through better company. The Gospel invites abiding in Christ, so that life—our humanity—is not averaged, but made new.

"For God is not a God of confusion but of peace." – 1 Corinthians 14:33 (ESV)

Loki: The Ambiguity of a Trickster God
In the old Norse sagas, Loki is the god of the in-between—a shapeshifter, schemer, and stirrer of chaos. He dwells among the gods but never truly belongs, weaving mischief and calamity with equal delight. Sometimes his tricks help, more often they harm, but in either case, they blur truth and trust. Loki is not a god of promises kept; he thrives in tension, subversion, and uncertainty.

In this mythic world, truth is fragile, always under threat of deceit, always precarious amid shifting forms. Loki reminds us of the peril that comes when divine power is imagined as capricious, cunning, or self-serving.

The Gnostic “Gospel” of Thomas: A Trickster Christology
Centuries later, some early heterodox writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas, would present another ambiguous figure, a Jesus who feels strangely Loki-like. In these Gnostic or near-Gnostic texts, salvation is not proclaimed openly to the world but hidden in cryptic sayings:

• Truth is reserved for insiders who can crack the code.

• The physical and tangible—the goodness of creation, the joy of embodiment—are often diminished or dismissed.

• Jesus appears as a cosmic riddler, withholding clarity, destabilizing ordinary faith, and inviting speculation rather than trust.

Yet here we glimpse an important distinction. Across many mythic traditions, the trickster archetype plays a necessary role: to disrupt, to unsettle, to break false orders wide open. In that sense, a parallel with Jesus is valid:

• He too is a disruptor, overturning tables (Matthew 21:12–13), upending false religiosity, and declaring a kingdom that inverts human hierarchies of power and greatness.

• But where Loki and the Gnostic “Christ” destabilize without a center, Jesus’ disruption is redemptive and covenantal, tearing down illusions to rebuild creation in truth and love.

• His “upside-down kingdom” is not chaos, nor secret wisdom for elites—it is God’s intended order, revealed openly in Him, turning the world right-side up under His lordship.

This becomes the decisive break between the false trickster Christology of Gnostic imagination and the true Christ of the Gospel. Jesus does not leave seekers lost in riddles. His mystery is promise, not puzzle; His disruption is healing, not harm, a holy overturning that brings the true kingdom near.

Marvel’s Loki: A Mythic Signpost to True Redemption
And yet, in the modern mythos of Marvel Studios, Loki undergoes a different journey. The series begins true to form: self-serving, cunning, untrustworthy, a being of lies and illusion. But across its episodes, a transformation unfolds:

• From chaos to calling: Loki begins to shoulder a cosmic burden, willing to lay down ambition for the sake of others.

• From deception to truth: Once a master of falsehoods, he embraces honesty and loyalty, even at personal cost.

• From trickster to stabilizer: In the series’ climax, Loki becomes the anchor of reality itself, binding broken timelines in his own sacrifice, holding the universe together.

Marvel’s tale is not the Gospel. Its redeemer is still flawed, driven by necessity more than holy love, grasping at redemption rather than bestowing it. Yet this mythic arc serves as a signpost, however faint, to a deeper truth:

There is One who truly gathers all threads of time and existence—not with guile, but with grace; not to preserve power, but to pour out his life for the world.

In Loki’s fictional transformation, we glimpse a shadow of the Redeemer who is not a trickster, not a puzzle, but the Logos, the faithful and eternal Word.

From Loki to Loci: Clarity in the True Word
The Lutheran Loci Communes, first shaped by Philip Melanchthon in 1521, arose precisely to anchor theology in clarity and promise. Amid confusion and distortion—whether from medieval speculation or later Gnostic-style mysticism—the Loci drew directly from Scripture to name the central truths of salvation:

• Law and Gospel: God’s Word convicts of sin and delivers grace.

• Faith and Justification: Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—not by secret wisdom or riddled sayings.

• Good Works: Flow from faith as fruits, not currency for divine favor.

• Sacraments: Tangible words of promise, not hidden mysteries for elites.

Where Loki revels in deception, and the Gnostic Christ leaves seekers uncertain, the true Christ speaks plainly, even when his sayings are hard, because they are words of life and light. He does not toy with souls but saves them. The Loci serve as a theological witness to this reality: the Gospel is not a shifting riddle but a sure foundation, the Word made flesh who dwells among us full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

The Final Transformation: From Chaos to Covenant
If we linger on Marvel’s final image of Loki—seated at the center of time’s vast web, threads of existence held in his scarred hands—we can almost sense a longing for something more, a yearning that fiction cannot fully deliver. His arc brushes against the truths the Loci proclaim:

• Law and Gospel: His lies judged, yet he offers mercy to others.

• Faith and Justification: Trusting something greater than himself, laying down power for life beyond his reach.

• Good Works: Freed from ambition, his final act is pure gift, not self-preservation.

The series imagines a trickster made almost Christic, transformed by love and sacrifice. Yet it is only a shadow, a mythic approximation. The true Christ does not almost redeem—He fully redeems. He is the Son who makes the Father known, the Logos who brings light into confusion, grace into guilt, and covenant order into cosmic chaos.

In Him, the Loci are not just doctrines—they are living truth: promises given, faith awakened, good works flowing, sacraments sealing. From Loki’s shifting illusions to covenant clarity, the Word gathers what the world scatters, and holds it forever in faithful hands.

Postscript: Algorithms and the Flattening of Truth
Even the digital age cannot escape the confusion of counterfeit words. On platforms like Kindle, books by faithful witnesses are often displayed side by side with the so-called Gnostic Gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas. The algorithm does not discern truth from distortion; it simply clusters what others have clicked.

This creates a deeper irony: in an age where we know the earth is not flat, the algorithmic marketplace flattens truth itself—treating all “gospels,” all testimonies, as having equal weight in history or faith, blurring authority and catering to curiosity over discernment.

But the Gospel does not flatten reality—it restores its true depth, breadth, and height in Christ. The Loci help us see this dimension clearly, guiding us past counterfeit horizons to the Christotelic center where the Word speaks faithfully, not as one option among many, but as the light of the world (John 8:12).

“Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.”
—Psalm 85:10

We often speak of forgiveness and justice as though they must be balanced—as though they sit on opposite ends of a divine scale, each needing to be measured just right. But the truth is more profound than that. In God’s economy, these are not rival systems in need of compromise. They are distinct, holy dimensions of His character—truth and mercy, righteousness and grace, not pitted against each other, but destined to converge.

And that convergence is not theoretical. It is a person.

Christ is the thin space.

Not just between heaven and earth, but between God’s justice and God’s forgiveness. He does not flatten the difference between them; He inhabits the seam. On the cross, He does not cancel justice to offer grace, nor does He suspend grace to satisfy justice. Instead, He holds both fully in Himself—the wrath and the mercy, the consequence and the pardon—and in doing so, He establishes something entirely new.

This is not a third option or a clever synthesis. This is the new and living way (Hebrews 10:20). A way that flows from the eternal love of the Father, enacted through the body of the Son, and made known by the Spirit—not by erasing justice or softening forgiveness, but by transfiguring both through presence.

I. Christ in the Thin Spaces
Christ does not merely pass through thin spaces—He dwells within them. He is their center and their tension, their boundary and their breakthrough.

He is born of a woman, yet begotten of the Father.
He walks on earth, yet holds all things together in heaven.
He weeps at Lazarus’s tomb, and then calls him out.
He dies, and yet through His death, life begins again.

At every crucial seam in Scripture—between time and eternity, flesh and spirit, sorrow and glory—we find Christ already there, holding the edges. He is not the midpoint between opposites, nor the abstraction that resolves them. He is the incarnate presence where opposites are fulfilled without contradiction, where paradox is not erased but revealed as purposeful.

We might call these thin spaces:

• The seam between divine justice and divine mercy

• The space between knowing and not-yet-knowing

• The aching moment between crucifixion and resurrection

• The tension between God’s hiddenness and His self-revelation

And Christ inhabits them—not as an intruder, but as the Word who speaks from within. He is the one who sings the psalm and is the psalm, the one who fulfills the law and becomes its living rhythm. He does not offer distance, but dwelling. Not observation, but participation.

To say that Christ is the thin space is to confess that God’s most decisive action is not separation but convergence. The Incarnation is not a visit—it is a joining.

II. The Seam Between Justice and Forgiveness
Nowhere is Christ’s role as the thin space more urgent than in the matter of justice and forgiveness.

For many, forgiveness is imagined as the erasure of wrongs—an act of emotional detachment, or worse, a denial of harm. But Christian forgiveness is not amnesia. It is not permissiveness. And it is not soft. It is, at its core, an act of divine presence.

Forgiveness, in Christ, does not sidestep justice. It passes through it.

In Him, justice is not suspended, but fulfilled—not merely by punishment, but by the offering of a life so aligned with the Father’s will that He can absorb the consequence of sin without replicating its violence. In doing so, He opens space for forgiveness that is not injustice, but a new kind of righteousness—a righteousness that restores, reclaims, and re-creates.

This is what makes Christian forgiveness so radically different:

• It does not forget, but names.

• It does not flatten, but enters.

• It does not excuse, but transfigures.

To forgive as Christ forgives is to do so in Him, in the thin space where justice and mercy are not alternatives, but cohabitants. He does not offer forgiveness as an escape from justice, but as the only place justice can be made complete without annihilating the sinner.

This is why the cross is not only where debts are paid, but where God’s justice is revealed as restorative. The Lamb of God bears sin not to sidestep justice, but to fulfill it in love. And the Risen Christ breathes peace upon those who failed Him—not to minimize betrayal, but to establish a new creation where grace writes the final word.

To forgive in Christ is not to look away from the wound. It is to look through it, into the resurrection.

III. To Abide in the Seam
We are not called to resolve the tension between justice and forgiveness. We are called to follow the One who lives in that tension and makes it holy.

To forgive in Christ is not to cast aside justice. Nor is it to crush the offender beneath its weight. It is to trust that true justice and true mercy can hold hands in the body of Christ—that the cross does not offer us a system, but a person. A path. A presence.

And so, we learn not to walk around the thin spaces, but into them.

• Into the space where judgment would be easy, and mercy would feel naïve.

• Into the space where the wound is still visible, and yet peace is spoken.

• Into the space where the gospel is not theory, but lived paradox.

To follow Christ is to live near these seams—not to master them, but to be held by the one who does. And in doing so, we begin to forgive not because we are strong, but because we are surrendered. We begin to act justly not to prove ourselves righteous, but because we are drawn into the righteousness of Another.

Christ is not the gap-filler between two systems. He is the living seam.
And where He is, justice does not silence mercy, and mercy does not weaken justice.
In Him, both sing.
And in Him, we are invited to dwell.

In the Protestant tradition—especially among those shaped by Protestant sensibilities—the word Saint often comes with hesitation. We do not venerate the Saints—indeed, all followers of Christ are saints (while simultaneously sinners—simul justus et peccator), as Paul tells us.

Yet, there remains deep value in examining their lives.

The lives of the Saints are not distant portraits to be worshiped, but they do provide us with parables of formation—stories of faith, hope, and love centered on Christ. They show what it means to live in Christ, not perfectly, but faithfully.

We can ask:

What does it look like to lead in and through Christ? What does service in His name truly require? What does it mean to be part of the communion of saints—not merely in memory, but in the living body of Christ today?

Within the vision of the Stand Firm in the Word initiative, we call Christians to nurture communities in Christ—to be leaders marked by integrity, humility, and Spirit-filled courage. We long to embody faith, hope, and love as the shape of our vocation. And we believe, without pretension, that Christ may even write new parables through us for the good of others. To that end, the saints become examples—not as final authorities, but as fellow travelers who point toward the Author.

In curating examples of such saints, we have also taken care to avoid the common tendency to enlist historical figures into present-day ideological movements. Many saints are now held up as symbols of contemporary social activism—even when that was not their self-understanding. But to flatten Christ-centered formation into mere activism is to diminish the full scope of their witness. We do not reject engagement with justice—we embrace the Christic and Psalmic calls to right wrongs—but we resist interpretations that detach it from theological depth, ecclesial life, and the enduring shape of Christ’s love.

Below is a brief, curated list of saints whose lives offer resonance. Each comes from a distinct era, yet all reveal something of Christ’s formative work across the ages.

Patristic and Early Church Saints

• Augustine of Hippo (354–430)

• Perpetua (d. 203)

Monastic and Medieval Saints

• Benedict of Nursia (480–547)

• Julian of Norwich (1343–after 1416)

Saints of Reform and Conscience

• Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582)

• Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)

Modern Saints and Witnesses

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945)

• John Henry Newman (1801–1890)

These can serve as mirrors—often cracked, often luminous—reflecting the many ways Christ forms His people through Scripture, suffering, vocation, and community. They may stir in us a renewed desire to be formed by the One true Gospel.

To learn from the saints is to remember that the story of the Church is not yet finished. We are not merely students of the past; we are participants in the present—called to let our own lives be written into the great parable of Christ’s redemptive work.

Let us then stand firm in the Word, learn from those who came before, and walk forward in the Spirit ready to become parables of formation for others.

There are dreams that drift away by morning—and there are dreams that disturb the morning. This was one of the latter.

I dreamt of a house with two massive columns—black, towering to 100 feet—anchoring the entrance like a portico. The house itself was human-sized, perhaps even modest in design. But those columns distorted everything. They stood impossibly tall and out of place, like pillars borrowed from a forgotten temple—something ancient but misapplied. They weren’t ominous exactly, but they didn’t belong. The whole structure rang with a quiet dissonance. It repelled presence.

And though the dream never turned to nightmare, I woke with the sense that I had seen something constructed with intention, even admiration, yet not meant to exist.

Then in the quiet dark of early morning, I wrote a poem. It came quickly, as though it had already been waiting for me.

A Benediction of Thresholds:

Wood,
glass—
we give it to impossible
heights,
while God’s
Word
already
blows
beautiful.
May our lines
settle within
the wind
in His cypress.

We build things. We raise columns. We use wood and glass—good materials, created by God—and stretch them upward in hopes of reaching something greater, or proving we’ve already arrived. But when the scale is wrong, when the weight is misaligned, even what is beautiful becomes disordered.

The poem answers with breath, with Word—God’s way of building.

We serve, not to be seen, but to settle within the wind in His cypress.

Let the world raise its darkened columns to impossible heights. Let us instead be carried on the breath of His Word, shaped by the rhythm of grace.

“Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”
—Psalm 19:2, ESV

We Are Tidewater People
We are a tidewater
people,
an oscillatory people,
merging from
dust,

expanding to dust.

The heart, mind,
imagination—
fills and drains,
and in filling,
leaps

from people to person,

to floodwater, while
the Word
continually
sings, abides,
settles.

The even stream
of creation.

Christ—

the intervener,
the intruder,

the midst, the stable center

of tides,
of story,
of covenant.

Postscript
Psalm 19 reveals a world that speaks. Not always in sentences, not always in sound—but in rhythm, in incarnation.

Creation’s knowledge pours out not only in grandeur but in pattern: the rising of tides, the setting of stars, the faithful repetition of day and night. This rhythm is not random; it is covenantal. It is law—not as prohibition, but as structure, music, gift.

The poem above is an offering in that rhythm—a meditation on oscillation, rest, and renewal. It names the experience of being human in a world where we are not fixed, but formed and re-formed in relation to the Word. The Christic center is not static, but alive within the motion.

He is the one who renews, abides, and settles—not to still the tide, but to hold it together.

And so, we listen—not only with ears, but with attention.

With discernment.

With willingness to find a center in the midst.

This listening is difficult in our time. Many of us are like jugglers: not just managing motion, but improvising under pressure. A ball, a book, a torch, a grapefruit, a chainsaw—each one flying through mental space, each demanding attention. But even here, there is rhythm. And when the movement is surrendered to Christ, even the act of juggling becomes doxological.

There is a tradition of poetry that leans into these tensions—not to glorify fragmentation, not to critique down to bare atoms, but to trace its outlines until coherence and meaning returns. T.S. Eliot, a modernist who knew how to name dissonance without surrendering to it, remains a companion in this space. He did not stop at despair. He pressed through it toward the still point. His work reminds us that Christ does not erase our paradoxes—He inhabits them.

Christ—the one for whom and through whom all things hold together.
In scriptural writing, for and through are not merely prepositions.
They are incarnate words—alive with meaning—
and in Him, they oscillate with purpose and motion.
The draw of for, the push of through.

The longing and the arrival. The rhythm of Alpha and Omega, Aleph and Tav.

“All things were created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16, ESV)

The Crocus and the Arrow

In well-drained
soil,
we rejoice.

In well-drained
soil,
the mocker,
the hunter of wrong,
is drowned.

Crocus—
lift your cup
to the arrows
of the Lord.
Drink,
and give
to the bee.

You have trusted,
and trusting,
you blossom
with joy.

The Word Through It All
There is confession
in the wordless groan—
laid bare in convenient light.

There is renewal,
hidden in the shoot
of Jesse, rising to restore.

Arrows strike deep—
yet the branch grows health,
grows Spirit—resting, rising.

Still the stars speak.
Still the scroll sings.
Still the Son walks the arc.

Of Him—of Him!—
the Word runs through it all.

A Church Called Vav and Nun
Grace in the Gap, Resurrection in the Missing Line

As explored in the video, Grace in the Gap, a few Psalms are built like alphabets in motion—acrostics whose verses follow the Hebrew letters from Aleph to Tav. Like a spine of prayer, these psalms unfold with intention, their form echoing fullness.

But in several of them, a letter—and the verse it should carry—is missing. Most often it is Vav (ו)—a simple, connective letter often meaning “and.” Elsewhere, in Psalm 145, the letter Nun (נ) is absent—its poetic crown left blank.

And yet—the psalms still hold. The songs continue. The structure stutters, but the Spirit sings through the silence.

This is more than a literary quirk. It is a theological doorway.

If Tov is Goodness, Vav and Nun is Grace Through Fracture

We deeply value the vision behind A Church Called Tov—Scot McKnight’s call to cultivate goodness, empathy, and justice within Christian communities.

A Church Called Vav and Nun is not an alternative, but a companion vision: a church that names the absence, inhabits the fracture, and lets the Spirit fill what we cannot.

It’s a church for those living between “Lead me” and “Remember me,” for those who know the pain of missing words, missing justice, missing wholeness—and yet believe that grace holds anyway.

The Astonishing Restoration of Nun
In Psalm 145, the Nun verse was long missing. But in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it appears—a verse once lost, now restored:
“The LORD is faithful in all His words, and kind in all His works.”

And what follows?

“The LORD upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.”

Nun, once a symbol of descent, becomes the signpost of resurrection. The lost verse becomes the hinge of restoration. The structure sings again—not through perfection, but through the Spirit’s return. This is no mere textual recovery. It is theological fire.

The Christ-shaped surprise at the heart of Scripture.

A Church of the Missing Verse
A Church Called Vav and Nun:

• Makes space for what’s unresolved.

• Listens for the silence between the lines.

• Refuses to hide the fracture or fabricate closure.

• Believes that Christ Himself is the Waw—the divine “And”—and that through Him, even the Nun will rise.

This section is only a beginning.
A whisper, not a promise.
A seed in the seam.

But even now, we believe:
The broken alphabet is not the end.
The psalm holds.
The Spirit breathes.
Christ fills the silence.
And from every missing verse,
new music will rise.

Stand Firm in the Word: Leadership In and Through Christ

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” — 1 Corinthians 15:58 (ESV)

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” — 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV)

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” — Psalm 31:24 (ESV)

Vision
Christians who continually nurture communities in Christ.

Goal
To be leaders in Christ—for our families, vocations, and communities—with a faith, hope, and love centered on Christ as revealed in Scripture and strengthened by like-minded Christians. Without pretension, to understand that Christ may write new parables through us for others.

Introduction
This reflection explores what it means to stand firm in the Word, cultivating leadership that is forged in Christ, formed by Scripture, and faithfully lived out through the Spirit. Leadership in Christ is not about titles or hierarchical authority but about a lifelong journey of nurture, ministry, and service. When we nurture communities in Christ, we minister; when we minister, we lead. And yet, it is always Christ who leads us.

The spiritual life requires courage, honesty, and humility. It also requires a deep and continuous return to the Word. Leadership in Christ unfolds not through domination, but through discipleship; not through control, but through confession; not through personal advancement, but through personal surrender. Therefore, leadership in Christ will often look unconventional—even paradoxical—defying typical markers of power or success.

Another essay, A Church Called Vav and Nun, explores how certain psalms, built as Hebrew acrostics, leave key letters—and their verses—missing. These structural absences, especially of the letters Vav (ו) and Nun (נ), become a theological metaphor: a sacred space where fracture is not failure, but invitation. In that vision, Christ Himself is the divine “And”—the Vav—who stands in the silence and fills what we cannot. It’s a vision of grace within brokenness, and of resurrection emerging from the missing line.

This present reflection does not fully develop that ecclesial image, but it is shaped by the same spirit. For even in leadership, we are not asked to be whole by our own strength. We are asked to be faithful—to trust that Christ fills the gaps, and that the Spirit leads even when the structure stutters. In this way, to lead in Christ is also to listen for the silence between the lines, and to believe that new music will rise.

We are invited to ask:

• Does this leadership increase mutual faith in Christ?

• Does it increase love of God and neighbor?

• Does it foster forgiveness, patience, and peace?

• Does it allow others to thrive as Christians in their families, vocations, and communities?

Let us, then, build ourselves into successful—and even unconventional—leaders, as we heed the encouragement from Hebrews: "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." (Hebrews 10:24–25, ESV)

A Communal Prayer
Jesus Christ is enough.
Let us continue to feed our own faith and the faith of others.
Let us understand it is not we who lead, but Christ.
In all levels of leading, in the future and now, let us boast only of Christ, and of His finished work, and of our salvation through Christ.
Let the Spirit teach us to lead ourselves and lead among others with a believing heart, and with continual forgiveness—
as we nurture the Spirit in others, abiding in Christ, into the Father’s embrace.

Leadership as Christ-Led Formation
Leadership in Christ depends upon a growth of personal characteristics—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These mirror both the fruits of the Spirit and the structure of emotional intelligence. But even these traits are not ends in themselves. They are signs of formation—formation by Christ, through Christ, and for the glory of God.

Indeed, Christ is not merely a model leader. He is the source and goal of all faithful leadership. He is the peace that transcends understanding (Phil. 4:7), the joy that is inexpressible (1 Peter 1:8), the love that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19). When we lead in Christ, our leadership reflects His life, death, and resurrection—and finds its root in His Spirit and its fruit in His Church.

Leadership in Christ often manifests through ordinary faithfulness. It may not be immediately visible or publicly acknowledged. It may not follow traditional patterns of influence. And yet, it can transform hearts, homes, and communities.

A Christ-Centered Reading of Scripture
Scripture must always be read through the lens of Christ. As Jesus taught, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me." (John 5:39, ESV)

From the first chapters of Genesis to the final vision of Revelation, Christ is the thread that weaves all of Scripture into a unified, redemptive story. He is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), the promised seed who will crush the serpent (Gen. 3:15), and the wisdom by whom the cosmos was ordered (Prov. 8:22–31). He is both the suffering servant and the victorious King.

When we engage the Old Testament, we are not simply uncovering moral examples or disconnected fables. We are seeking Christ. We are asking:

• How does this passage point to Jesus?

• How does it deepen our understanding of the gospel?

• How does it invite us to abide more fully in Him?

This Christotelic approach—an understanding that all Scripture finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ—shapes our theological vision, nurtures our spiritual imagination, and forms the basis of all true Christian leadership.

Apologetics: With Gentleness and Reverence
Apologetics—the defense and articulation of Christian faith—must begin in the heart, as further described in the video, A Defense in the Wilderness. As Peter writes, "I…but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy..." (1 Peter 3:15). This inward reverence is the foundation for any outward explanation. It reminds us that before we can speak to others about Christ, we must first be continually reoriented toward Him ourselves.

Apologetics, when misused, can become combative or prideful. But faithful apologetics protects and nourishes faith—ours and others'—by pointing always to Christ, not to our own understanding. It encourages us to defend our faith not merely against external challenges, but also against the subtle doubts and temptations within our own hearts. Our witness must be marked by gentleness and respect, never as a weapon but always as an invitation.

Christ’s own defense against Satan in the wilderness was not with argument but with Scripture. Likewise, our defense is rooted not in cleverness, but in the Word. In our vocations, friendships, and communities, apologetics becomes a form of nurture and service—another way to lead in Christ.

The Measure of Leadership
Leadership in Christ does not measure success by visible achievement. Rather, it asks whether our actions—no matter how small—help others trust Christ more deeply, love God more wholly, and live more fruitfully. Even the smallest act of forgiveness or encouragement may echo eternally in the Spirit’s work.

We should always return to the core questions:

• Does this increase love of neighbor?

• Does this reflect Christ’s mercy and truth?

• Does it encourage someone to rest more deeply in the gospel?

Even when we stumble, even when we are uncertain, Christ abides. Leadership in Christ is not about having all the answers. It is about pointing to the One who does.

Continuing the Journey
This reflection is not an endpoint. It is a beginning—a call to abide more deeply in Scripture, to nurture others in Christ, and to lead in ways both humble and holy.

As you move forward in your faith, ask:

• How is Christ calling me to lead today?

• What might faithful leadership look like in this season?

• How can I stand firm in the Word, even amid the ordinary rhythms of life?

May we boast not in ourselves, but in the cross of Christ. May we nurture communities not through control, but through compassion. And may we lead not by striving for greatness, but by resting in grace.

Christ is still opening ways beyond the expected.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
— Matthew 7:13–14, ESV

“So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”
— Hebrews 13:12, ESV

“The sun also rises, and the sun goes down…”
— Ecclesiastes 1:5, ESV

Introduction
There are many today—quiet believers, hesitant seekers, faithful servants—who find themselves outside the familiar gates of Christian institutions and movements. Not for lack of faith. Not for lack of longing. But because the path they walk is not one paved, lit, or clearly marked by others.

This reflection is for them.

It is not a protest. It is not a call to abandon the church—indeed, we greatly support local church life as essential to a healthy community—or withdraw into private truth. It is a quiet affirmation: the gate may be narrow, but it also rises. In unexpected ways.

We begin with the words of Jesus in Matthew 7. The way to life is not wide or obvious. It rarely aligns with what is popular, or powerfully endorsed. But Scripture doesn’t say there is only one institutional gate. It says there is a narrow one—and many miss it. And while Christ is the gate (John 10:9), we are often poor at recognizing the real entrance. We fixate on signs and signatures. We trust credentials and categories. We assume that visibility equals validity.

And yet, Scripture tells another story. It tells of a Messiah who was dismissed by experts. Of prophets scorned in their hometowns. Of the Son of God crucified—outside the gate.

In our time, there is a flourishing marketplace of Christian voices. Books, conferences, podcasts, platforms—many of them sincere, and often helpful. But none of them are the gate. And when they begin to act as though they are—curating not just ideas but access—we lose something essential.

Because the gate is not a personality.
It is not a publisher.
It is not a platform.
The gate is Christ.

And Christ is not bound by institutional lanes or human-lit paths. He appears in deserts. He walks with the wounded. He meets us on unmarked roads, breaks bread, and vanishes just as we recognize Him.

He didn’t write books.
He didn’t wear credentials.
He didn’t win awards.
He is the gate.
And we are to live by His lee, not line it with billboards.

Edges in the Pathway
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound,
but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
— John 3:8, ESV

Not every path winds through institutions.
And not every faithful witness comes with recognition.

The pattern throughout Scripture is unmistakable:
some of the most profound movements of God begin at the edges.

They rise from wildernesses and caves, from unpolished voices and overlooked towns. Not because God favors obscurity, but because His Spirit moves freely—and often beyond the structures we build to contain it.

• Moses, in exile.

• David, singing in caves.

• Hagar, seen in the desert.

• Ruth, gleaning in foreign fields.

• Jeremiah, ridiculed and rejected.

• Mary, misunderstood and magnified.

• Paul, doubted by both outsiders and insiders.

• And Christ Himself—dismissed as “the village carpenter’s son,” and ultimately crucified outside the gate.

Scripture does not romanticize marginalization. But it does reveal that the center of God’s movement is often found at the margins of human expectation.

The narrow way, the true gate—it may not be where we were told to look.

And while many human structures act as if they control access, they do not.

Gatekeeping and Grace
To be clear: gatekeeping is not inherently wrong. There is wisdom in discernment. It is good for pastors to guard sound doctrine. It is good for elders, editors, and teachers to test what is said, to weigh it against Scripture, and to preserve what is true.

But when discernment hardens into dismissal—
when intelligence combined with humility is ignored simply because it arises from outside a known circle, outside a clique—
when the instinct to protect turns into a reflex to exclude—
then something shifts.

It is no longer stewardship. It becomes insulation.
It is no longer care. It becomes control.

And that is not the way of Christ.

Jesus never mistook visibility for validity.
He spoke truth in synagogues and from fishing boats.
He taught in temples and on hillsides.
He dined with religious leaders and with those they called sinners.

And when He died, He did so outside the gate—where the unclean were sent, where the condemned were cast off.
And it was there that He sanctified the people through His own blood.

If the Church is the Body of Christ, then it must move as He did:
with arms open, not folded.
with a posture of listening, not filtering.
with the humility to say: “God may be working here, too—beyond what I see.”

From Gatekeeping to Gardening
The solution is something quieter—and far more faithful.

It is gardening.

Rather than fighting for space at the gates others have built, we take up the trowel and begin to plant.

• We plant where the Spirit leads.

• We water ideas born of prayer, study, silence, and song.

• We tend to the life in front of us—with both patience and trust.

• And we sing what the Psalms and prophets call a new song—
  not for novelty’s sake,
  but as an echo of something eternal breaking through.

This is not rebellion. It is renewal.
It is not rejection of the past. It is its fulfillment.
True faithfulness does not always walk the center aisle. Sometimes it grows along the edge of the field—fruitful, fragrant, unnoticed by many, but seen by the One who planted the first garden.

The good news is this:
The narrow gate is not hidden in the hierarchy.
The Spirit still moves—over quiet soil, in unguarded voices, among those willing to remain rooted, even when unrecognized.

A Word to the Seeker at the Edge
If you find yourself outside the gates—
of institutions, of the paths others affirm—
hear this:

You are not lost.
You are not disqualified.
And you are not alone.

The Kingdom of God is not built on platforms or proximity to power.
It is not accessed through academic credentials, bestselling books, or curated networks.
It begins—always—with Christ.
And Christ is not bound by what others have built.

The Spirit blows where it will.
The Servant walks outside the camp.
And the gate, though narrow, rises where He stands.

So keep walking.
Keep praying.
Keep tending the soil entrusted to you.
And if you must sing, let it be a new song—one that is still true.

“Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the end of the earth!”
— Isaiah 42:10, ESV

This new song is not reserved for those at the center.
It rises from coastlands, deserts, and distant places.
It is the response to the Servant who brings justice with gentleness and covenant through mercy.
It is sung not by those who presume to own the gate,
but by those who have found it—rising elsewhere.

Let them sing.

Let you sing.

And let the Church listen.

Because even if you’ve been shut out of the familiar gates,
the Gate also rises elsewhere.
And like the sun in Ecclesiastes, it rises again.

It rises quietly.
It rises persistently.
And it rises true.

https://youtu.be/gC9GmnNukLk

https://youtu.be/8jo9-L2xeFk

https://youtu.be/UjPR7mup8wA

https://youtu.be/pY5-jgDTXqY

https://youtu.be/-YGdOvyaT08

https://youtu.be/vLYIN5RNiu4

https://youtu.be/v_SUzZxSMtM

https://youtu.be/y8J6LS6kL0g

https://youtu.be/gBm_AdSeV5w

https://youtu.be/6jOBIrd2Nz0

https://youtu.be/RbSel82oF_U

https://youtu.be/2jjBoRhnhb0

https://youtu.be/qhLfS26JXkM

https://youtu.be/j2gYzTLN71I

This is where The Fisher of Courts begins:

https://youtu.be/iEP6A3feqsg

This short film tells the story of a forgotten relic: the Wilson Sledgehammer 2.8 Stretch — a racket born in the age of aces, designed to serve up unanswerable power.

But the Slammer, once a symbol of domination, now finds itself at a crossroads — repurposed in a game that has shifted:
from violence to rally,
from bluntness to conversation,
from monologue to improvisational grace.

It is a perfect emblem of transition — not only in tennis, but in the deeper rhythm of the Christotelic arc:
where the law gives way to the Gospel,
where zeal gives way to mercy,
and where righteousness, rebuked, is reshaped in love.

Told through motion, scripture, and restraint, this parable serves as the threshold piece for The Fisher of Courts.

A gospel in motion.
Filtered through tennis.
And shaped by the quiet grace that meets us — sometimes — at the baseline.

There’s a group of men who gather at the courts in the early evening.
Sometimes a dozen or more.
Not a league. Not a tournament. Just a loose federation of the willing—playing doubles, even triples, laughing, cheering each other.

Some are strong players.
Some can barely hold a rally.
But all are playing. All are known to each other. All were invited by each other.

And one evening, they emptied a court for my family —
without being asked.
They made space.

That small gesture lingered.

Because if we’re honest, inclusion doesn’t always come easily.
Even with family.
Especially with friends.
We calculate:
Who’s easy to have around?
Who might slow things down?
Who feels awkward to invite?

But Jesus doesn’t calculate like we do.
He says:
“But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”
(Luke 14:13, ESV)

Not for the return — but for the reflection of God’s welcome.

And Paul, interpreting the mind of Christ, tells the church in Rome:
“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
(Romans 15:7, ESV)

It’s not always simple.
But when in doubt — include.
When unsure — make space.
Not just for fairness.
But for joy. For witness.

For the Kingdom is heard in the soft clatter of a triple match,
and in the awkward but holy love of opening the court a little wider.

A Reflection on Restraint, Discernment, and the Wisdom of Staying Put

There is a strange pressure in our age — not to be still, but to optimize.
To switch rackets. Change strings. Add lead tape. Try something new.
To revise what already works, simply because we could.

But some of the wisest players resist this.

Carlos Alcaraz — arguably one of the greatest players of this era —
uses an unmodified, off-the-shelf racket.
No custom specs. No fancy retooling.
Just a tool he trusts… and learns from, day after day.

In tennis — and in life — the barrage of options can be paralyzing.
Not just in gear, but in daily choices:
Which path? Which priority? Which pursuit?

As Jesus said,
“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”
(Matthew 5:37, ESV)

But clarity isn’t always immediate.
We walk through paradox.
Grace doesn’t always feel like freedom at first.
Sometimes discernment means waiting —
not because we are passive,
but because God’s purposes are revealed slowly, faithfully, and often beyond the surface of things.

Jesus came not to uproot the old, but to fulfill it —
not to abolish the Law, but to draw it toward its telos in Himself.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;
I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
(Matthew 5:17, ESV)

This fulfillment is not a tightening of demands,
but a transfiguration of them —
Law through the lens of Gospel,
judgment giving way to mercy,
burden giving way to promise.

As Paul writes:
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
(Galatians 5:1, ESV)

A Lutheran sees this clearly:
The Christian is at once totally free and bound in love.
We are not justified by decisions, but by Christ.
And yet, in freedom, we are called to discern with care —
to resist the compulsion to change for its own sake.
To trust what we’ve been given.
To deepen, not diversify for its own sake.
To be still in grace, even when the world calls for motion.

And when Jesus critiques the restless dissatisfaction of His generation, He says — in imitation of the foolishness of the age:
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.”
(Luke 7:32, ESV)

Just because someone demands movement doesn’t mean it’s the Spirit’s cue.

And when the crowd still doesn’t understand, Jesus reminds them:
“Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”
(Luke 7:35, ESV)

Even the fruit of discernment can take time to grow.
Even the right “no” might feel uncertain at first.

So when the disciples, caught in the urgency of the moment, tell Jesus to send the people away,
He answers with unexpected stillness:
“They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”
(Matthew 14:16, ESV)

There it is again:
Not everything of the moment must be included.
Not every option is a required invitation.
Sometimes the path of wisdom is narrow.
Sometimes the freedom of the Gospel looks like restraint, not reactivity.

In a world that spins and markets and updates and admonishes —
sometimes Christ invites us to stay rooted.
To return to the familiar tool.
To receive what’s already in our hands.
To trust the paradox that standing firm is itself movement under grace.

And so, I swing the same racket I acquired —
given gracefully by my mother when I was sixteen.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:1, ESV

Not every tool is for every moment. Even a cherished instrument can betray us if summoned out of season.

This week, I stood behind the baseline, hand wrapped around the Wilson Staff 6.5 Si—the Ancestral Sage, as I call it. Given to me in 1990, it has weight, memory, and a stern kind of honesty. On the right day, my one-handed backhand sings from it—fluid and full-bodied. But not this day. My timing was off. Every backhand missed the mark, each swing a wooden thud.

And I realized: the instrument hadn’t changed—I had. And in that moment, what I needed wasn’t discipline, but mercy. I needed The Cushion—my Volkl V-Sense 4. That forgiving frame, light and dampened, would have caught me. It wouldn’t correct me, but it would hold space for grace until rhythm returned.

I’ve come to see my racket rotation not just as gear, but as a kind of parable. Each frame carries a distinct spirit. And choosing which to wield becomes an act of discernment—of listening to the season, the task, the body, the spirit.

The Lore of the Frames
The Sculptor – Wilson Pro Staff 97 v14. The primary. Precision and discipline.

The Cushion – Volkl V-Sense 4. The fallback. Comfort and forgiveness.

The Cannon – Wilson Hyper Hammer 5.2. The blaster. Lightweight power. For when energy wanes but purpose remains.

The Ancestral Sage – Wilson Staff 6.5 Si. The teacher. Demanding and full of memory. It rewards presence and punishes haste.

“We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
— Ephesians 2:10, ESV

God works through means. Christ healed with mud, with touch, with words. Paul wrote with parchment and pen, walked by foot, and relied on the hospitality of strangers. The instruments of vocation are not random—they are given, selected, chosen for a time.

Whether it’s tennis or calling, the question is not always “Which is best?”
But rather: “Which fits this moment, this task, this season?”

That is the discernment.
And discernment is never wasted.

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
— Philippians 2:4, ESV

There’s something gentle about a public tennis court.

The spaces are adjacent but not overlapping—four, or so, courts laid out in a grid of invisible boundaries. On each, a different story unfolds: a father and daughter sharing quiet joy; two retirees slicing soft volleys back and forth; a pair of teenagers hammering forehands like they’re playing for the French Open. And yet, across all this difference, there’s a common thread: a quiet curiosity, a shared decency, a kind of unspoken communion.

No one is watching each other, and yet everyone is aware.

A glance across the court isn’t competition—it’s acknowledgment. It’s the subtle, unspoken message: I see you. I’m here too. There is no striving against. No territorial resentment. Unlike sports where one group’s success intrudes upon another’s space, here the games unfold in parallel grace—not identical, but not antagonistic. Each court its own small kingdom. Each player a neighbor in rhythm.

And when a stray ball wanders across the lines—a humble intruder—it is not met with scorn, but with friendliness. A call of “yours” or “got it!” A quick toss back. A smile. The kind of moment where grace takes the form of an easy return.

There’s a generosity here, born not of effort but of posture. It’s not a cultivated virtue—it’s simply how things are when people share space with goodwill. The best players don’t dominate the atmosphere—they honor it. Even in their focus, they remain aware. This, too, is a kind of love: awareness without intrusion, confidence without comparison.

I find myself returning to these courts not just to play, but to witness. To observe how, in this unassuming grid of lines and nets, a model of neighbor-love unfolds. Not loudly. Not doctrinally. But truly.

And I wonder: what if the Church sometimes looked more like this?
Not a field of hierarchies or contests, or denominations, but a rhythm of adjacent courts—each player present in their game, aware of others, welcoming the occasional bounce that crosses the line.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life… to work with your hands… so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders…”
— 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12, NIV

This is the witness of the public court:
That we can live side by side, not in rivalry, but in rhythm.
That difference need not mean division.
That a stray ball can be a gift.
That neighborliness is not flashy, but it is holy.

Even a ball can make disciples of us—pulling us along a psalmic-to-apostolic path.

“The ball doesn’t have feelings,” the coach says—a phrase meant to build intention,
to unstick the swing.
And there is wisdom in it.
Confidence sometimes begins in detachment from what we are working with—or, sometimes, from whom we’re working.

But vocation is not best built on detachment.
Ideally, it begins in wonder—
in the possibility that even the object before you has a part to play in the story of creation.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. —Ephesians 2:10, ESV

To pair this verse with Psalm 1 is to understand that, in God’s created order, we are not stuck, we are not pinned—rather, we reflect into true freedom. In all we do. Even a game of tennis, rule-bound but permissive of the infinite we see in the night sky of Psalm 19.

Let’s come back to the ball. While saying a ball has feelings is no more valid than the reverse, let’s look at it this way: even a ball has a purpose. Not a soul, but a telos.

So later, as I rallied with my daughter after her lesson, I offer her another way of seeing it: maybe the ball does have feelings. Or if not feelings, then at least a role to play—and our job is to help it fulfill that role.

Let’s rally this through Psalms 1, 19, and 90. Let’s let the ball pull a thread into the tapestry of the court of play—the court of vocation… or micro-vocation—the little activities that nevertheless serve, and can also be doxological: acts of praise to God.

Psalm 1
Psalm 1 does not begin with action but with posture.
The blessed one does not rush to win, but walks not in the counsel of the wicked.
He delights in the law of the Lord—
a law not of burden but of ordering,
a Torah that draws one into the deep structure of life.
Like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in season.

And so the swing becomes fruit-bearing.
The follow-through—from which the ball is sent by the centered pop of the racket—becomes a kind of rootedness.

Psalm 19
Psalm 19 opens the sky. The heavens declare the glory of God—without speech, without words, and yet nothing is hidden from their voice.

In that same joy, the tennis ball moves—intention incarnate—if struck in time, in form, with care. And we, too, rejoice in its movement. Not because it wins the point, but because it fulfills its design.

And the law, too, returns in Psalm 19, mid-poem:
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul.
His precepts are right,
rejoicing the heart.

Here is doxological vocation:
to participate in the order that rejoices.
To help a thing move as it was meant to move.
Even a ball.
Even yourself.

Psalm 90
Psalm 90 speaks from the far side of strength: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

For our time is fleeting, but not forgotten.
God’s favor is not in the magnitude of our labor,
but in its rootedness, its direction, its offering. Down the line, or cross-court.

Benediction
So let the court become a quiet liturgy.
Let the motion of your hand become the echo of the hand that formed you.

This is the mystery: not that the ball has feelings, or lacks feelings—but that in helping it fulfill its purpose, we are drawn into ours in and through Christ.

And so we play on the court of doxological vocation:

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. —1 Peter 4:10–11, ESV

There’s one tennis court my daughter and I sometimes play on that stands apart—not because the surface is different, but because it is fully enclosed. Four high fences, a gate latched shut.

A kind of nest. Or maybe a family-sized crib.

The sort of space where movement is both protected and echoed, where boundaries aren’t merely limits but walls that hold something tender.

Yesterday, that court was occupied by a couple and a presence beyond them. Not just the third adult, who would emerge later, but the child—tucked in the nearby car under someone’s careful care. The man had set up a ball machine—meticulously, methodically. I imagined him a lawyer, not by behavior but by bearing. Perhaps it was the precision. The refusal of improvisation. The choice of mechanical rhythm over the unpredictable dance of direct play.

His wife—perhaps an office manager, again just an intuition—stood across from the machine at first, then beside him. They didn’t rally. They received. Together, side by side, they struck balls in parallel, training their timing in quiet tandem. Every so often, he’d walk back to check on the baby and the caregiver in the car.

Presence across thresholds.

Eventually, a third woman, the caregiver, emerged—mid-to-late twenties, perhaps a sister or friend—and the baby was brought in, placed in the stroller. The court held them all then. The nest grew fuller.

The ball machine resumed.

It was the choreography that stayed with me. The subtle, familial unfolding of roles—caregiver, partner, companion, player—rotated not with announcement but with quiet accommodation. The baby was simultaneously at center and distanced—protected, but never forgotten. Fully present but protected. A parental breather, and yet never truly a breather. Love stretched itself across the court, adjusting constantly.

The court became a mirror of family life. The net not a divider but a gentle reminder of order. And the game—not a game at all, but a form of presence, of structured motion beneath the deeper stillness of care.

The way we play tennis often reflects the way we live: sometimes turned toward each other in play, sometimes standing side by side, receiving from the same source. That day, the ball machine replaced competition. And the sameness of its feed made space for something else—watchfulness, solidarity, grace.

I thought of Jesus' words over Jerusalem:
“How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...” (Luke 13:34)

And of the Psalmist's assurance:
“God sets the lonely in families...” (Psalm 68:6)

Christ doesn’t only meet us in the spectacular. He enters the choreographies of our care—the borrowed courts, the plastic strollers, the unspoken handoffs, the small returns.

The enclosed court was not a retreat, but a sanctuary.

And love, that day, was both practiced and received.

It started with one boy. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Every time he won a point in the match, he’d loudly call out, “Come on!” or “Let’s go!” — or both together, in one sequence or another, reflecting his own variety of play.

At first, I thought it was odd. Maybe even a bit brash. Was he trying to needle his opponent? Draw attention? I glanced at the other parents… nothing. Not the faintest movement of a facial muscle. More odd. Had I stumbled into a French existentialist film?

Then, once the other boy began to rally back, I noticed something: he started doing it too. And before long, it wasn’t rivalry so much as rhythm — a way of putting a mark in the scorebook of the heart.

The parents and coach remained quietly courtside, almost somber, as if they were watching a match under library rules — or under the hard brow of Max von Sydow. No clapping, no cheers. Just the scrape of shoes, the thud of the ball, and these two young voices claiming their little victories.

It finally struck me: this wasn’t arrogance. It was survival. In the stillness of the court, they were finding a way to celebrate the moments that mattered.

The psalmist knew something of this:

May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions! —Psalm 20:5, ESV

And again:

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength! We will sing and praise your power. —Psalm 21:13, ESV

In both psalms, victory is celebrated — not as personal conquest, but as the work of God’s hand. The shout isn’t self-congratulation; it’s gratitude in motion.

That’s where the court and the kingdom meet. In the Christian life, we are called to meekness — but meekness isn’t silence in the face of grace. When God gives a victory, even a small one, it’s not pride to acknowledge it. It’s obedience. It’s joy.

As Paul writes:

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. —1 Corinthians 15:57, ESV

So maybe on some days, standing firm in the Word looks like quiet faithfulness, steady and unseen. But on other days — maybe more days than we realize — it also sounds like a voice on the court, calling out, “Come on! Let’s go!”

Not to taunt, but to remind ourselves and each other: the point is won, the match is still going, and God’s hand is in it all.

In the summer of 1990, my mother asked me a simple question:
“What would you like to take up and do?”

I was sixteen. Recalling a handful of lessons my grandmother had arranged when I was around ten, I said, tennis.

We went to a local tennis shop. I had high expectations for a new activity, but no real expectations for, well… what to expect. We spoke with the salesperson—surely an Andre Agassi disciple—and he began orienting us to their inventory. At one point, he pointed out a racket in particular:

The Wilson Staff 6.5 Si.

A serious player’s racket—95-square-inch head, flexy, head-light, built for control and feel. Not the sort of frame you buy lightly. Not the sort of frame my mom could easily afford.

Agassi-haired tennis shop employee: “Now this one here, the Staff 6.5 Si—it’s a sort of hybrid! A transitional graphite frame with a slightly higher beam stiffness, blending control with emerging power needs, featuring Wilson’s PWS and a 95-square-inch head that maintains precision while giving you a touch more forgiveness for modern baseline play.”

Me: “Cool color.”

And it felt nice in my hand.

That day, my mother bought it for me—$120 in 1990 money, which was no small thing. It was a beautiful act of grace, love, and encouragement. That summer, it became my companion, my teacher, my way into the game. I had just moved back to Texas, caught in the simultaneous holding-pattern and freedom of summer. I didn’t yet know anyone, and so I found a nearby tennis court with a backboard. I spent hours each day refining a forehand and backhand technique that I still use today.

And now, decades later, I hold the racket again—with a fresh grip, new strings taut with microfilament, its voice fully restored. The pop off the strings is a thing of beauty: not sharp or hollow, but a deep, resonant thock that seems to dwell for a moment in the air just before the sound innervates… everything. It’s the sound and feel of the ball finding a home before it leaves again—a kind of elemental handshake between you, the frame, and creation itself.

When I grasp the frame, I feel as though I am shaking hands with that sixteen-year-old kid. The weight, the balance, the feel—none of it has changed. And in that continuity, I feel the gift my mother gave me all over again. Not just the frame, but the invitation, the belief, the quiet sacrifice.

It’s more than nostalgia. It’s the recognition that some gifts become part of who we are—so that when they are restored, we are restored a little too.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
— James 1:17

God works through means. Sometimes through people. Sometimes through objects. And sometimes, through both at once—in one sequence or another, the variety of match play mirroring the variety of the Christic life in God’s created order. Above all, it reflects how an ordinary thing, given at the right time, can carry the extraordinary weight of love.

This racket is the Ancestral Sage—not because it’s old, but because it has taught me over the years. It reminds me that the things given in grace can become instruments of grace themselves.

And that in Christ, what is given in love is never truly lost.

August 9, 2025—evening
I was sitting outside in the early evening when my younger daughter mentioned an upcoming planetary convergence. I remembered our telescope—unused for nearly two years. I had splurged on it during the pandemic: a 9.25" Schmidt-Cassegrain with a range of eyepieces and filters.

Her interest in the celestial event was unexpectedly intense. She never mentioned the telescope, but I suspect it was already in her mind—she is as tactful as she is lovely. Still, the thought of it stirred a flicker of guilt. “Let me see about getting our telescope set up,” I told her, shifting my inertia from the patio bench toward the basement.

What followed over the next two hours was pure preparatory stewardship: removing the protective shroud, inspecting the scope, taking inventory of accessories, plugging in the mount’s charger, learning about a needed firmware update, and refreshing my memory on the Wi-Fi-linked app that guides the telescope. I even ordered a red-light headlamp.

I was in the basement so long, and so late, that my family turned off the light on me twice. “I’m down here!” I called up. “I’m getting the telescope ready.”

And I reflected on a thought I had earlier in the day, or perhaps yesterday: that I should apologize to my younger daughter that we had not used the telescope in so long. The thought had come unbidden, arriving in the usual activity of the day like a seed planted without my knowing.

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me.” — Psalm 139:1 (ESV)

August 10, 2025—morning
I am in a slight holding pattern, waiting for a mini USB type B to standard USB A cable for the firmware update. I vaguely recall a nest of such cords — three or four jumbled together — and, judging them clunky relics, I threw them out. Little did I know.

In the meantime, Valery Afanassiev’s performance of Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 18 measures out the kind of patience this moment requires, offering the same spaciousness I associate with celestial exploration.

My younger daughter, my soon-to-be astronomy companion, prepares a bagel — oversized for the undersized toaster — without disturbance or destruction to either. Her quiet resourcefulness assures me she will be the right partner for this renewed adventure.

“It’s already 9:30 this morning!” I say to my wife, who had planned to run errands by now.
“It’s only 8:30,” she replies, glancing at the clock, and then adds, “Keep your voice down,” reminding me that our older daughter is likely still asleep. I check my phone. She is right.

“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” — Psalm 27:14

August 10, 2025—8:53pm
Telescope firmware successfully updated — a process that, to my relief, turned out to be easier than expected, though still challenging enough to be enjoyable. There were multiple connections to coordinate: telescope to handset, handset to computer, downloads to acquire, files to transfer. Watching those lines of communication come alive was, in its own way, satisfying.

Fortunately, the USB cable arrived around 4:30 p.m., early enough to get the update done without rushing. That’s the good news.

The less-good news is that, at 8:53 p.m., the sky is still not fully dark. And the moon — our chosen first object to inaugurate this renewed adventure — is rising on the opposite side of the house from where my backyard setup would be. And by around 9 p.m., my habitual bedtime calls.

So, tonight’s story is one of tremendous progress in stewarding the scope to full readiness meeting the practical limits of the summer sky, the geometry of my backyard, and the rhythms of sleep. We will re-strategize in the coming days, watching for the convergence of a crystal-clear night and wide-eyed evening endurance.

August 10, 2025 — 9:00 p.m.
A few minutes after my last entry, I went to my younger daughter’s room—my co-astronomer—to suggest that we hold off until the previously mentioned “convergence”. My older daughter, overhearing, burst from her room and fast-tracked the re-strategizing process with, “Go outside! and have some fun!,” in a tone that was half bemused, half sincerely annoyed.

We are headed outside.

August 11, 2025—6:00 a.m.
The moon hovers beautifully in the early morning sky.

Coffee. I grab my binoculars. The “man in the moon” looks different than I remember—more Rorschach than man. This bodes well. Transfiguration. Possibility. Faithful originality. Witness. Praise.

“From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised!” — Psalm 113:3 (ESV)
And yet, “the sun knows its time for setting.” — Psalm 104:19 (ESV)

More coffee.

August 12, 2025—4:45 a.m.
“Let’s go ahead outside, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to yet… oh wow!!”

There it was—already about twenty degrees above the horizon—the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, less than my pinky’s width apart. Venus shone the larger of the two, both framed by clouds sketched in accent, as if the clouds themselves were radiating from the convergence. From a sort of celestial covenant—Jupiter much more massive than Venus, but smaller from our vantage point. Their places reversed to our eyes—the immense diminished, the lesser enlarged—as in the upside-down Kingdom itself.

I brought out my 10x50 binoculars, which I had set up on a tripod the night before, but the view was more or less the same as with the unaided eye. So we simply enjoyed the event without magnification, letting the sky speak for itself.

And I found myself asking: What do I make of this? Without any possibility of directly accessing these objects, beyond sight. In that moment, the objects became presence—shared with the person beside me. They gained significance in conversation, and thereby entered the heart.

My younger daughter heads inside, my wife joins me, my eldest daughter still asleep.

Four in convergence.

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?” — Psalm 8:3–4 (ESV)

August 14, 2025—evening
The North Woods, Wisconsin
Perfect darkness. We are far afield, on a family trip.
The Milky Way gleams. Moses must have seen such a sky when he composed the prayer of Psalm 90, and in the Spirit:

Before all this, You are God. Eternal renewal—we fly away toward the convergence of Heaven and Earth, and the work of our hands is established in You.

First recording expected early fall

She is caught in the mystery of string.
Her hands hold the pattern in place—not for a game, not for gain, but for the beauty of it.

And beside her, the dog watches—head lifted, eyes intent, body still.
Not out of training. But something like reverence.

Together they inhabit a sacred stillness, a shared silence not of absence but of attention, of abiding.

This sculpture, created by my mom in the later years of her life, lives now in a quiet corner of a display case in our home.

The girl, held in clay, is not rushing. She is not solving. She is not seeking distraction.
She is attending.
And in her attending—in the liturgy of her play—there is a kind of praise.
A wordless devotion found in the mystery of string.

At her feet lies a bundle of sticks. Not sculpted in clay, but real.
Gathered from my mom’s own backyard. This is not a mere accent. It is placement. Grounding. A way of rooting the eternal in the local.
A child’s play beside the tools of a day’s chore.

Perhaps she was gathering wood for the family fire—then paused, for a breath, for a game, for something she could not name.
And in that pause, creation resumed.

For play is not opposed to vocation.
It is often its echo, its rest, its human, holy improvisation.

In this way, the sculpture becomes more than a scene. It becomes a psalm. And the dog, like all of creation, joins in—not as servant but as a created being also caught in something eternal.

Even the sticks beneath her feet whisper Scripture.
A reminder that small things, gathered with care, are never too small to be sanctified, to be sacred.

“Truly I tell you,” said Jesus, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
— Matthew 18:3

To become like a child is not to abandon wisdom, but to return to the heart of it.
To trust. To attend. To play without performance. To notice.

This sculpture is not loud. It does not demand understanding.
It simply is.
And in that is-ness, it invites worship.

So we name it The Liturgy of Play.
Not because it seeks heaven,
but because it quietly reveals how heaven is already near.

***

In Remembrance of My Mom
The sculpture The Liturgy of Play was created by my mom, a lifelong artist whose eye for beauty and heart for quiet wonder shaped every facet of her life.

She earned her degree in art near San Antonio, Texas, and though her professional life often moved adjacent to the arts, her days were saturated with a creator’s eye—observing, gathering, arranging, delighting. She lived as an appreciator of color, form, texture, and gesture. And, like many true artists, she bore that quiet but critical discernment—never overbearing, always attuned.

When I was around six years old, she began working in ceramics in earnest. I remember her converted garage studio—adjacent to where I played, its floor patterned with flecks of clay, the potter’s wheel humming, the air filled with the earthy scent of drying vessels. She made it look easy, and I, of course, assumed it was. But when I tried, my hands couldn’t center the clay, or collapsed the form, and I began to understand: beauty is not an accident. It is a craft. A calling. A labor of care.

Over the years, she continued throwing pots, shaping glazes, firing pieces at the local community college—sometimes selling them at their annual Christmas sale at the college. Many of those pieces—unmatched and quietly exquisite—were sold so she could buy Christmas gifts for us, her children. Her art, in that sense, was not just beauty—it was provision.

In time, she turned increasingly to sculpture. Animals—especially dogs—became recurring figures in her work. These were not sentimental renderings but devotional portraits, full of warmth, stillness, presence.

I consider her one of the greatest followers of Christ I’ve ever known. In the way she lived—observant, generous, devoted—she bore His image faithfully.

And in this piece, The Liturgy of Play, her fingerprints remain. Not only on the clay, but in the posture, the wonder, the shared stillness of a girl and her dog. It is her heart, fired into form.

My dad carried a deep spiritual gravity—a reverence for memory, place, and the ineffable mystery that lingers just beyond sight. Some of his writing was rich with mytho-poeticism, generational memory, and the ache of mortality transfigured by wonder.

One of his final short stories, Sparks, stands as a haunting meditation on death, the spark of life, and the shimmering edge between this world and what lies beyond. Set in the northern woods of Wisconsin, it weaves mytho-poeticism with generational memory, personal reckoning, and the search for mercy in the wilderness of the soul. He wrote of a place where the veil thins, and something eternal flickers through the leaves.

He was also a man who, in a motorboat, would circle an anchored sailboat and extemporaneously sing “Yo Ho, Ho!” in a deep bellow, while the passengers looked on in bemused, mild concern—until they at last recognized my father, though never fully understanding why he had done what he just did. His mytho-poeticism was one that burst forth, and all you could do was join in or head for the hills. He refused to let the world shrink into predictability.

My theological work—shaped by Scripture, mystery, and poetic resonance—attempts to carry forward that same spark. The fire is different now, but the flame is related, if quieter. His story lives on not only in what I write, but in why I write: to trace the faint light of transcendence, to honor the mystery, and to speak faithfully from the banks of the river.

***

Sparks
by my dad, Karl Rubinstein
2011 winner of the Wisconsin Writers Association, Jade Ring Contest
Loon cries echoed in the dark. He shivered beneath the star-splattered sky that Binaakwe-giizis, the “Falling Leaves Moon” of the Ojibwe, would soon dominate. He lingered on the dew wet riverbank, staring up at Orion’s shining star belt and breathing in the marsh-grassy, lily-paddy odor of the river. Soon, Binaakwe-giizis would be full. Magic would ride the wind.

Recollection nudged. When was it? The last time all the family was alive together? He couldn’t recall. Too many years had passed away since he was a young boy, full of hope, basking in the loving warmth of family. But it was long ago, before he was an orphan, before he turned into the old man he now was, before he came here to die in these remote forested acres that lay inside the La Courte Oreilles Indian Reservation in Northern Wisconsin.

All dead, but he saw them last night as he sat at the campfire beside his cabin. Flames lapped cold air, sending smoke and red sparks twirling skyward, hot sparks that dimmed to yellow, then faded to nothing. The old folks had appeared in shadows gathered at the farthest reach of firelight where it merged with night-shrouded trees. Shy, the old folks eluded the glare, not wishing to intrude, yet wanting to see him. Acrid pine laden smoke assailed his nostrils and stung his eyes making him lose their images, but then they reappeared, each looking the same as when he’d seen them last; all except his father who appeared as a young man with well combed dark hair and a self-deprecating smile. Fire flash danced in black eyes as his father grinned and beckoned, “Come.”

He’d put down his glass, vodka sloshing against the rim, ice-cubes clacking in the stillness as he leaned forward, seeking a clearer view, a better look. But the images shimmered and disappeared, seeping away into darkness like the mist from the river where, according to his grandfather’s stories, evil spirits lurked and searched out the souls of young boys. There skulked the shape-shifter Wiindigoo, biding its time, dreaming of human souls and, sometimes, human flesh.

“Come.” A lonely idea hanging in calm air under a starlit sky that waited for the rising of Binaakwe-giizis. He shivered at the memory, remembered that the Wiindigoo’s power increased when full moons hung in the sky.

It had been the booze, he now told himself as tonight’s moon edged above the trees in the cold eastern sky, casting its yellow light upon the earth, turning the river into a golden pathway. Was it a coming pathway, or a going one? Did it lead in or out?

A sudden gust of wind rushed up the river and stirred fallen leaves on the riverbank, the raspy sounds mingling with the tannic scent of summer’s end. Leaves whirled against one another and scratched the trees; the red, gold, and brown of fall’s colors now pale monochromatic in the moonlight.

***

Morning sun glared through narrow cabin windows, lighting up dust motes riding cool air in the rustic one room cabin Gramp had built eighty-seven years ago. Insistent light stirred him awake and he lay gazing at the pine-sheathed ceiling, remembering where he was and why he was here.

He slid out of bed, in a hurry to pull on his flannel-lined jeans and his gray wool sweater. Thick socks soon encased his cold feet and he laced his boots, carefully pulling the rawhide ties around the brass hooks, tightening them until his fingers hurt, then double knotting the stiff laces. He eyed his cell phone lying on the rickety bedside table that was marred by burns from the days he still smoked cigarettes.

His gun leaned in the corner by the chipped, white enameled propane stove where his grandmother had cooked so many meals. The air by the stove shimmered and he saw her faint image holding her biggest cast iron skillet, stirring up a mound of scrambled eggs and bacon. The phantom odor of bacon made his stomach growl. Then the sight and smell were gone and there was nothing, only empty air and undead memories. He shrugged and coughed in the sun-splashed room, his visible breath swirling dust motes into crazy rhythms. The booze, he thought, but knew he hadn’t drunk that much. It was more complex than alcohol.

His rifle gleamed in the light, its oiled walnut stock and gunmetal blue barrel claimed his attention. As he pulled the gun away from the wall, a dark spider scurried across its web, dropping to the floor as the rifle tore away the flimsy gossamer. He smashed the spider, telling himself it might be a Brown Recluse.

He hefted the rifle, rubbing his palm against the smooth wood of the Remington 700 CDL, loaded with one hundred forty grain, soft point cartridges. These would exit the rifle’s twenty-six inch barrel with a muzzle velocity of over twenty-seven hundred feet per second, more than enough to knock down a deer.

A sharp whiff of gun-oil took him back to the day Gramp had shown him how to clean a rifle--the same day he’d killed his first deer. Now, it was deer season again and he’d brought this new rifle.

He should already be out in the woods. A hunter needed to leave before dawn, quietly slide through brush and hanging tree branches, take his position, and await a big buck with a wide pointed rack of horns. But he hadn’t gone. The mystery of the spark of life was on his mind.

The spark of life: that mysterious something that converted dust to life, that animated random collections of minerals, amino acids, water, and whatnot. Was the spark of life in the deer different from that in the man? Or the spider?

His cell phone rang.
“Daddy,” said his daughter’s anxious voice, “where are you?”

Annie. Sweet little Annie, the blessing of earlier years, now a mother herself with two rambunctious boys that ganged up on him when he knelt down on the carpet to wrestle, pummeling him with tiny fists, yelling that they would teach him a lesson he’d never forget. And they did, and he didn’t. But now it was too late.

“I’m at the office.” Poor reception made his voice echo.
“No, you’re not. I called there. Margaret said you’d left four days ago.”
“Well, I’m out to lunch.”
“Daddy…I…” She began to weep, long ragged sobs he knew she was trying to stifle as she had always done when she was little and ashamed to let him see her cry. “Daddy, you’re up at the cabin, aren’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s Mommy’s birthday. You always go there on her birthday.”
“Yes, but she’s dead now.”
“I know Daddy. Won’t you come here? Won’t you be with us?”
“Can’t.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m alright Annie. Sweet Annie. I’m fine.”
“No you’re not. I hear it in your voice. What did the doctors say?”
“I’ve got to go now Annie. Say hi to Joe. And my little buddies, tell them I’ll win the next match, that I’ll…”

He shut off the phone as the stabbing pain cut through his lungs like icy revenge. He let it slash its way through him until it finally dissipated, leaving him breathless and weak like the old man he’d become.

The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.

Robinson Jeffers wrote the lines, but he knew they applied to him as much as anyone. He was an arrogant man; had been that is. He could not expect mercy and there was no point in asking for it. Cancer. It was going to suck at his essence until it quenched the spark within him, until it left him as dead as that dark crushed spider over in the corner of the cabin.

***

Mid-morning produced hard-driven rain, accompanied by pounding thunder and lightning intermittently flashing up the room. He loved this violence that seized the earth, making his pulse throb, vibrating his heart to the rhythm of high sky booming.

The rain stopped in the afternoon and he pulled on his parka with the white fur-lined hood, picked up his Remington, and started for the deep woods. The sun illuminated thousands of crystal rain beads clinging to the bare branches of hardwoods and to the green fronds of pine and cedar. They resembled diamonds that could be picked like fruit and strung in the long flowing hair of a beautiful girl, like the girl his wife had been when they were young and first came here.

He shoved into the forest, his heart sad and his breathing labored and panting; stamping over long fallen dead trees and pushing through winter bare underbrush until he reached his hill, a hummock rising ten feet over the surrounding elevation. He’d found arrow heads there, left by the Ojibwe when they’d hunted food or fought Sioux for the rights to the land and the wild rice that grew in the river.

He hunkered down, leaning his back against the red granite boulder dominating the hilltop. The rock was hard and cold against his back. The rifle clicked metallic loading sounds as he worked the bolt, chambering a pointed, soft tip bullet. He watched the clearing in front of him, knowing the deer trail crossed it still, as it had always done.

This had been Ojibwe Indian land, a part of the reservation when his granddad bought it. The Ojibwe had controlled this place since the late seventeen hundreds when they finally chased away the Sioux with whom they had contested ownership for three hundred years.

He shifted his position against the rock that had grown colder and harder against his spine. He should have brought a pad. He massaged his stiffened legs, wiped snot from his nose onto the sleeve of his parka where it left a shiny snail trail. The wind flared, knocking a shower off nearby pine branches and the cold water splashed his face, then trickled down his neck. Hell! It’s stupid being out here. And hunting. For what?

His thoughts choked away when he saw the massive buck. It appeared between eye blinks, poised at the edge of the clearing, its nostrils quivering, testing the air. But he was downwind from the buck and soon the deer paced softly into the clearing. He rubbed his eyes and tried to breathe softly, to be as still as death. Twelve points. A prize buck.

He raised his rifle, laying his unshaven cheek against the cold wood, sighting along the barrel over open iron sights. Easy shot. Easy squeezy. His finger gently tightened on the trigger.

But he couldn’t do it. Knocking out that spark of life was more than he could stand. The idea of the buck lying dead, no longer a proud and perfect specimen of its race, burned his mind. He clapped his hands, the sharp sound echoing off the trees and across the clearing, and the buck bounded into the woods and out of sight, leaving only the fading sounds of flight.

He stood on trembling legs, his muscles aching and uncooperative, then followed his own trail back to the cabin, toting the gun over his shoulder even though he knew he would never kill another animal with it. But it had other uses.

***

There was no electricity. Gramp had refused to put it in, preferring to light the cabin with kerosene lamps. He now struck a large kitchen match against the rough wall and it snapped to life emitting sulfurous smoke as it flared. Soon yellow kerosene flame lit the cabin, yet the far corners of the room clung to their darkness. He spied the cell phone he’d left on the table and ignored it.

He opened a can of stew, heated it on the propane stove, and spooned it onto a paper plate he’d found in the cabinet. He ate at the small round table where, as kids, he and his cousins had played canasta and rummy with Gram and Gramp. He poured a drink from his bottle of vodka and paused to remember the cousins, almost all dead now.

Shaking his head, he sopped up the last of the stew’s gravy with a piece of bread and dumped the paper plate into the black plastic garbage bag he’d hung on the rusty nail next to the stove, just then noticing the plate was festive with colorful birthday balloons from some forgotten party. As he turned away, the movement made him dizzy. A spiked fist squeezed his lungs and he had to sit down. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. He pulled his pills from his shirt pocket, swallowing two with a slug of vodka. His age-spotted hands gripped the edges of the table as he waited.

When the pills and vodka kicked in, he let himself slide into the fuzzy wonder of painlessness. Washed up. Face it. Maybe he should have an accident: mixing too many pills with too much booze. Ride this foggy flow into eternity.

He tilted the glass bottle of clear liquid against his lips and took a long pull, then glanced around the ancient cabin, seeing visions of the past that reached for him. His barely focused gaze fell upon the cell phone lying on the table. He tried to pick it up, but it skittered away across the scarred wooden surface. When he managed to retrieve it, he saw he’d missed six calls, all from Annie. He thumbed the key for voice mail.

Annie’s voice was controlled, “Daddy, we’re coming up there. Day after tomorrow, we’ll be there. Someone wants to say hello.”
Then the two boys, their high voices laced with childish adoration,
“Hi Gramp. Hi, hi, hi. See you soon. We’ll catch fireflies. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha. Kick your butt…”
Annie interrupted with a giggling, “Boys, watch your language.”
Shrill childish laughter. “Kick it good. Yeah, yeah, you bet.”

***

Late the next morning, he shoved his red canoe into the river and climbed in. He kept the craft tied to the rickety wood dock by a thirty-foot rope and he lay on his back in the canoe bottom, his rifle beside him, watching skittering gray clouds race across the pale sky. The current pulled the canoe downstream until, at the end of his rope, the canoe jerked to a halt and yawed back and forth, stern high, in the powerful stream. The steady undulation was hypnotic, as soothing as being in his mother’s lap as she sat on the porch in the oak rocking chair. But the sleek rifle dug into his side, forcing him to acknowledge its presence, its purpose. He lifted it and stared into the black hole of its muzzle. How fast is twenty-seven hundred feet per second? Pretty damn fast, that’s what. Hell, if he sat up, put the muzzle to his ear, and pulled the trigger it would all be over. Would he hear the bang? What’s the speed of sound? What’s the sound of helplessness?

But he couldn’t do it. He had Annie to consider and the boys even more. He couldn’t hang the rotting albatross corpse of their Grandpa’s suicide around the kid’s necks for the rest of their lifetimes. Thinking of them eased his mood. Funny little guys they were; aged six and four, and so open, so unaffected, so new. His fishing buddies, his shipmates. The ones who pulled their punches even at this age as they pummeled him in their roughhousing, teaching him lessons he would never forget.

And beyond all that. Wasn’t there some obligation to the spark of life itself? Some duty to preserve that invisible, untouchable, unreachable essence of existence?

Depends on circumstances.

He held the gun across his chest and watched the clouds as the canoe rocked him in the gentle arms of time. He dozed an old man’s nap and, when he woke, sat up and looked around. Sadness, then defiance seized him. He stood in the precarious canoe, raising a gnarled fist, “John! My name is John,” he shouted out to nothing, to everything. “I’m John...I’m John.”

He knelt and tugged on the rope, pulling the canoe to the dock. He smiled as he muttered, “I guess every rope has two ends.”

***

That night Binaakwe-giizis floated with full-moon glory above the horizon and he stood by a wide-spread oak watching, holding his rifle. He shivered from his memory of Gramp’s tales about Indian ghosts dancing beneath full moons. He’d told those same stories to Annie and to his grandsons so that someday they would pass them on to their grandchildren. Gramp to Gramp to Gramp, down the rolling years.

Nights like this were prime prowling times for ghosts and the Wiindigoo. The notion of a soul-stealing, shape-shifting, flesh-eater pumped fear, like electric snow, into his blood. He shivered, shook it away. Silly bastard. The Wiindigoo is already inside you, eating your flesh. What do you have to worry about?

A twinkling light flashed down by the dock, making him peer through the darkness, trying to discern what it was. He walked toward it--closer…closer. Then he stopped, raising his gun, pointing it at the apparition of an Indian in full Ojibwe regalia: face streaked red and black, long-fringed buckskins, spiked hair with feathers sticking straight up and some hanging down along his prominent cheeks. Black eyes watched as compulsion seized him and he cocked his gun and fired, the muzzle-flash lighting up the trees and the boom of the shot reverberating in the night.

The apparition emitted a deep rolling laugh and said, “Missed.”
“My God! I didn’t mean to shoot,” John called as he rushed to the river.

The Ojibwe’s smile was a crooked leer and he stood at the riverbank, regarding John with knowing eyes. An aura of faint light sheathed the Indian. Cold darkness enfolded John. The two figures stared at one another as an owl hooted and something big splashed in the river.

“How could I have missed?”
“Maybe you didn’t.”
“Who are you?”
“I have many names, all of them secret. John is your name.”
“How do you know my name?” “I have always known your name, as I knew your father’s name and your grandfather’s name, as I know your daughter’s name. Annie. She will come in the morning. Also, your grandsons and your son-in-law, Joe. All.”
“Have you seen me before?”
“Many times. I saw you yesterday when I walked into the clearing and you didn’t shoot.”

John said nothing, knowing it was true, knowing who this was. Bright moonlight revealed the Ojibwe’s colorfully embroidered buckskins and flashed on the red, white, and turquoise beads of his moccasins. The Indian extended his arm with its up-facing closed fist. Light filtered through clenched fingers.

Wind whistled in the trees and whipped moon-flecked ripples on the river. Primal fear laced frigid air as John struggled to work his lungs. But he realized he was beyond terror’s reach, and the knowledge calmed him.

John stared at the light, entranced as the Ojibwe slowly opened his fist revealing a yellow, glowing softball shape of brightness that writhed, straining against its own edges.

The light hit the Indian’s face, deepening the furrows at the corners of his mouth, darkening his eye sockets. A broad smile revealed sharp teeth.

“Wiindigoo,” John whispered. “You are Wiindigoo.”
“Maybe.”
“And you are holding souls in your hand.”
“These are sparks of life.”

A deep bayonet-stab of agony pierced John’s chest and his knees gave away. He slumped to the wet ground, transfixed by the glowing orb that was now held out towards him. A bright tendril of yellow light left the brightness in the Wiindigoo’s hand and weaved towards John. A red reciprocal light oozed from John’s chest to meet the yellow light. The yellow absorbed the red that flowed and flowed from John.

Darkness seeped into John’s mind, pulling him down into a black, empty place and John’s last sight was the Wiindigoo’s grinning face with its white sharp teeth.

***

Annie, Joe, and the boys arrived at sun-up, driving down the long dirt road winding through the woods to the cabin. Strong morning sunbeams filtered through the trees like multiple yellow searchlights.

“I hope he’s okay,” said Annie. “He was so pale and full of pain when we saw him two weeks ago.”
Joe replied, “He’s a tough old bird.”
The boys laughed with glee. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Tweet. Tweet. Tough old bird. Ha. Ha.”

The bright morning did nothing to ease the dark sense of dread within Annie or the cold fear that had possessed her heart since the last phone call with her father. Please, please, let him be okay. Please.

Their red Ford Explorer crested the last rise and the small lonely cabin was finally in sight. Stillness ruled the clearing. Nothing moved until Joe stopped the car and Annie burst from her door and ran to the cabin, her high-topped leather boots scattering the morning dew. The door was ajar and no one inside.

Panicked, she rushed out into the daylight, her wide blue eyes casting anxious glances. She stumbled through the dying camp-fire, strewing bright sparking embers that quickly died.

She looked toward the river and saw it.
An odd, motionless form on the dock.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Please. Please.
She ran to it, calling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

He put down the rifle and turned his smiling face upon her. He stood tall and straight, his skin smooth and glowing with health. Two eagle feathers were wound into his gray hair and he wore red, white, and turquoise beaded moccasins.