As opposed to me—well, when I do similar things I download a habit tracker app on my phone, add in things, and progress is less, umm—linear. I showed her my app recently and she put her hand over her face and said “I could never…”

Different strokes, as they say.

Anyways, she was telling me about one of the things on her goal list recently. The concept is to, at the end of your day, pick out one moment of your day that you were grateful for, find some quiet, and relive that moment in your mind like a movie scene.

Replay the whole moment, let it simmer in your mind, and thank God for it. For this beautiful scene in an ordinary day.

I asked her how it was going, and she raved about it. How helpful it is specifically to end your day like that.

I have been thinking about it since. Because in a way, we are all filmmakers when you stop to think about it. We can’t help it, we are storytellers at heart.

But there are two distinct categories of things:

• One, there is the bare facts and happenings of our lives—the characters around us, the plot points. While…

• Two, there is the editing. The slicing and dicing of footage. The narration we assign to a day or a year or a life. Some stuff gets brought to the surface, and other stuff hits the cutting floor with the other forgotten moments.

And let me tell you, the editing makes a big difference. I’ve seen people who—while living the exact same life—move the vibe of their film significantly.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a person who rehearses the worst or most upsetting parts of their day while winding down is going to have a different outcome than a person who intentionally finds a bright spot in their day and relives it while thanking God for it.

Which brings me to another question: why, upon hearing this incredibly helpful idea, didn’t I immediately, you know—do it? Or at least add it to my habit tracker app to do sometimes—much to the dismay of my perfectionist wife?

I think the answer lies in what a friend of mine used to say: Insight is not change. Insight often feels like change, but it is most certainly not. Change requires acting, through all the resistance outward and inward, on the insight attained.

Insight is free and feels good. Change is hard-won and gritty.

Add to that the reality that we’re not exactly short on ideas to improve our health in all the areas. The question of why don’t I read my Bible more or eat more protein could be subbed in. We are generally not short on insight today and have to do the work of discerning which things we genuinely need when the amount of possibilities could overwhelm someone living an actual life.

But I had another thought about the gratitude scene thing that unfolded in real life last night. Right before our kids’ bedtime, my 12 year old daughter asked me to go watch her do flips on the trampoline. I was tired and ready to get things moving along but I had the sense to know she is growing up before my eyes and half the time is already too busy or cool for me and this is one of those things I should absolutely say yes to.

So we sauntered out into the still oppressive July heat and I sat down and watched her try to get something called “a full.” She only got a half, which was plenty impressive to me. Then she asked me to play a song so she could show me a dance routine she made up. She said the song is called “Unwritten” and that it was from “the olden days,” which made me laugh. Afterward she did another routine to the song “Cotton Eyed Joe” and then I clapped for her performance.

And the whole time I was watching her, I was thinking, “This is it. This is the moment I would replay if I was doing the gratitude scene thing!”

And I realized that, at least for me, sometimes the reason I don’t notice those moments more respectfully in real time is that there are often other things in the scene.

Tonight it was all the things I need to do in our backyard. The grass that needs to be cut. The large limbs I chopped down that were overtaking our fence that I have to find some way to haul off to save paying someone to do it. The repairs on the trampoline we bought during Covid that my kids have lovingly almost destroyed. The half of our grass that is dead because of said trampoline.

All of those things were there, vying for my attention, while my stunning little girl was doing flips in her pajamas. But when I realized I was in the scene none of them mattered at all.

Most of the time, it’s something else. It’s the stress I’m bringing into the moment I suddenly want to soak up. The to do list, the thing I have to get to next, the difficult conversation from that day, the worries, the phone, the knot in my upper back, the whatever.

I don’t know if I will start doing the thing my wife is doing. We will see if it makes it onto my app and how many bubbles I miss if so. But what I do know is that I want to get better at making sure I notice those moments in daily life when they happen.

To stop ever so briefly and announce to myself, “This is it—this is a moment you don’t want to forget. A moment that should make it into the movie, because it is screaming to you that this is the day that the Lord has made, and you should rejoice and be glad in it.”

Here’s to being better editors.

The town I grew up in, at the time, did not have soccer. I played football and baseball through high school but was always a bit confused by the world’s most popular sport, thinking it must be some highfallutin’ European thing where a draw (tie!) is…celebrated?

To be honest, it’s taken me most of my 41 years to truly appreciate the game for what it is (my kids playing helped that tremendously—though it took me a while to come around to offside being a good thing).

But this year’s World Cup, hosted here in North America, has been the first time I’ve truly, fervently followed this event and to keep it short, I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

The pageantry.

The passion of fans from all over the world that sometimes makes rabid college football fans seem tame in comparison.

The stunning difficulty of getting that little ball into that big ol’ net.

The thunderous, stadium-shaking response when it does.

HOW MUCH FUN PKs are to watch.

But if you are anything like me—almost equally as fun as the games has been the steady stream of social media content by people from other countries visiting here for the first time and being like, “Umm…this place is kind of amazing you guys…”

Far from the negative perceptions they had received through media, they found our country gorgeous, our stadiums awe-inspiring, our BBQ otherworldly, our Walmarts and Costcos unthinkably large, and most importantly our people warm and hospitable—not to mention the evident genius of something as simple as…ranch dressing.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve seen stories highlighting the head-turning things that visiting nations do, like Japanese fans cleaning up stadiums, Uzbekistan fans parading through Houston on horseback in full armor to show a vibrant aspect of their culture to locals, the Iranian team leaving behind pristine locker rooms and thoughtful thank you notes to their host cities, or Scotland’s Tartan Army raising money for local charities.

And recently, while thinking about all of this, these verses came to mind from Revelation 21 about the New Jerusalem that will one day descend from heaven when Christ reunites heaven and Earth:

And I thought, how cool is it that we, in a small way, get to see a glimpse of what is coming that day, when the redeemed from all peoples of the Earth bring their own particular glories into that great city?

Their colors, their languages, their honor?

I thought of the ending of one of my favorite novels, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, where (spoiler alert) the main character, an asthma-ridden boy named Rueben Land is on an operating table and has a vision of what those verses describe.

He sees different nations marching toward a boisterous homecoming in a distant city, each in their own attire, a history-sweeping mosaic. Their individual identities are intact and heightened as they laugh and sing and celebrate in their march toward the New Jerusalem.

Music seems to be coming out of the land itself, Reuben thinks, in a way that propels him toward the city, asthma-free. (I’ll save other details in case you haven’t read—)

"Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation..."

"I felt prodded to appear before the master. The place had a master! Realizing this, I knew he was already aware of me—comforting and fearful knowledge. Still I wanted to see him. The farther I went the more I seemed to know or remember about him—the way he'd planted this orchard, walking over the hills, casting seed from his hand."

Excerpt from Peace Like a River

The scene—emblazoned in my memory since I first read it 15 years ago or more—is a global family reunion of sorts. A parade of unspeakable glory, onward to the Master, the likes of which the world has never seen.

And, so—back to the World Cup—quite meager in comparison to that but still a cool glimpse of what is to come for those in Christ.

When I hear fans sing “Country Roads, Take Me Home” post-match, I think about, well, a different—more lasting home. One that is still this radiant Earth we adore, but far better.

When I hear the gathered nations sing their national anthems, most of which I’ve never heard and don’t understand a word of, I think about this scene:

I think about how wonderful it is that we have a God who loves the nations. That God so loved not just one nation but “the world,” that he gave his only begotten Son for them. For us—all of us Gentiles blessed to be included in God’s cosmic rescue plan.

He loves the many fellow Americans I’m thankful to share a country with and he loves my son from China and he loves my dear friends from Iran and he loves my neighbor from Bulgaria and my other neighbors from India—and he will see to it that he is worshipped in every one of those languages and countless more until we do so on that great coming day when we as his redeemed march toward that city and bring our different glories into it.

I’ve always sensed that we have some glories worth keeping in the New Heavens/New Earth. How much more real and glorious might our mountains and beaches and canyons be there, when all creation is redeemed and perfected in God’s eternal delight?

But at the same time, I never would have thought that one of the glories we Americans might bring in would be ranch dressing or biscuits and gravy, but you know what, maybe so…

And, in the meantime…go USA!

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Food.

There’s a way in which you can know a fact like that but not appreciate it, like you can know many facts without feeling the full weight of them. But then when I imagine what today—day 36 of having no food—would have felt like for him…it hits different.

What did his body feel like, on day 36? What did his mind feel like? I almost start to feel lightheaded when I skip a meal or two, I can’t imagine after 108 meals…

Christ is tougher than me. It’s a thing I know, but also something I forget. Christ has suffered more than me. Christ knows pain far more than I know pain. Christ knows the disorientation of hunger, the pangs of thirst and deprivation far more than me.

Sometimes I think we downplay the challenge and pain of Christ’s humanity due to his dual nature, to him being the Son of God. As if his divinity somehow made hunger not scream as loud, nails not hurt as much—but the Bible offers us real tears, real blood, real screams, and a death every bit as real as our own.

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Recently I went to Kenya to work with Agape Children’s Ministry, a beautiful ministry in a stunning country (that I intend to share more about).

One day while in country, we were driving down a random street, looking at a view common in developing nations, homes built from block and metal—fires roasting in small yards where a goat or chicken might roam—and I had this thought.

The thought was simple: “The way Jesus lived on this Earth is far closer to how they live than how I live.”

It was one of those obvious-in-hindsight, but somehow fresh thoughts. It landed on me as a “huh.” It stuck with me. Still sticks with me.

That thought morphed into another statement that kept ringing in my mind throughout the whole trip, a sing-song, metronome rhythm that went like this:

If * I * lived * when * Je * sus * lived * I * could * not * drink * the * wa * ter.

14 syllables bouncing off of one another in poetic cadence that just kept bouncing through my mind as we drove through Kenyan cities and villages.

I’m a pastor and being a pastor doesn’t keep me from sinning, doesn’t keep me from believing untrue things about God, doesn’t keep me from sometimes keeping some distance with God about a particular thing, because of the ever-tempting thought that we sometimes don’t even think but feel:

“He doesn’t understand…couldn’t possibly understand…”

But I pictured Christ sitting there, in a dusty, earthy country. With nowhere to lay his head. A Christ who knows what its like to be unbathed in a place where the dust sticks. Who knows what it’s like to roast real fish, eyes and all, over a fire for breakfast.

Who knows what it is like to be hungry, starving even—to be dreadfully thirsty, to experience excruciating longing for relief, to be a man well acquainted with grief.

That picture battles so much of the unrealities that enter our minds when we think about him.

In reflecting on this, I wrote this kind-of-poem (which I hope is some part encouraging or amusing).

if I lived when Jesus lived, I could not drink the water.

He might look at me retching ancient bugs

and say, “Modern stomachs, huh?”

time to go to sleep, I might look at him,

say “Jesus, umm…my memory foam mattress?

my perfectly contoured pillow (to reduce neck pain)?”

and he might smile at that, at me, and pat

a pallet on the hard and unforgiving ground.

if I lived when Jesus lived, I might ask

“how much farther, Jesus?

I am down to follow you but my

knees hurt in anything but Adidas…”

It would be cold at night, and my friends

could tell you I don’t thrive under 50 degrees.

yes, Jesus, of course I fast—if we’re talking

16:8 but lunch at 11 keeps the hangry away

i’m not so sure how I’d do if I lived when Jesus

lived, knowing lunch has to be cleaned & cooked

but sometimes chased & butchered too

i would miss Trader Joes tea tree shampoo,

hot showers and hot coffee—a proper toothpaste—

but I think he would look at me across a

Middle Eastern fire, hair greasy but eyes

that aren’t, and I think he would smile

because while the ground is hard and unforgiving,

he is not.

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The hard-won toughness of Christ, through hunger and deprivation and betrayal, turned out to be needed practice for the real test at the end of his life. He begged his friends to stay up with him, to watch and pray in Gethsemane, while he sweat drops of blood and pleaded with God for another way.

They could not even resist sleep—and who am I to think I could either.

“And he came to them and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.” -Mark 14:40

“They did not know what to answer him.” What a relatable feeling.

Christ then marched a prisoner’s march, the shepherd alone while his sheep scattered, to humiliation and torture. Christ the man suffered abuse from the hands of those who hit him in the head with reeds, spit on him, knelt in mock submission while Christ the Son of God found a way not to call legions of angels to torch the place.

Because Lent leads to Good Friday, as it always does.

I don’t know what you are going through or what doubts you battle. But we would do well to wrestle with the toughness of Christ, the hunger of Christ, the blood-sweat of Christ, the tears of Christ, and the screams of Christ on the cross—all of which seem like heaven forbidding us to ever think that God does not care.

That we would be foolish to ever push out the arms of our minds and think that he does not understand.

I wasn’t sure, at that young age, how two people who loved each other that much could be separated. If the universe would even allow it, or if time and space would no longer compute. It felt as if life had an error code, but still refused even the smallest of delays.

I picked up my grandmother for church one Sunday night not too long after. Through her screen door I saw her get up from her kitchen table, her mouth moving in speech.

“Who were you talking to, Mema?” I asked as she got in my truck.

“No one,” she said, and it broke my heart.

My truck still went in reverse, and gravel still crunched beneath it.

“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

That’s what my wife, whom I adore, used to say to me sarcastically when we were young—when I would point out something that bothered or frustrated me.

One of those things, early on, was her tendency to put Incredibly Large Things in Incredibly Small Trash Cans.

I would be like, “Honey, you know that if you put a Clorox bottle in a bathroom trash can then…that means…you can’t put a single other thing in it…

…thus defeating the purpose of a trash can?”

“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” she would say.

Then there were the thermostat wars.

We lived in a very old house, which may as well have had screens for windows. My wife, who is frugal and tough, and also part Eskimo it seems, would turn the thermostat down so low in winter that I would take pictures of it and post it to social media looking for some help talking sense into her.

I would turn it up, she would turn it down. I would turn it up, she would turn it down. Thus we went, good-naturedly, with laughs and eye rolls, back and forth. I’m sure it was terrible for our HVAC, but we were in our twenties—a good excuse if you ever need one.

“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

Jason Isbell’s song If We Were Vampires has always caught in my throat. “Maybe we’ll get forty years together,” he sings, but what we have can’t and won’t last forever.

If we were vampires and death was a joke
We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke
And laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand

The thing is, though, that we often do act like we’re vampires. Like this could possibly go on forever. That the time and the days are not precious.

I was writing some content for young married couples recently, and one of the points I put in was “Know your spouse is a gift on their worst day.”

The idea was this: Take your attention to a day in the future. It might be 50 years from now, it might be 5 years from now. There’s no way to know. But this day, if you are married, is the last day you will have your spouse here on Earth. 

That will be a day of perfect clarity. You will feel with all the weight what you have lost. And what you will instinctively realize in that moment is that your spouse was always a gift given to you by God. 

Not a perfect soulmate to complete you, not someone to make you happy every day, not a robot that suits every preference you had, but a wonderful, real, live gift given to you by God. To help you grow. To put the gospel on display through unfailing love and forgiveness. To put his faithfulness on display through your continual faithfulness through thick and thin. A gift.

A decade or so into marriage, I admitted defeat. I said, on a random day, “You know if anything ever happened to you, I would walk through our house and absolutely despair over the amount of room left in our trash cans and recycling bin. All that space would make me weep.”

We’ve had some successful negotiations over the thermostat, because now we know how expensive that dreaded four-letter word can be. Still our house is quite crisp, and our bedroom a good 5 degrees colder than the rest of the house, for some unknown reason. And still, there are nights where I will have 3-4 blankets and I’ll look over and she has barely a sheet.

I told you, she is part Eskimo—at least.

But she is not cold-hearted, and her warmth fills our home, cascades onto the small humans trying to find their footing in this world. She once told me I am the oak of our family, and the only response I had was “Well how does it feel to be the sun?”

If something, God forbid, happened to her, I would be what I need to be for our children, of course. But to those who don’t need to stand on me I would fall apart, I tell you, and miss every single one of the things she said I would and more.

I would lay in our bed, trying to get my feet warm, knowing I could just go over and turn it up, but refuse to do so.

I would find every large thing that barely fits in a trash can and affix them just so to have a vision of her looking over her shoulder and saying in her trademark sass, “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

I don’t often take our marriage for granted, but recently I had one of those particular moments of clarity. We were at a local brewery standing and talking to a group of people. I was standing on a step above her, and in the sunlight I looked down and saw a small strand of grey hair popping up on top of her head.

And the weirdest thing happened. I genuinely had to fight back moisture from my eyes—not because of a grey hair, obviously. But because in that moment the future flashed before my eyes.

The way age slowly asks things of you and then quickly demands them. The relentless march of time. The eventual reality…the eventual quiet meals.

In some ways I’m still a young teenage boy who can’t compute the universe allowing a love like ours to split. It doesn’t seem like oxygen would work the same way, that water would quench and food would fill—it seems that what God has joined together, even death should not separate.

There may be a moment in the future where a child or grandchild picks one of us up and says, “Who were you talking to in there?”

And we might say, “No one.” It could be true and not true at the same time.

There will be a witness still, in that moment—in all of our varied and impossible-to-predict moments of pain.

Shortly after my Grandfather passed away, my Mema hung a painting on the wall behind her kitchen table. I don’t know where she got if from, but I’ll never forget what it says:

“Christ is the head of this house, an unseen guest at every meal.”

I think when I was younger, I thought that was true but not always comforting. Now I know that it is both—immeasurably both.

Now I know that the endings to great loves break us so because they point to a love more faithful, a marriage more lasting, and the eventual healing of every heart belonging to Christ, the unseen guest at so many tables. Not only witness but also savior—he alone able to put someone back in the chair they belong in.

When that day inevitably comes for us, I hope those in our wake marvel at a love for the ages—but most importantly I hope they think of the God our love points to. And that whichever one of us is left will welcome Christ ever more near into the empty chair left behind.

But in the meantime, being no vampire, I will go grab my wife’s hand and hold it.

They sat down to have a breakfast beer at 11am, and this all was an unexpected and rare occurrence for his dad, who was not a talkative man nor one to drive 500 miles unannounced. 

Eventually, during the course of this breakfast beer, Bruce’s dad looked at him and said “You’ve been very good to us.” Bruce nods his head, acknowledging that he had. He had been a financial blessing, and so on.

His dad went on, “And I wasn’t very good to you.” 

Bruce said in that moment, the room was just shocked silent. Here’s what he said about the encounter:

“to my shock, ya know, the un-acknowledgeable was being acknowledged...if I didn't know better I would've sworn an apology of some sort was being made, and it was. Here in the last days before I was to become a father, my own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made, and to warn me not to make them with my own children. To release them from the chain of our sins, my fathers, mine and our fathers before, that they may be free.” 

He went on to say something I’ve never forgotten. He said that in our children’s lives, we are either ghosts or ancestors. Those are the two options. Ghosts lay their mistakes and burdens upon their children and haunt them, and when they are gone they just float away.

But ancestors...ancestors stick around and continue to bear fruitful effects long after they're gone. 

Ancestors bless us, but ghosts haunt us. (And of course, it’s applies beyond children.)

Springsteen said on that day his father was petitioning him to take an ancestral role in his kids lives after being a ghost for a long, long time. He said, “It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad, and it was all that I needed.”

That story stuck in my throat the first time I heard it, and I haven’t stopped telling it since. The language of “ancestor or ghost” strikes me, a new picture for the well-worn paths of blessing and curse laid out all through Scripture (and quite clearly at the end of Deuteronomy).

I think the reason it grabs me so much is because, like any aging human, my mortality is tapping me on the shoulders (more accurately—the knees…my knees keep telling me they will wear out before the rest of me does). It keeps feeling like life is speeding up somehow. A few weeks ago I created a new note and titled it “2022 To Dos.” Then I stared at it and was like, “Did I really just do that? And is it really 2024…already?”

Recently I had to get a CT scan on my sinuses, to see if I need surgery. The nice physicians assistant put my head in a small spaceship, whirled something around it a few times, and then said come have a seat here at this computer while you wait for the doctor.

As I sat down I looked at the computer, and, taken aback, said “Is that my skull?!”

(yes, that’s an actual picture that I took in the doctor’s office)

“Yep!” she said. “You have nice teeth.” Then she just left me in there, in a room by myself, looking at my skull. It was in that moment that I began planning my mid-life crisis (I kid, I kid).

It was a memorable gut-check though, that life is passing by quicker than I’d like. A cold reality that when I look like that it will be far too late to shape my legacy for my kids, my church, my neighbors and friends.

Two stories stick out to me from the Old Testament that put flesh on the idea of becoming an ancestor or a ghost.1

On the ancestor side, it’s hard to look past Abraham, the OG ancestor of our faith. The childless old man past Social Security age who “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6).

Hebrews 11 discusses his legacy in glowing terms, and shows his continual trust in God was rooted in a different vision—that he looked to “…the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10).

He looked past the comforts of life, the ability of his flesh, the familiarity of home, because he was seeking a better country:

¹⁶ But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11:16

On the ghost side, I think of Lot’s wife, whose eyes go in a different direction than Abraham and Sarah’s. Her eyes turn back to her wayward city, to the life she was leaving behind, even though she was warned, and whoosh. She’s gone.

Her legacy haunts instead of blesses, serves as a cautionary tale. Even Jesus says, “Don’t be like her.”

This is what I wrestle with in these moments of these particular years of life. Because too often my eyes are, in a sense, like Lot’s wife. Not looking at sinful things even, but at things that don’t ultimately matter. Time wasters that end up character shapers. Good things, even, that aren’t ultimate things, not things that will matter when my skull looks like that.

You don’t get the legacy of Abraham with the eyes of Lot’s wife, after all.

2024 is already speeding by. February is a short month. I’ll blink and it’ll be over. It won’t be long, Lord willing, that I am asking “Is it really 20__?” And then at some point my legacy will be set.

I keep learning that the small things matter. What my eyes are prone to look at, and how much (and how long) those things matter. Small moments with my kids. A minute to laugh with my wife amidst all the chaos. Conversations that might not have happened. Words that may not have been said. Phone calls that may not have been made.

I hope that—in the words of the Old Testament—when I am “gathered to my people,” that my people will gather warmth from me—light that points them to a city to come.

“I could ask the same of you,” the Teacher replied, kindness evident in his clear voice. “You have not progressed in your journey for some time.” 

“I wonder why?” I said, letting out a puff of air, shifting my dirty legs on the ground like a small child might who is prone to tantrums but trying to master self-control.

“It could have something to do with this huge boulder staring us in the face…” I finally added.

The Teacher said nothing, just looked at the boulder with a kind half-smile. 

“I mean, you’re the one who brought me this way in the first place. I don’t know what you expected of me.” I sat down among the dusty brush, pushing away some fallen limbs.

The Teacher did the same, opposite me on the craggy path. 

Finally, he broke the silence.

“Wanted–not expected.” 

“Sorry?”

“What I wanted for you–not what I expected of you.”

“And what is it that you wanted for me? Other than to be stuck here for ages?”

He bit his lip, anticipating my response. “You can only see further down.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate, because I won’t ever get to the magical land of Further Down. I’m sure it’s great…” 

He held his tongue—kicked his right foot gently in the dust, back and forth, ruffling up a small cloud. 

“What ways have you tried to get around it?” he asked, still kindly. 

“What ways have I tried? Every way! Every way imaginable.” He still looked at me.

“Up, down, around, over, sideways, backwards, on my tip toes–you name it, I’ve tried it. I’ve poured out every ounce of my energy, over and over. There is no way around this thing.”

He sat in the silence known to him. Comfortable. Patient. Unhurried.

“At some point I can only conclude that you wanted me to be stuck.” I finally added, looking his way for a response.

“Conclusions can be dangerous,” he said, one corner of his lip rising up. “Sometimes even impervious to facts.”

I said nothing in response to this, and we both let the moment settle. 

“There is one thing that you have yet to try, if you are willing to hear it…” he said, looking up into my eyes. 

“Please, do tell,” I said, my sarcasm at least somewhat eroded by genuine desire.

“Gratitude,” he finally said, letting the full weight of the word land.

I looked away from him. My insides turned, jumped. I struggled to fight back tears. 

“Gratitude?” I eventually said, and He made no reply. “For this? That’s quite an unorthodox solution for such a predicament.”

“Solutions are…solutions,” he stated, matter of factly. 

I felt a confused hardening start to spread deep inside of me.

“Surely this is not the remedy for everyone who finds themselves in such a painful place?”

“Do you see me talking to everyone?” he answered gently, turning his head as if looking around—then back to me. “I am talking to you.” 

I didn’t dare look at him—unwilling to show him the hot moisture building beneath my eyelids. The pressure built in my forehead, my body starting to realize the awful rightness of what he said—the precise weight of correction that presses and lifts at the same time.

My tears said one thing, but my mind still fought against it.

“It…” I said, clearing my throat. “…is so…heavy.” 

“I know,” he said. 

“And it has cost me so, very much.” 

“I know,” he replied, sitting in the kind of love that refuses to remove the hard things required of it.

“But,” he said. “There is no other way around it.” 

We sat for a bit, unsure of how much longer this might last. 

“Look,” he said. “There are many things I could tell you. About the glories further down. About the kind of person you will be—oh, I wish you could see. About the ways you will carry this with you. But I sense the most important thing I can tell you right now is simply…I know.” 

“You know?”

“I know. I know how hard it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is no other way.”

“I have a feeling,” I said, after a moment, “that if I ever do get past this, it won’t be a one-time experience. This thing will follow me, someway or somehow.” 

“That feeling might be correct,” he said. “But it will get smaller. Eventually. This type of boulder shrinks as you soften.” 

“And I’m still not sure how I can do what you’re saying. How I can manufacture…that…for this.” 

“Oh my friend,” he said, wrinkling his left cheek. “It cannot be manufactured. It can only be chosen through an act of great trust.”

“I don’t think I have the power.”

“That’s good,” he said.

A minute later, He got up and dusted himself off. 

He walked over to me, still sitting up against a rock, thinking. He bent at the knees, came down to my level, put his right hand onto my shoulder.

I looked up into his beaming eyes, searching for something I desperately lacked.

He smiled.

Last year I was able to take a routine sabbatical from my amazing church, and one of the things I spent time on was forming my writing future. (I also wrote a novel, which I’m now re-writing and hope to release in the next few years—but that’s a story for another time).

DearBibleBelt was a lot of fun, but I decided its focus was too narrow and I wanted a space where I could write for the rest of my life (hopefully), as well as be creative due to my love for experimentation and fiction.

Also, in the span of time away from online writing, platforms have improved significantly (enter Substack). Hosting a site on Wordpress, dealing with all the plug-ins, updates and themes was a soul-sucking drain for me. Substack has created an easy and beautiful interface that lets me just…write.

So…what is That City’s Light?

You can read more here. But, long story short, I’ve always been fascinated by the end of the Christian story. Eden is restored in Revelation 21 (and somehow made even better). A heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, comes down out of heaven to rest on the remade Earth I love so dearly.

²² And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³ And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴ By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. ²⁶ They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

-Revelation 21:22-26

It’s a moment in the future that affects all moments. It’s a clarifying moment, telling us where this world with all its heartbreaking glory is going, what the end of the story will be for those in Christ.

Standing there, blinded by the light of unimaginable joy, tears wiped away forever and always as the new heaven and Earth join together.

It’s just…so hard to remember that.

To remember the end of the story when we aren’t so sure the story is good anymore, for one reason or another.

To remember every desire fulfilled as we wrestle and weep over unfulfilled desires.

To see the light when so much around us is dark and heavy and clouded by Stress and Bills and Depression and Kids Screaming or Horrible Bosses or Kids Fighting or The Intolerable Silence of Moments Alone.

It’s hard to see clearly, to think clearly, to love God cleanly with all our hearts when they are pulled in so many directions.

T.S. Eliot once wrote this, and though I will never be an Eliot I feel what he says in my bones:

If this is a world in which I, and the majority of my fellow-beings, live in that perpetual distraction from God which exposes us to the one great peril, that of final and complete alienation from God after death, there is something wrong that I must try to help to put right. (emphasis added)

I too must do whatever I can to keep my own faltering eyes, my family’s eyes, my friends’ eyes, my church members’ eyes pointed to the radiant light of the glory of God shining backward through time, telling us what matters most—and what ultimately doesn’t.

Truth be told, I write for my own fickle heart first and foremost, with it’s occasional calloused places, so that the grace of God can break it time and time again. Publishing words is a way to share what I’m learning, get feedback, and grow as a writer.

I’m excited about the journey. I plan on writing nonfiction reflections, but also mixing in creative elements as well. Who knows what might hit your inbox, so don’t be surprised to see some parable-like stuff or imaginative fiction mixed in.

I may send another post this week, but in general my goal is a few posts/month to one/week max.

I’d be honored to have you continue to subscribe. Hopefully together we can learn to see what matters most a little more clearly. But if not, no hard feelings whatsoever—feel free to unsubscribe below.

Stay tuned if you’d like. Thank you, and may the Lord’s face shine upon you.