Anchor

²⁴ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷ The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

²⁸ Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,^[f] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

²⁹ Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

³¹ The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. — Genesis 32: 24-31

Sea

Have you heard the story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel? Genesis 25-31 give us the lead-up to the epic face off: how Jacob tricked his brother and his father into giving him the family blessing and firstborn birthright; how he ran away fearing his brother’s reprisal only to work for 14 years for a greedy uncle and get tricked into marrying a woman he did not love; how he had a bunch of kids and finally left his uncle’s land only to have to face the angry brother whom he defrauded.

That’s where our passage begins. At his lowest, alone and full of fear, Jacob winds up in a wrestling match with the Angel of the Lord.

God had spoken to Jacob before, sent him visions and instructions, but nothing like this. The wrestling match was their most intimate encounter yet. It was the first time Jacob risked something to take hold of God.

Up until that point, Jacob had been receptive to God but largely passive. During that fight, Jacob got active, struggling all night. He used all his strength not to steal or run or trick, but to pursue what only God could give him. And the Lord blessed him. Today I want to talk about what happens after an encounter like that.

After Jacob’s encounter, so much about him changed. Most importantly, his identity changed, marked by a new name. The name Jacob (Yaʿaqōḇ) was given to him because of his personality and history. He was the one who grabbed the heel (ʿakeb) of his twin brother as he exited the womb and usurped (ʿaqab) his brother’s status,

After their wrestling match, God changes Jacob’s name to Israel, the one who wrestles with God and man and overcomes.

Jacob’s perspective also changed after this encounter. The Angel humbled him when He dislocated Jacob’s hip with just a touch of his finger. Earthly humility is always the first sign of spiritual maturity.

From the ground of defeat, Jacob looked up at God and, for the first time in his life, asked God a question and waited for an answer: Who are you? Please tell me your name.

His willingness to listen showcased a shift in perspective, a desire to draw closer to God, not merely to the outcome he desired. Goals fell away to intimacy. That posture affected how Jacob experienced the world, and it changed the ensuing encounter with his brother.

When he ultimately comes to his brother, he does so displaying his weakness rather than trying to hide it. Jacob comes limping, not striding.

Genesis 32:30-31 says that Jacob left the place where he and God wrestled and named it Peniel, and “the sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel limping because of his hip.”

After this encounter with the Living God, Jacob moves at a slower pace, leaning on a staff. Jacob’s God-given disability means he cannot walk in his own strength without falling. He must go forward, but he must do so slowly, using a staff to help bear his weight.

And I could mourn this. A part of me does mourn this, as I imagine Jacob did. I look back on the ease (and speed) with which I once wrote poems, fell in love, completed tasks, jumped on opportunities. It got me to places quickly…and sometimes wrongly and ill-prepared—a lot of rushing only to hurry up and wait or retrace my steps.

Pastor Enrique Pascal said that “Rushing is a spirit” and not one from God. Of course, there are moments when the miraculous manifests through speed. Elijah outstrips chariots; a whirlwind snatches up Phillip and immediately spirits him to the next village. A word comes out of nowhere, on time and exactly what you need. These are great demonstrations of God's immediate power at work.

It is also the case, however, that the people of God often find themselves waiting on the Lord. It took 42+ generations to deliver the Word of God in the flesh. The whole church has been waiting more than 2,000 years for our Groom’s return.

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As the story of Jacob tells us, sometimes God has to slow us down by force: an unexpected setback or illness, a public failure, a thorn in the flesh, just so we slow down. When we move slower, God can correct us gradually and gently. When we move slower, we have more opportunities to notice God at work around us, and that always results in more joy.

My dad was an Army Major, and I grew up hearing the military slogan, “Slow is fast.” I think that’s true in God’s Kingdom, too.

So why are we rushing?

Simply put, most of us are rushing because we are afraid. Mortal as we are, we worry about running out of time or about there being none left over for us once we get there. Sometimes we fear not getting there at all. So it makes us unwilling to take the time God says we need.

From the womb, Jacob was worried about coming in last. As the twin born second, he was struggling to come out before his brother Esau, jostling and grasping his brother’s heel to come out first.

This is how we know we are striving. We strive to escape defeat instead of living from the place of victory. We scheme rather than receive the truth that God has already blessed us.

Or we avoid the task altogether and learn to cope. We walk around with a limp of the soul, despairing that God’s goodness just isn’t for us.

Being firstborn meant everything to Jacob. The firstborn son was entitled to a double portion of the inheritance. Born with unmerited favor, the firstborn was also destined to become the head of the family upon his father’s death.

When his mother Rebekah wondered why her pregnancy was so difficult, she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”

He didn’t know that being born second was actually the sign of God’s favor, not of being behind. It was only after God forced him to slow down that Jacob saw God face to face and received his identity as one blessed by God. And God made sure he never forgot.

God’s people live by the Spirit. When we live by our own strength and at our own pace, we go right back to being a usurper, an opposer, and a runner.

Jacob was born to be Israel, but he could only experience life as Israel once he learned to depend on God for every step. Sure, Israel was free to drop the staff at any time and try walking on his own, but eventually he would stumble.

Israel walked with a staff, foreshadowing the shepherd’s staff of Moses and ultimately the righteous branch of Jesse, who is Jesus, the Christ. We learn to lean on Him, to keep pace with Him, to remain by His side—that’s how we find the freedom to live without striving and without falling behind.

Jesus states that in the kingdom the last shall be first and the first shall be last. So if you find yourself coming in last place, don’t worry about the late start and keep leaning on God. You are in just the right place for God’s goodness to overtake you.

Sail

Some things are very hard to be patient about. Right now, people in Gary, Indiana, are facing day 11 without power after 99-mile-an-hour winds clobbered the city. Too often, certain people are asked to be patient in urgent situations while the needs and preferences of others are being met with care and deference.

This weekend I ran out of patience for prayer, but the Spirit knew my heart and answered my overwhelm immediately. “No one is overlooked in the kingdom of God. No one is unseen in my kingdom.”

I wrote a poem to avoid overlooking the people. I wanted to do something more than pray, more than repost a headline. Below is a psalm of lament for Gary, Indiana: “How Do You Raise the Alarm When the Power’s Out?”

Anchor

But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow to keep his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to reach repentance. 2 Peter 3:8-9 (New Living Translation )

Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? - Romans 2:4 (New Living Translation)

Sea

At the beginning of the month, I celebrated my 38th birthday. The thing I am most thankful for is contentment. Not the contentment that comes from having everything I want, but the contentment that comes from giving up the control I once clung to to make everything I want happen today.

The last four years were incredibly difficult, for many reasons, but, in part, because of my unhealthy relationship to time. For me, time was a gauntlet of expectations.

Case in point: when I turned 33, I fully expected to have a resurrection, life-altering level up just like my Lord Jesus. Well, 33 came and went and no such transformation. Where is the drama? Where is the career shift? Where is the man?!

So when I turned 34, I made a decision. I would not be turning 34. I would be turning 33 again, to give God just a little more time to put everything in place. If my transformation had not happened yet, I would graciously extend God a do-over year so I could get where I needed to be before I turned 35.

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I didn’t realize it, but behind the silly joke lay an insidious and arrogant assumption. God was late. God was wrong, but I would fix it for him.

I was a fool.

God was not late.

God knew something that I didn’t: ready to get in the pool doesn’t mean ready to race Michael Phelps. Ready to date does not mean you are ready to get married.

But boy did I learn that the hard way. A week or two before my 34th birthday, I met a guy—a believer—and instantly, because I was “ready,” I was so sure he was the one. I was overconfident despite a myriad of red flags and hardly knowing each other at all. That ended within 3 months.

In November, I met a guy who I had been thinking about dating for over 2 years. Lots of green flags (and a few yellow ones), but in my heart I wasn’t sure, and I knew I wasn’t ready. Besides, dating across an ocean is tricky for anybody. But what did I do?

• Did I give myself time to heal after the last relationship?

• Did I give this burgeoning interest time to develop organically?

Pressure, fear, shame, and uncertainty began mounting. Instead of enjoying drives through Dutch summer countrysides, or cuddling with hot chocolate, I was busy asking myself why I hadn’t fallen in love already. What was wrong with me? What was wrong with him? Something had to be wrong if it hadn’t happened yet. God had finally brought the man I wanted into my life. Now it wasn’t God who was behind—it was me.

That constant sense of urgency in search of certainty robbed me of bespoke moments of my life. And for that I am still angry. I put both of us through a lot of agony. It’s something God is still in the process of restoring me from.

As I enter year 38, I finally understand that having the desire to begin is distinct from having the diligence to sustain. The ability to see a future is different than possessing the qualities needed to carry it to completion. In the past, I’ve had plenty of passion, but character and discipline were an entirely different beast.

Pastor Enrique Pascal on the “We Need To Talk” Podcast said that “there is a pace of heaven,” and God does not rush. Not one time in Scripture do you see Jesus hurry, not even when on his way to heal the dying. God doesn’t rush because God controls time, not the other way around.

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In Mark’s gospel, the word immediately appears 41 times. Immediacy is a mark of God’s positionality. Everything for God is immediate because he exists outside of time. Immediacy is also a mark of God’s power. It shows that there is no distance between God’s will, his word, and its becoming reality.

The first reason is that God has free will. He is not bound to do things when we see fit but as it suits his beatific designs. The second reason is kindness.

God doesn’t force us. He gets to know us; he woos us. By the nature of being God, God is omnipotent. But by his personality, God is patient and kind. In Exodus, God announces himself to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” God describes his own character, his own name and title as Patient (slow to anger), Steadfastly Loving, and Faithful.

In the hands of a patient Creator, time is an artistic tool, never a hindrance.

When God takes his time, and we participate with him in the process, He gives us the grace and instills in us the discipline needed to mature. Things always age, but they don’t always mature. Maturation is the internal speed at which an object develops in accordance with its purpose and identity, and God’s respect for this natural pace is called patience.

I might think I am patient, but when the timeline doesn’t match my expectations, I am all too willing to discard those next to me, seeing them as obstacles slowing me down. But when I practice patience, I submit that my agency and my pace aren’t the only ones that matter. God (and the people around me) have timelines too and an end goal in mind that takes into account their good as well as my own.

What about when I’m the one that needs to mature? Am I patient with myself? Am I cool not being great at something long enough to become good at it? Can I sit in that tension without resorting to shame or complacency? Can I say I’m not ready yet, though I want to be? Or do I give up on the desire, the hope, the relationship, the life God has for me because it’s easier to deadhead the dream than to practice patience?

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I asked Ar how he thought I’d grown the most over the last 3 ½ years, and he said I’d become more patient. That is nothing short of grace!

So here is to turning 38 and realizing I’m not the Wizard in this story. I don’t bend time to my will. And thank God, I don’t need to. God is patient with me, and if He’s not in a rush, then neither am I.

Next newsletter, I will still be on this topic of patience. As I write to y’all, I also write to encourage myself as I still wait on the fullness of God’s promise with hope and expectation.

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Sail

My sail for you this week is to journal about something you desire that you’ve been waiting for a long time, it seems. Maybe this is a career change or a relationship. Maybe it’s mental clarity, freedom from a certain character flaw, or resolution to a tense situation.

First, write the fullness of your desire for this perceived good. Then I want you to imagine how practicing patience might actually increase this good. Invite God into your process. Ask Him how he is being kind to you right now. Resist the temptation to answer for Him. Give Him the space to state what’s on His heart and mind. Offer His thoughts back to Him in prayer.

Also, I am now accepting bookings for appearances, workshops, and performances in the fall. So if you’d like to bring me to your school, church, or organization, please send me a message!

Anchor

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
and his ears toward their cry.
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
He keeps all his bones;
not one of them is broken.
Affliction will slay the wicked,
and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

— Psalm 34:15-22

Sea

There was a period in my life when I was obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. I even decided to name a future daughter after him, Hemingway. I still think it is a beautiful name with great balance and movement. The first trochee bobs along on an open sea, and the last syllable feels like the opening of a small sail, the sudden briskness of the boat as it speeds upon the waves.

My favorite Ernest Hemingway book is Old Man and the Sea. I read it in a single day: crouching against the striped stone staircases of the American University of Cairo campus; on the hour-long bus ride from blonde desert sands to the dingy streets of Zamalek; in my tiny dorm bed while scooping dollops of peanut butter into my mouth with my index finger. Tears streamed down my face almost every time I turned the page.

The ending felt enigmatic, as Hemingway endings typically are. Even today, I am not exactly sure what the book meant, but the sensation of reading it remains singular. The only other time I felt similarly was years earlier after watching The Fellowship of the Ring. Overcome with emotions I still have a hard time finding names for, thirteen-year-old me locked myself in my dad’s bathroom, lay on the floor, and wept.

“Man is not made for defeat.” On what authority can Hemingway make such a claim? And simply writing, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated,” doesn’t carry nearly the same gravitas.

How does Hemingway know man wasn’t made for defeat? In fact, many people have been defeated. Every day outside my window, on the news, and on social media, people live below the level of human dignity—defeated. But why should this bother Hemingway or me? He reasons that defeat is antithetical to man’s purpose: this is not why man was made.

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The first half of the quotation makes a bold theological claim about the author of mankind’s dignity. To utter Man is not made for defeat presupposes that we have first been made. Bear with me as the linguist nerds out for a second. The verb make requires an active agent. Man has a Maker.

Purpose undergirds Hemingway’s use of the word for; this Maker had a specific intention behind their actions. Lastly, the selection of the generic kind term “man,” instead of “a man,” takes us back in our biblical memory to the moment of creation; it reminds us of that passage in the most read piece of literature of all time, where the Creator God says: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” God made our species. God’s intention was for us to model God. Every individual has been endowed with essential, prototypical qualities and created for a reason. And if it wasn’t to be defeated, then God has destined us for something else.

Ignoring God, Hemingway exalts man to the place of prominence at the beginning of the sentence, indicating the author’s belief that his statement (and his life) is really about himself, rather than the God who created him.

Without the active presence of God, Hemingway only has one choice. He must be his own maker. He must try with all his might not to be beaten. His life is that of a man who warred against beasts, the bottle, lovers, governments, and the empty page to remain undefeated. In the end, he destroys himself. Dying at his own hand was perhaps the only way to remain undefeated. His life ends with this pitiless ultimatum: be defeated or be destroyed.

Hemingway’s personal life and his writings are full of great beauty and greater tragedy. In Western logic, this registers as honorable and chivalrous. Our focus is brought to the man, his limitations, but his valor and genius in the face of them. We are trained to give him his due. He’s a man who buys our admiration with his life.

Something powerful emerges: a more complete truth than Hemingway’s indomitable revelation. But to grasp it, we must turn to an older text.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,

but the LORD delivers him out of them all.

He keeps all his bones;

not one of them is broken.

Affliction will slay the wicked,

and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.

The Lord redeems the life of his servants;

none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

— Psalm 34:19-22

What strikes me is this Psalm’s indirect correction of Hemingway. The difference between destroyed and defeated is Hemingway’s critical insight, but the Psalmist suggests that God made man neither to be defeated nor to be destroyed.

Consider the second half of verse 19: “the Lord delivers the righteous out of all his afflictions.” This is already more hopeful than Hemingway surmised.

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A few days ago, I saw a recording of a family pit bull launching into an attack on a small child. Thankfully, the mother was present. I watched her spring into action, but the dog wouldn’t stop going after the boy. Eventually, she fell to the ground to cover her son’s body with her own as the dog kept attacking her to get at her child. Though she was exposed to the dog’s assault, her son was safe, sheltered between her body and the ground. Eventually, the husband came and fought off the dog, while the mother ran into the house carrying her boy.

That mother was loath to let her child be destroyed by an aggressive dog. Why? Because the child is made in her image. To see her child destroyed would be worse than her own death. How much more is this true of God’s fearsome love for those made in Her image! “She keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.”

Not only that, but “The Lord redeems; those who take refuge in him will not be condemned.” Hemingway’s reference to not being defeated is echoed by the vindication spoken of in Verse 22. Condemnation and redemption speak of legal, social, and spiritual realities. It means God keeps our souls from decay as well as our bodies.

Salvation—both physical and spiritual—does not depend on the bravery of the righteous but on the One they serve, the LORD, “in whom they take refuge.”

Earlier, this psalm describes the righteous as the poor, the needy, the one crying out. It’s clear: there’s nothing to admire about the righteous, but there is everything to admire about their Righteous God.

Psalm 34 doesn’t divide people into the courageous and the cowardly as Hemingway’s quote and lifestyle urge us to do. It doesn’t divide people into the defeated and the unconquered, the destroyed and the preserved, or even the prosperous and the suffering. Its critical distinction is between the wicked and the righteous, and get this—both are promised afflictions.

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We all suffer, whether good or bad. But what condemns? Wickedness and hatred, not being poor, needy, and fearful. What saves? Not by being “the captain of one’s own soul,” but by reverence for the Righteous One, by seeking refuge in His mercy.

It is true, men can be destroyed and defeated—but not the righteous. The righteous remain undefeated because the Lord fights for them. If their bodies are temporarily destroyed, they don’t even manage to stay dead. God ultimately delivers us out of ALL our afflictions, even out of death, as we see with Jesus. The resurrection is the evidence of a God that saves from both defeat and destruction, from sin and the grave. The response to that revelation isn’t crying on a bathroom floor but shouts and tears of joy!

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being^[a] rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.^[b]

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. — Psalm 16:9-11

Sail

Our sail for this week is to sit with Psalm 34. I encourage you to listen to it a few different translations over the next seven days. Listen for resonances. Pull out one or two verses that either comfort you or challenge you. If you notice yourself smiling or scowling while reading, consider it an invitation to write down that particular verse and meditate on it throughout the week. See if the Spirit shifts or deepens your understanding.

The Psalms are the Bible’s deep emotional heart. Full of poetry: odes, laments, exaltations, confessions, the Psalms are where God not only acknowledges our human frailty, but He also hallow it by elevating our heartfelt cries to His Holy Ear.

After a long hiatus I am back! Thanks for the folks who are still excited to be on this journey with me and who keep engaging despite my frequent starts and stops. I asked God what to write about and he said shedding and developing so here we go. As always we will start with our anchor in scripture before heading out to see and finally setting sail with a poem.

Anchor

[Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’” Matthew 13:24-60

Sea

After years of floundering about, how do we emerge as our biggest, baddest selves? A pertinent question for me as I turn 38 next month.

When I arrived in my mid-30s, I began craving the kind of stability and gravitas I thought came from age and consistency: a house, a legible career, a marriage, and kids—things that look and sound serious so that I could take myself seriously. I placed more emphasis on what I thought it meant to “be grown” rather than the process of growing.

After all, there is a difference between stable and stale, between free and flippant.

Besides, our biggest, baddest selves are not always the most “stable.” They seethe, respirate, constantly expanding and contracting, responding to the dynamic flux of living. They seek wiggle room to allow for growth, redirection, and experimentation. They are quickened by possibility and unthreatened by failure. These selves look for conditions in their environment that facilitate evolution while simultaneously nurturing the choices and commitments they’ve already made.

Growth

Like a plant sunning itself in stimulating rays of light, growth is what we were designed for! We are meant to grow big, full, and mature. And like the Sun distributing light and heat, God continues radiating Their Goodness to Their creation to stimulate that growth. But the measure of goodness (or goodness) we begin with is certainly not all that you or I were ever meant to have. Imagine a tiny seedling in the middle of spring, cocking its head to the side, folding its arms, and saying, “I’m grown! I’ve sprouted. I’m done.” That’s what we say in our hearts when we make endpoints out of marriage, kids, careers, and other milestones, as if that’s the culmination of the journey. Plants continue to grow as long as the conditions are right until maturity. For us, there’s no endpoint.

If you have ever gardened, it is always spectacular watching a plant you’ve tended bloom from the bare cold earth into brilliance. Each time my fiddle leaf grows a glossy violin-shaped leaf, I FaceTime my mom, and we both squeal over the new development.

We are meant to grow more and more into God’s image (which is perfectly visible in Jesus). We are meant to imbibe more and more of the Spirit’s succor until we are strengthened, and that strengthened self bursts out of our old, deadened casing like a snake sloughing off old skin. So we don’t need to worry about breaking out of our old lives as much as we need to allow for growth to happen wherever we find ourselves.

Actually, a snake is a pretty good metaphor for thinking about the two stages of growth and shedding, because before a snake sheds its old skin, it’s already developed a completely functional new one.

Shedding

A key misconception I had was that in order to grow, I had to first “free myself” from the old patterns, environments—and sometimes, people—I thought were keeping me bound.

Snakes are not out here flaying themselves alive, exposing muscle and tissue, and hoping the trauma forces them to grow bigger. But here I was thinking that creating harsh conditions and forcing myself to grow at a rate I wasn’t ready for would somehow result in transformation. It did, but in the wrong direction. I got smaller, weaker, sicker—not freer.

Snakes teach us that shedding happens fairly quickly, in a matter of minutes or hours, but growing takes time. 50 to 80 percent of the two weeks it takes snakes to change skins is spent growing it, in what is called the “blue period.”

The Blue Period

I learned from Blue Planet Aquarium’s website that during growth, moisturizing fluid accumulates between the old skin and the new skin cells to reduce friction. Ultimately, this layer of fluid separates the old layers of keratin from the new skin that is forming. Going blue refers to the snake’s eyes, which glaze over with a moisture-filled sack called spectacles as the snake grows the new skin. Because the spectacles cloud the snake’s already poor vision, the creatures feel particularly vulnerable and anxious. This forces the creatures to slow down and hide away until shedding is complete.

Doesn’t it feel like that sometimes? Growth feels particularly, and if only you could be sure that is what you were in fact doing. Because the growth is an internal process, you can’t see what’s happening or if there is any progress. You feel this stretching within. Something tightening and pulling. Outside things that once felt clear suddenly blur, and you are no longer sure of the way forward. You feel exposed and uncertain. For snakes, this period lasts about a week, but for people, infinitely more complex, our blue periods can last for years.

The whole process is frequent and natural, yet indisputably uncomfortable. Going blue can be marked by growth pains and an itch-like sensation. For me, that itchiness translates to a kind of internal restlessness and anxiety where nothing feels quite right.

Not only that, but in your blue period, you feel a bit, well, blue. Life feels dull and lackluster. When snakes “go blue,” the often vibrant patterning of the snake’s skin becomes less vivid and distinct, and their eyes become milky. Reminiscing with a friend over a particularly hard season of life I had been through, she said, “Ah, that explains it. I didn’t know what was wrong with you, but it seemed like the light had gone out of your eyes.”

I didn’t know it then, but I was in a blue period.

The thing is, it cannot be rushed—neither for snakes nor us. Pulling off the old skin before its time can damage the new skin and the living tissue beneath, leading to wounds that are prone to infection. If a snake is rushed out of its old skin too quickly, the spectacles might be left on the eyes permanently, resulting in permanent blindness. Tugging can also leave patches of dead skin, which restrict mobility and circulation. Best to let the creature crawl out of its dead skin with ease once it’s good and ready.

But boy, did I try to rush my process and everyone else’s. I just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get it over with. Recently, my cousin was in the hospital with an IV tube down his throat. Struggling to get to the bathroom, in frustration, he pulled the tube out, causing internal bleeding and severe pain. Just like the parable of the wheat and the weeds above, we can do more harm than good by exiting prematurely.

Relax into the Blue

Now, some of us aren’t ripping out the IV, some of us are clinging to it because we fear the shedding process. We worry we might fall apart without the flimsy coping mechanisms we’ve gotten used.

Besides, there is nothing to fear. Snakes shed to accommodate their larger size and to get rid of dangerous parasites that have embedded in their skin! Shedding itself is painless and healthy, and contrary to our worst fears, not everything disappears with it! The snake retains its pattern and uniqueness but regains vibrancy, moisture, and flexibility. Shedding doesn’t change who we are but allows us to be who we are more fully.

So what would happen if we just relaxed into His arms, and let our vision cloud, our skin tighten? Could that discomfort be a signal that something good was unfolding in our hearts, beneath the inflexible exoskeleton that we’ve grown cramped inside? Evidence that our living goodness is swelling underneath those brittle shells. That it’s just a matter of going blue before we emerge brighter, braver, bigger.

Sail

The hymn “He Will Hold Me Fast” came up as I was thinking of Jesus’ embrace of us. I actually wrote a little poem before I watched the video, and it paired really well with these visuals.

My Lord and Lover, whose vastness embarrasses the sea

Whose celestial depths overturn me.

He holds me fast to his broken body without strain

A task I thought impossible, as much as I wiggle

And beg to be turned loose. I want to

Hide from him. He lets me hide in him.

I want to ditch this body with its feeble needs

Abandon this mind with its anxious knotting.

Yet He adorns this body, He unspools my tangled

Thoughts. I sit before him crosslegged, back turned.

He on the couch, my shoulders snug between his thighs.

Impatient and ungrateful, I would have torn out whole clumps,

But he combs my coils, soothes them with oil.

A tender persistence so that not one strand is broken.

I have broken his heart a thousand times

But this time I want to abide, curious now

About the hand that so often reaches for me. Who am I?

Surely, not the uncouth creature who licks the spit off forked tongues,

Who needs a bit and bridle,

Who bites the hand that feeds and caresses.

I am not the thing I made myself out to be.

Perhaps instead, I am a songbird, fledged of terror,

Who comes to nest in the gentlest palm.

The Shift Podcast

I had the honor of appearing as this month’s guest on Mark Travis Rivera’s The Shift: Stories of Resistance and Resilience.

In this episode, we explore resistance as a creative and evolving dialogue, the importance of rest and discernment, and how storytelling helps us better understand ourselves and one another.

Listen here: [Amazon Music] [Apple Podcast] [Spotify] [YouTube]

As a poet and as a believer in the Incarnate God, Jesus Christ, I believe that each human life has immeasurable value, and our stories are worth taking seriously.

I am so excited to share this conversation with you, because it marks one of the first times I take myself seriously, not simply as a poet, but as a poetic intercessor. In my identity as a poetic intercessor, I channel my faith conviction, poetic and scholarly practice, and community-building into a single, cohesive whole.

My life has always been about more than poetry, even when I didn’t know it. The poems are prayers, the prayers are a practice, the practice is a poem lived out loud. Through truthful observation and visceral testimony, poetry helps us faithfully image the realities all around us. Prayer then helps us reimagine those systems in alignment with God’s beautiful vision for God’s creation. Social practice then helps us re-image God within our neighbors and God’s character within our neighborhoods.

I am so grateful for the ways my poems compel faith to take shape in the world.

The Burden of Being Resilient

Interesting, while The Shift is all about resistance and resilience, my recent collaboration with singer, worship pastor, and lawyer Tina Colòn Williams speaks to when it is inappropriate to demand resilience from those who are suffering.

Commissioned by Love146 for their Annual Red Gala and their vision to create a world without child-trafficking, this poem recognizes that those who survive exploitation should not be celebrated for the ways they have successfully endured (and often continue to endure) harm. Rather, each of us should embrace accountability and action that creates a world aligned with love rather than abuse.

Systems should never expect children—or any vulnerable person—to be resilient to dehumanization. If you like the piece, I encourage you to make a donation to Love146 and its essential work.

C7M7N (COMMUNION)

If you are in Texas next week, I would be delighted to see you at Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX.

Artist and inspirational singer K7N invited me to participate in this second performance of his work COMMUNION: a ritual of nourishment and commemoration. About COMMUNION:

“In what ways does a meal distinctly allow commemoration and also provide nourishment? And where are the joy-working and life-sustaining spaces of the future? COMMUNION seeks to construct new spaces and traditions of testimony and witness.

COMMUNION (C7M7N) is a participatory “blues Eucharist” inspired by the artists’ early experiences in the Black Protestant churches of his childhood in the Southeast region of the United States. In collaboration with chef and artist Omar Tate (featured in the Netflix series High on the Hog), food and culture writer Osayi Endolyn (The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food: A Cookbook), and visual artist Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, COMMUNION began as an offering to the audience, with poems, prayers, movement, music, and food. The ritual applies the distinct paradox which imbues a Eucharistic meal: the partaking of which is simultaneously a commemoration of death as well as a claim of unity with that which cannot die or be diminished. COMMUNION seeks to construct new spaces and traditions of testimony and witness.”

It takes place April 16-18 at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural, & Genealogy Center in Austin, TX. Get your tickets here.

Intercession is always a collaboration with God and with others. Poetry is an honoring of the truth. Journey alongside me, as I live out my commitment to both!

Verily,

Alysia

Anchor

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made

And by the breath of his mouth all their starry host.

He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;

He lays up the deep in storehouses. — Psalm 33:6-7

Sea

I don’t know about you, but my mind often feels like the Deep of Genesis 1. King James describes this primordial setting as empty and void, making the very materiality of existence sound inert and vacant. Yet, rather than being empty, my mind teems with chaotic possibilities: it is loud static, restless wind, a shifting map that leads in contradictory directions.

A million options, all without shape or form—voices clamoring over one another, reels of overlapping information, feelings flooding my thoughts, their source and intention unclear. Here, void doesn’t mean empty but nullified—like how the peak and trough of intersecting waves cancel each other out.

Over the past month, I’ve been doing a lot of traveling: Atlanta to Toronto to Texas to DC to Connecticut and back to Atlanta, from global ministry to small town community building to shifting family dynamics. The lack of stillness, the overflow of conversations, the diversity of topics and locations, the constant outpour of energy into different containers—by the end, my brain was racing a million miles an hour. I already talk fast, but now noticed my pace of speech was breakneck. I generated 6 different ideas within an hour, and all of them felt “equally necessary and equally impossible,” to quote Lindsey Mackereth’s great piece “Chaos as Cognitive Oxygen.” I could feel chaos surging, not only outside me, but within.

The Hebrew word “tohu va bohu” is an onomatopoeia of sorts. Katherine Keller notes this in her long discourse, The Face of the Deep. The Hebrew ‘tohu’ can mean confusion or tumult, and ‘bohu’ means something like waste or desolation. A confused chaos, wasted tumult without structure, direction, or life-giving support.

I like this description of the deep. I like this description of the heavens. Before God’s creative intervention, the surface of the earth was flooded with primordial potential, and the expanse of the heavens was lost in impenetrable darkness. Neither the dark nor the deep was bad in and of themselves; they were in waiting. They were waiting for God to speak.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made

And by the breath of his mouth all their starry host.

He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap;

He lays up the deep in storehouses. — Psalm 33:6-7

God speaks, and light shines in the darkness. God gathers, and dry land appears beneath our feet. Somehow, he does it. Out of incoherence, He pulls poetry. Above speechlessness rises the spoken word.

Most of us don’t like the overwhelming feeling of chaos, but others are addicted to it. If you avoid chaos at all costs, your god is most likely control. You want to remain undisturbed, unaffected, and so you run at the faintest hint of the unpredictable, the unforecastable, and you spiritualize it as peace. But really, it’s fear, comfort, and pride.

Conversely, some are addicted to feeling at the mercy of a power that is greater than themselves: the freedom of not having to carry responsibility or make good choices because something else has overpowered you: Passion, power, alcohol, adrenaline, risk—you have made these into gods. Your god is intensity, and you want to remain ungovernable. This, you spiritualize as freedom. But really, it is slavery, rebellion, and destruction.

I have embraced both idols at different times in my life. When control is my god, I demonize the dark and the deep. When intensity is my god, I bow to it and drown.

But where is the God of the Bible in all of this? Where is the Spirit of Christ? In the Genesis 1 account of creation, Scripture says:

“Now the earth was confusion and waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters.”

Where was the Spirit of God? Over the surface of the waters. Some translations say “on” the face of the waters. There is a nearness here. God is not in the waters—battling or drowning— nor is God distant from the waters, above it all, looking down with disdain. Rather, the Spirit of God is right there, face to face with the deep and the dark.

And what is the Spirit doing? Brooding—hovering, fluttering, vibrating, incubating, waiting for something to hatch—this is the posture of God towards our chaos. Not one of fear and revulsion but of intimacy and encounter.

Mackereth’s piece first introduced me to complexity science’s idea of “edge of chaos.”

It is the zone between rigid order and total disorder. Not one or the other, but the dynamic tension between them.

It is where systems generate their most sophisticated behavior. Where adaptation happens. Where emergence becomes possible.

Stable systems do not evolve. Fully chaotic systems do not hold together. But systems that live at the edge between them, right there in the productive friction, that is where complex behavior actually emerges. — Makereth, “Chaos as Cognitive Oxygen”

In Genesis, the edge of chaos is the beginning of God’s creation. Faith is cultivated at this creative edge, on this narrow way where we are neither running for our lives nor diving in headlong. Here we learn to move with grace.

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Imagine not just writing poetry but living it! Both require that kind of grace. Rather than agitated with fear or inundated with impatience, we are poised with intention/attention, aligned and animated by Spirit’s powerful flow. We breathlessly wait for God to voice the next line, illuminate the next step, to speak ‘peace’ to the storm, and organize the conditions for our flourishing.

Best of all, at that edge of creation, at the end of the line, we have a front seat to God’s next move.

Case in point: When Moses delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, they found themselves on the edge: Pharaoh’s army behind them and the Red Sea in front of them. Either be swallowed by the sea or submit to slavery under a heartless tyrant. Precisely at that moment, when the people believe they are doomed, God speaks to Moses, “Lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry land.”

As you know, the Israelites made it across, and when Pharaoh’s army followed them—not in faith but in vengeance, trusting their chariots would overtake the people on foot—God released the sea, and all the enslavers were drowned.

When the people praise God in the Song of Moses, they use the same language as Psalm 33 uses to describe God’s act in creation,

In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries;

At the blast of your nostrils, the waters gathered up

The floods stood up in a heap;

The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. — Exodus 15

All of creation is miraculous, and every miracle is evidence of the new creation.

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Perhaps you need to see more of God's power. Perhaps God is inviting you to take a step closer to the edge of the unknown. Instead of fearing that the unexplored places in your life will overwhelm you, make the God of Miracles your God. Perhaps He wants to shine a light into those very arenas.

Perhaps you are one who needs to embrace the grace of God’s shoreline and wait for God’s direction. Let the God of Creation be your God. Perhaps rather than drowning in the Deep of your life, God wants you to walk on it. There, we will find the Spirit, hovering at the edge of chaos.

Verily,

Alysia

Sail

This is one of my favorite worship songs. It reminds me of the immense beauty, creativity, and sheer power of God in creating the universe. When things are chaotic, all that means is that perhaps creation is on the verge of breaking forth. I dare you to listen to this song and gaze at the God behind the stars, the mountains, the seas, and the living creatures. Where is he leading you in faith today?

Anchor

“The Lord upholds all who are falling

and raises up all who are bowed down.” - Psalm 145: 14

Sea

I live in downtown Atlanta. Funnily enough, when I was looking to buy a condo 9 years ago, my mom had only one condition: Do not buy near Five Points Marta Station. Do not buy downtown. As God would have it, the perfect condo became available below my price point. It had 15-foot ceilings, big 10-foot windows, gorgeous fluted columns, tons of square footage…. all just blocks from Five Points.

My mother’s weariness came from there being a bit of a drug problem in the area and a lot of folks sleeping rough. My mom worried about me coming home late at night as a single woman. She wondered where I would get groceries without a grocer for 2 miles in either direction. I was a bit nervous too, but after years of living in Philly and New York, I shrugged it off.

Besides, while I was in grad school in New Haven, I had become friends with folks for whom houselessness was part of their story. Our church had a worship session for unhoused people on New Haven’s green, and so the prejudice and fear of “those people” began to melt slowly.

“Those people” played the drums at service. One of “those people” makes the meanest banana pudding you’ll ever taste. “Those people” were our people, God’s people. I am embarrassed about how frequently I need to be reminded.

One lesson I learned from my friend Angela (pseudonym) I’ll never forget. Angela sold single-stem flowers on Yale’s campus. Mostly carnations. Cheap and readily available, but every now and then she’d have roses, especially on Valentine’s Day.

Angela wasn’t homeless, but most people thought she was. She had long locs and a beautiful, loud personality with very bad CPOS. Every day when I was rounding the corner to class, I’d hear a loud and very out of breath, “HEY GIRLFRIEN!” I responded with my “Heyyyy Angela!”

Some days when I had time to kill, I would sit down next to her and chit-chat. We’d laugh, we’d gossip. She’d give me the scoop on some professors walking by or tell me about her man troubles, and I would tell her about mine. This went on for 5 years.

Sitting next to Angela let me see things from her perspective. When you sit down low, you’re usually sitting on concrete. It’s cold, hard, and dirty. It hurt my knees and butt after sitting for less than 30 minutes. Imagine being outside all day in that position.

One day, someone walked by Angela and me, and she asked the man if he would like to buy a flower. He didn’t acknowledge her, didn’t look at her, didn’t speak. Just kept walking by as if she wasn’t even there.

She turned to me with tears in her eyes. I was shocked because Angela was pretty jovial, either laughing, cursing, or smoking. But she could not mask the hurt. She said:

“That’s the part that really makes you feel bad. You speak to people, and they just ignore you. As if you are invisible, nobody, nothing. He don’t have to buy my flowers. I don’t expect that. He could say, “No, or Not today.” But to not speak, act like I’m not here. Like I’m not worth talking to, or like they’re afraid of me or something—that really tears you down.”

I’ll never forget what she said. Never.

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People might ask for charity, but they expect dignity. They expect another human being to acknowledge that we are all part of the same world, to say, with their actions, I recognize your presence. I see you.

What happens to a person over time when they can no longer expect to be treated with dignity? Do they end up feeling less and less human?

This past spring, I was in Corsicana. Me and my Texas parents were running some errands at the local church. Even though it was spring, it was already well into the 90s. Sitting under the church’s stone portico was an Afro-Latina woman. She was crouching atop one of two suitcases, several plastic bags arranged around her. She looked exhausted, like she was taking a break from plotting her next move. While T & T were inside, I sat down next to her. This time, the concrete wasn’t cold. It burned my legs through my jeans.

She and I talked for a little bit. She had just come to Corsicana. Looking for safety, sanctuary, freedom. Her cellphone had run out of battery and minutes. She was stuck. I gave her my number anyway, and then when T&T came outside, they told me to call a woman who could help her. I did, and she was able to put the lady up in a local motel for a few nights and connect her to some services in Dallas. Her story of getting on her feet was far from over, but I can’t help but think we made a difference by seeing her and offering a little mercy.

Isaiah 58 warns against a culture that engages in religious ritual but fails to regard others.

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen:

To loose the bonds of wickedness,

To undo the [a]heavy burdens,

To let the oppressed go free,

And that you break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;

When you see the naked, that you cover him,

And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

We often stop short of offering others the same compassion that God gives to us. We say to ourselves, “I can’t help everybody.” True, you can’t. But you can help somebody. Besides, sometimes help is not what is required. Sometimes dignity, friendship, and a listening ear will do. Perhaps we can start by asking someone their name instead of turning our heads.

This morning—as most mornings in Five Points—someone was yelling outside. Today, it was the older man. He’s always yelling, angry, frustrated, wandering from garbage can to garbage can, trapped in his own mind. Nearby him, there was another person asleep in the doorway of the old Atlanta Bakery—no shoes on in 32-degree weather.

I couldn’t shake the memory of the cold concrete on the days when I would sit beside Angela in New Haven on the steps of Yale. I turned back to my devotional. This is what it said:

“The Lord is faithful in all his words,

kind in all his works.

The Lord upholds all who are falling

and raises up all who are bowed down.”

I looked out the window again, ready to get dressed and offer some human dignity if I could. But the men were gone. In their place, crouched a robotic police dog, the city’s new inhuman tech initiative to scatter the unhoused and to deter “unsightliness.”

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God raises up those who are bowed down. We chase them away. God shelters; we shoo out of sight.

It’s not a pleasant reality that people are living on the street, but how much of a threat is a man dozing outside of an empty building? How fast can a man flee without shoes on? What are we so afraid of? We say we are worried about safety and security, but whose safety?

Just ask Ms. Grace, a prayer warrior and unhoused grandmother, the number of times she has been raped on the street. Ask the people living with curable diseases, but who can’t get seen by a doctor. Ask Mr. Matthew, a proud, hardworking man who just fell on hard times and hasn’t been able to dig himself out. Because they live unseen, they are more vulnerable every minute of every day than we think we are when they pass us by.

“No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account,” Hebrews 4:13.​” The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good..” on the housed and the houseless.

Sail

This is a poem I was commissioned to write by Hands on Atlanta for MLK Day in 2021, and since it’s Black History Month, it feels appropriate. Called “New Year’s Redress,” this poem came to mind because it shouts out some of my outside neighbors whom I’ve come to know over the years.

New Year’s Redress

Anchor

Hannah was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow…Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli took her to be a drunken woman… But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” — 1 Samuel 1:10; 13-16.

Sea

My former pastor, John O., used to say that faith is where hope and desperation meet. Desperation is a crucible, and in it the paradox of absolute dependency and shameless audacity to trust in grace alchemizes into a faith that cannot be denied.

Snotty, snobbing, surrendered faith pleases God. It bets everything on His character and creativity despite the odds. This faith is more than intellectual. It’s worked out with “fear and trembling,” and many times tears.

For me, Hannah is the model of this crucible-forged faith.

Long before Jesus wailed in the Garden of Gethsemane, Hannah was weeping on the tabernacle steps. Before King David fasted and prayed for his sick child, Hannah hungered for a child she struggled to conceive, pleading with God to deliver her a son.

She’s often portrayed in sermons as classically hysterical: emotional and irrational because she is a woman. Scripture notes that the priest Eli saw her crying and thought she was drunk.

We will see how, in faith, Hannah connects her story to the stories of the leaders who came before her and asks God to show up for her just as He did for them.

Hannah’s Vow

Scripture usually warns us against making hasty vows/oaths to God. You know, the whole “let your no be no and your yes be yes.” Hannah, too, would have been familiar with the problem of vows.

Hannah lived during the time when judges reigned over Israel. She would have been familiar with the tragic story of Jephthah. He promised to dedicate the first thing from his house to God, for victory over his enemies. After the victory, his only daughter ran out the door and greeted him.

With many tears, he and his daughter agree that he must fulfill his vow to God, and the girl is dedicated to the Lord’s service in the tabernacle, remaining a virgin and unmarried all her days. In return for God’s help, Jephthah gives up his only daughter and his only heir.

And yet, despite the backdrop of this infamous pledge to God, Hannah makes her own vow to the same God:

O Lord of Armies, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.

Why is Hannah making a reckless vow? And why is she calling God, the Lord of Armies, when she is asking for a son and not a military victory?

It’s precisely because she has Jephthah’s story in mind. She knew God had given Jephthah victory over his enemies and had received his only child, a daughter, as a servant in return. Hannah mirrors Jephthah’s terms: grant her victory over her adversary, her fertile sister-wife Peninah by giving her a son, and she will dedicate the child to temple service.

But Hannah goes further. She also reminds God of what He did in the life of Samson, another judge whose story is personally significant.

An angel visits Samson’s mother and tells her that God will grace her with a son. We don’t have a record of her asking for one. Nevertheless, God graciously blesses her. When the angel announces the news, he gives Samson’s mother strict guidance that the boy will be a Nazarite. He’ll never drink wine or ‘allow a razor to touch his hair.’

So when Hannah comes to petition God for a child, she stands on God’s track record and references that story. In faith, Hannah vows that she will also commit her child to the Lord’s service as a Nazarite, “if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget me.”

Remembering the God who remembers you

The content of Hannah’s prayer shows that she is not merely weeping before the Lord. She is meditating on what God has done for others and using that to fuel her faith. Yes, she brings her emotions, but underneath them, flexes a robust knowledge of God.

This is a powerful story. We are meant to remember, along with Hannah, that God is, in fact, capable of giving barren women children, of bringing life out of the fruitless spaces in our lives.

Hannah’s vow isn’t hasty precisely because she anticipates what Jephthah initially recoils from. She is prepared to sacrifice to God the very thing she asked for. The vow Jephthah uttered with strength, Hannah mutters with tears; the heir Jephthah offered reluctantly, Hannah offers with a song and praise: “My heart exalts in the LORD; my mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation,” (1 Samuel 2:1).

But how does she translate what should be tears into song?

Because Hannah had faith—not only in God’s power but in God’s grace. It’s essential to know that God can do anything, but many of us stop short of asking because we doubt God will do it for us. We’re not unsure of God’s power; we’re skeptical of God’s character, and that in turn makes us focus more on our power or powerlessness, our deservedness or undeservedness. We focus on our need to buy God’s service rather than God’s disposition to be gracious.

Hannah knows if God gave her one child, surely He could give her another. She also knows that the real value lies not in the power to conceive a child but in a God who remembers his people. “Remember me,” says Psalm 25, “because of your steadfast love.”

More than God’s power, it is God’s character, his love, mercy, and grace that keep us on his mind. Because God is mindful of Hannah, Hannah finds peace, conceives a son, and becomes the mother of the Prophet Samuel, the last and greatest judge of Israel. Because God is mindful of her, Hannah goes from tormented and rejected to vindicated and esteemed.

In the last we hear of her, after Hannah dedicates Samuel to the Lord’s service in the tabernacle, Scripture says, “ Indeed the Lord visited Hannah.” The result of that visit is more children. In place of the one child, God gave her 5 times what she gave Him. Jesus says it like this in Matthew 19:29, “And everyone who gave up homes, brothers or sisters, father, mother, children, or fields because of my name will receive a hundred times more and will inherit eternal life.”

More than just remembering Hannah, God directly encountered her in the midst of her faithful brokenness. He graciously visits her, and she conceives again, foreshadowing the next moment when God would visit another young maiden, and she would conceive the Word of God, Himself.

I love Hannah’s story because it reminds me that what begins with tears can end in triumph because of God’s unfailing grace. Your tears do not disqualify you. Rather, they are fuel for an undeniable faith. Remember Hannah, and how God can turn lament into legacy.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sail

This is a poem I wrote inspired by Psalm 42. I especially love the line where it says, “My tears have been my food day and night.” The MSG translation says it like this: “I’m on a diet of tears.”

I imagine that is what Hannah felt like, and that is what many of us feel like, stuck in certain situations, wondering when it will ever end. Hannah’s tears led the priest to mistake her for a drunk. There are people out there right now mistaken for drunks who are simply irrevocably sad. They turn to alcohol because they want to taste something other than their own tears. Alcohol cannot solve our sadness, but God can offer His Spirit in exchange for both.

For Deer Mistaken For Drunks (Psalm 42)

We’re does drinking from dirty oil slicks, craving

the real. We’re teenagers bathing in the endless

digital downpour, trying to scrub another day’s

numbered hours. We’re lonely drunks in various bars,

on various marquise floors, on various couches

under various streetlights—bored

numb, disgusted, terrified—

stirring, sipping, slurping, sopping

but never slaking.

We’re parched with unimpeachable thirst.

We’re standing at the faucet

rinsing our food with our own tears. Our spirits

shrivel and shrink from our bones without you,

God. We need living water.

We need to be baptized in a drink

we can never empty, in a grace

that never runs dry.

We need your breakers to roll

and your waves to crash

over us. We need a violent deluge of Spirit

to shipwreck our survival strategies and carry

us to the shores of true flourishing. As the deer

pants for the water so my soul pants

for you. My soul pants for you. You alone

are our hearts’ desire.

We long to worship you.

Today’s newsletter has no sea (like the new earth in Revelations). It just has an anchor and a sail because I wanted to focus on things that are eternal, like God’s word and our faith in it. Oh, and faith is eternal (Romans 1:17; 1st Corinthians 13:13).

If God’s word is a shiny new appliance you got for Christmas, then faith is the user manual that came in the box.

Faith isn’t sold separately; it’s provided by the Manufacturer. For every word God gives you, He also provides you with the faith to believe it. And if you need help following the manual, there is a 24/7 helpline free of charge. All you gotta do is ring ‘em up and say, “Hey, I got a word. I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

I hope this encourages someone.

Because the cool thing is if God’s promise is like a new appliance with no flaws or defects, yeah you have to put it together, but the Manufacturer already gave you picture of what the appliance is supposed to look like (Jesus—his wholeness, peace, integrity, and love), and you know that the appliance works (the Resurrection—the power of God over anything and everything including our mistakes), and you have a set of instructions for how to put it together (Faith—trusting the wisdom of God will get you there step by step). And as long as you are breathing, you have the time to put it all together. So there you go! Everything you need to accomplish all God has for you, God has already given you.

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So what is today’s word?

Be encouraged. Perservere. (After the achor, read to the bottom for the prayer.)

Anchor

Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. — Isaiah 40:27-31

Sail

A prayer for perseverance:

You wake up, and it’s still here.

The pain is here today, and it was there yesterday. But we cannot speak about tomorrow. We cannot know with certainty that the pain will still be here because we do not know whether there will be a miracle.

A woman prayed for three years for God to heal her incurable cancer, and for three years the cancer remained and spread. She continued to pray. Then, on one day, unremarkable as any other, the cancer shriveled up. Without notice or warning, or treatment, it was gone.

We know the reality of today: pain, lack, frustration, immobility, impotence. But our God is not impotent. And the Spirit cannot be constrained, moving where She will, as She will, with works of power. There is no stopping our God.

Today we receive what there is to receive: joy mixed with pain, suffering mixed with refreshment, all the while maintaining hope for tomorrow in the mercy of God, that if we cry out to Him, He will hear, and He will act.

One thing we can know for certain: the suffering will end. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but all suffering, all pain, all death is only temporary. It has an expiration date.

Despair is a trick that says, “This won’t end; God has abandoned me to my pain.” Hope says, “God has poured His love into my heart through the Holy Spirit, so I know I have a prosperous future ahead in this life and the next.”

Alas, you may wake up and find that that familiar pain is still here. But remember, God’s Holy Spirit is also still here. Your God has not left you, so take heart. He has overcome the world. Anything is possible, in Jesus’ name.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Anchor

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. —Matthew 7:24 & 25

He makes me as surefooted as a deer, enabling me to stand on mountain heights.—Psalm 18:33

Sea

This summer, my boyfriend M took me rock climbing for my 37th birthday. I had told him I wanted to try rock climbing, and he listened, then clandestinely arranged the whole thing without my knowledge. First afternoon tea at the Waldorf—best scones of our lives—and then a quick change in the cab to arrive on time at the climbing gym. From pinkies up to scaling boulders with my bare hands, my advice to ya’ll is get you a girl who can do both!

Anyway, we arrived at the gym, listened to the brief introduction, and very soon found ourselves on the climbing walls. It was so hard! Hanging there by your arms and pushing your hands as hard as you could into the small holds and ragged ledges. The instructor, with whom I shared a tattoo, gave us sage advice.

1. Use your legs to push up more than your arms to pull up.

Stand Up. Push Up. Press rather than pull. Pressing uses a stable foundation to ground into as I rise up to full height on the wall. Trying this demanded that I first ask myself, not just where I’m going, but where am I anchored? Where is my center of strength: my core, glutes, quads and hamstrings? Find them first and then move from there with intention.

A familiar hymn reminds me where this spiritual core lies: “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” When I’m not pushing up from this rock, I’m trying to pull myself up by my boostraps. My goal is to stop limiting myself to the moves that are only in arm’s reach. Suppose I anchor myself in my core values and strengths (my joy, parallel processing, community, faith, and passion) and rise up from there? I might find that more is possible from this height.

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2. Don’t expend so much energy holding on for dear life. You are either on the wall or you’re off.

I know when I’m not trusting my foundation, I start grasping onto everything else that I think could stabilize me. However, when I grip, I send tension throughout my entire body, which quickly tires me out. Instead of tense, trust. I want to trust my hands, my feet, my partner, and most importantly, The (Rock) Wall. When I trust that the wall is holding me, I can relax even in difficult situations, accurately discerning between imagined fears and real stability. It’s simple, I’m either on the wall or I’m off. I’m either in Christ or I’m not.

If I’m on the wall, there is no need to grip, and if I’m falling, there is nothing that can stop me— so there’s still no need to grip. Anticipating a fall hinders my climb and robs me of rest. Hyper-vigilance doesn’t get me anywhere, and it doesn’t help me stay in place any more than simply having my hands and feet on the holds. I’m learning to relax my grip so I can do the things I love with more ease and grace. So I can pivot more nimbly when needed and give myself mini breaks, which allows me to increase my stamina for longer and more challenging climbs in faith.

3. Don’t climb with your headphones in.

An experienced climber was on the auto-belay, a system that allows you to climb up and belay down with the help of a machine so that you can climb solo. He had his headphones in, jamming out to some heavy metal or punk music, I imagine. His friends noticed he wasn’t clipped into the belay and tried calling up to him on the wall. But 50 feet up, he just couldn’t hear them. They were yelling and screaming at him, but he was in the zone. When he reached the top, he leaned back off the wall only to plummet to the ground, breaking both of his legs. He was lucky to survive. A cautionary tale, for sure, but lesson number 1 is make sure you are clipped into Christ. All that effort doesn’t mean anything if I’m not. Even the most seasoned climber is anchored by His grace.

Lesson number two is that when you’re alone, keep your ears tuned into your community and to God. It might be easier and faster to move on my own in my own zone, but that can be deadly. Isolation isn’t wise or safe—not even when I’m following Jesus. So keeping my ears open to wise counsel alerts me to when I might be headed off track.

Following Jesus at his stage of my life feels like rock climbing. The Holy Spirit is telling me, “Go, Alysia. Reach towards hope with your left hand. Release that lie that’s been anchoring your right foot and rise up on your left foot that’s been resting on the outcrop of trust. Stand up, come on! Push Push Push. That’s it. Now keep your right thumb and index finger where they are and press down hard on your forgotten passions. Do not look down or backwards. Good. Now look for your next move.”

Jesus is my climbing coach, but also the Rock I’m exploring with different footholds and hand placements, but also the rope I can rely on to catch me if I slip from the heights, but also the belaying anchor the rope is tied to, and the sun rising over the summit.

The more experienced I get, the more technical this Christian climb becomes. The funny thing is, I like it. Not always in the moment but ALWAYS, ALWAYS after the fact. And increasingly in the moment.

Some people test out their full strength through marathons, martial arts, or creative pursuits. I test out mine on this faith walk. Sure, there is a restful peace in walking on gentle, rolling trails, enjoying the sights with God as a young believer. But invariably, at some point, the landscape changes, and hills become mountains, and a stroll becomes a hike. Then the incline makes a vertical leap, and the option is either to turn back or to get on all fours and use my feet and hands to blaze paths through uncharted wilderness. In the process, I place new anchors in the Rock for others looking for purchase on their own journeys in Christ. It’s the thrill of being on this journey with him that gets me every time.

Sail

My hands hurt, cracked, dusty

and calloused. In the cobewebs of the mountain, I unspool

myself: long legs, long arms, stretch to full size.

I unspindle my fingers to find purchase

in the rock-hard earth. Yes, there will be groaning.

Yes, there will be sighs, but I’ve been wound tight

and safe for decades. It is time.

Time to clip in and get moving.

Time to find another angle over the boulder,

another trail to hike over the heights.

I pray for more than the view we long to see from mountain tops

I pray for joy along the way. I pray for the unpredictable tests of it

that will make our steps agile and our minds confident

I pray for the strength of our bodies, from knee and shoulder,

down to the smallest joint, give thanks

for the journey that will turn a toe into an anchor,

a finger into a screw, and steadfastness into victory.

Yes, Father, I’m holding on to you,

as you are making our feet like hind’s feet

to walk on high places. Most High, who made the serpent crawl

never intended us to drag on our bellies but to rise

in you with you, hand over hand, fist over fist, inch by inch

by inch. Not by power and not by strength,

but by your Spirit. Progress is not only measured in distance

but resilience, in every step we take

and climb we brave together.

Anchor

If anyone is in Christ—Behold, they’re a new creation! — 2 Corinthians 5: 17

You have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature and be renewed in the image of your Creator, becoming like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, uncultured, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience…. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. —Colossians 3: 9-12 & 14

Sea

Yesterday I put on my Juneteenth t-shirt. I purchased this t-shirt made by city councilwoman, mom, educator, and powerhouse Shayla Johnson of Corsicana, Texas. I didn’t know about Juneteenth until I moved to Atlanta and started working for Scalawag Magazine. I certainly didn’t grow up celebrating it, but to celebrate this special moment in Texas, where the last enslaved people were set free, and where the most explicit commitment to anti-Black policy remains—that was so life-affirming.

The woman on the shirt even looks like me!

But Juneteenth happens in summer. Why wear my shirt in chilly November?

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law on January 1, 1883, all Black people living in the United States and the Confederacy were subsequently declared free.

To be clear, Black people were never slaves ontologically or in essence even though idolatrous white landowners and politicians had forced them to perform the subhuman role of slave in American society. Any belief that Black folks were/are more suited to subjugation is demonic deception, pure and simple.

That was good news. However, this good news didn’t make it to enslaved Black folks residing in Texas for another two years after it had been signed into law. Although they were legally free, they were unaware of it. They continued to live, act, and behave as if they were still enslaved for two and a half more years. And of course, many had a vested interest in keeping Black Americans ignorant of the fact of what had taken place.

It took a general on horseback to alert the Black citizens of Galveston that they were no longer subject to the exploitation of their enslavers. They were now free. Stay or go, the choice was theirs. They were no longer under the power of the old law.

Of course, this new order was terrifying and exhilarating—how to live as free people? And for white people, how to learn to accept and love the new regime that understands white people to be Black people’s equals.

It’s an oversimplification for sure, and many people still haven’t fully aligned with this reality 160 years later. But I think emancipation is a helpful metaphor to understand what Jesus did 2,000 years ago, not just for one people who were being abused, but for all humanity. The entire earth had been subjected to the moral/personal and social/political laws of sin and death, which we were powerless to escape. The Declaration of the New Covenant was signed in something stronger than presidential ink. It was signed in Christ’s blood, and with that act, Jesus set the world free from the power of sin and death. We no longer have to be slaves to any kind of fear. But 2,000 years later, most of us still don’t know that. And those of us who know it have a hard time experiencing its real implications in our lives.

Hence, the t-shirt. The Bible talks about putting on Christ as if a garment. It’s assumed to be an everyday action, as essential as getting dressed.

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The act of pulling on my Juneteenth t-shirt reminded me of where I come from and the deep story of redemption still being written in my life. It also did something else. That act was a small way of practicing embodiment, of doing something different as an expression of my beliefs.

I surprised myself with the courage I exercised all throughout the day. How much more easily hope came than anxiety, compassion than isolation, trust rather than terror after putting it on. I don’t think it was the shirt, but more the small act of faith that lifting the shirt over my head demanded.

To make our ideals a reality, sometimes they need us to try something first. Try, not do.

Most of the time, we are keenly aware that the ushering in of the life and world we want requires much more than our individual efforts. After all, one Black person getting free certainly did not mean all their kin and loved ones were free. And freedom did not release them from the fugitive status that followed them the rest of their lives in a society of racial caste.

The world we want requires a power that, on our own, in our own strength, we just don’t have. We don’t know what to do to “make it happen,” and that feeling of uncertainty, insecurity, responsibility, and powerlessness makes us less and less likely to act, ensuring that nothing ever changes.

So instead of ‘doing something’ because of your values, how about try something.’ Try is modest. Try is anchored in the possibility of futility but lifts its head up to the potential of success. Try is where humility and hope get into bed with each other.

In this unlikely experiment, God’s power begins to flex. And when you do pull off whatever you are hoping for against all odds, you’re not arrogant enough to claim the victory as your own or lord it over others. You just experience the gratitude of somehow—by grace—making it through.

Try also suggests the need for practice and the possibility that you might need to change your approach. However, the more you practice your beliefs, the more tangible they become. You begin to accumulate real evidence that this works; this is a world that can be realized.

I put on my Juneteenth t-shirt because I needed to feel the power of this gospel truth I carry. I put on my Juneteenth shirt to encourage me not to keep quiet when people are still spiritually (and socially) enslaved. I put on my Juneteenth shirt because I need the reminder of my deliverance and liberation just as much as everyone else. If you’ve never been powerless in the face of something that wanted to destroy you, then maybe the Good News that unites Juneteenth and the Gospel ain’t for you. But if you have, I come to tell you, you’ve been set free by a Power greater than the one that wants to kill you. It’s already happened. You’re already free. There is nothing more you need to do… but there are plenty of things you are free to try.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sea

To the Great Deliverer who was also the Suffering Slave,

Thank you for the depth of the freedom you provide.

Thank you for recovering our dignity,

and pioneering the path to love and unity

after all that has been done to us and that we have done

to destroy the world you have given us.

Today, I ask for the faith to put on our hopes.

Today, I ask for the courage,

born from the belief in the sufficiency of what you have done

and the power of your word,

to try and experiment new ways of appropriating your promises

and making them real. We don’t have the power to do it on our own,

so thank you for sending us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,

the Spirit of Power and of Truth, to assist us in all our feeble doing.

Thank you for what you did on Juneteenth.

Thank you for what you did on Calvary.

We will not shut our mouths

until the last captives are free.

Amen.

Anchor

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” — Matthew 13:31-32

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. It’s not important who waters or who plants. The important one is God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one [united], and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. — 1 Corinthians 3:6-8

Sea

At the top of the year, I released a post called 2025: The Year of the Gardener. In it, I said, “ gardening is a continual practice of commitment and care. For a gardener, the pleasure is not in getting but in growing.”

I thought I knew what that meant, but as is often the way with prophecy, it arrives in your mouth before you understand it in your brain. And it took root in my brain long before it bloomed in my life. I needed a bunch of repetition—a lot of watering, so to speak—for the meaning to truly sink in.

This September, the Holy Spirit spoke to my spirit, telling me that I was in a season of increase. Immediately galvanized by the prospect of an increase in my bank account, an increase in closeness in my relationship, and an increase in creative output, I began anxiously anticipating my payout. But along with this word came a sense of restlessness, discontent, and frantic hurry. Nothing seemed ready to be harvested yet. Nothing was happening. Or at least not enough something was happening.

My new creative projects are only in their early stages of development. M and I are growing happier by the day, but still not any closer to having the setup that could support either of us moving to another country to be together. Poems are only beginning to take root in me. None of it is “ready,” and the prospect of a harvest was leaving me disappointed at what I knew would be an unripe, tasteless, and meager crop. I should be happy at a promise like increase, I thought, but why am I unsettled?

Thank God, the Holy Spirit is not only able to get us a word from the Father, but also able to correct our interpretation of it.

Separating the end of winter from the joy of harvest time are the spring rains, a summer of sun, and more autumn downpours. Two and a half seasons’ worth of growing time. This is what gives the peach its sweetness, the apple its firmness, the gourd its girth, and the gorgeous corn a kaleidoscope of color.

In addition to the Spirit helping me, Google was also illuminating. When I typed in growth vs. harvest, it actually pulled up two different business strategies. Growth strategy is all about investing more in the hopes of eventually getting more out. A harvest strategy is about reducing input to maximize immediate yield. If this was my season of increase—not harvest—it’s time to keep pouring in, nurturing. It’s neither the time to reap the benefits nor cut losses.

When I wrote the pleasure of a gardener is in growing, not getting, the Spirit meant that there is a joy to be discovered outside of consuming, outside of the harvest.

And to be perfectly honest, why was I sighing anyway? The hard work of cultivating the soil and planting the seeds had already been done. Now was the growth season, when the plants take over and do their thing. All I do is water. Occasionally, I might weed or do some VERY VERY light pruning, but honestly, the plants take it from here.

What’s required now is the quiet work of witness and trust. It’s often the hardest because in a profit-hungry capitalist society, we’ve never been taught to be steadfast and wait and see. We can’t see the life that’s in the seed below the soil. We don’t trust it. Plus. We are used to overnight acceleration. We’ve totally collapsed summer and fall, winter and spring—forcing ourselves into a perpetual boom and bust that, over time, drains the soil and the seed, producing a smaller and smaller yield until nothing grows at all.

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What I am being invited into is neither the satisfaction of harvest nor the joy of planting something new but summer’s patient anticipation. And hopeful anticipation is spiritual work. I choose to: delight in each way I watch M and I grow closer to one another, give thanks for every new poem and ripening sense of confidence, maintain the conditions that are conducive to my growth, feed my creative heart the inspiration it needs, and honor the invisible internal labor the Holy Spirit does in me on my behalf. Sounds like the easy yoke, Jesus was talking about in Matthew, but why does it feel so unnatural?

Maybe because we despise small beginnings. Perhaps because doing things to get simply isn’t the same as doing things to grow. The first is born from craving and need, the second is from love.

It’s easy to sing when love is in you. But it’s much harder to do if you are only wired for the pleasure of consumption. If we only have appetites for hunting but not shepherding, conquering but not cultivating, gaining but not gardening, if we think that satisfying our hunger is the pleasure that negates the intoxication of fragrance or color’s bombastic spectacle or the frissonate joy of music, or intimacy’s tender touch.

Our brains are sort of addicted to results, dopamine, achievement, and products. We don’t know the peace and joy and love that naturally multiply our hopes, talents, and God-given promises because urgency—the need of now—forces us out of the very seasons designed to increase the good we’ve already got.

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We forget that we are made to be witnessed and to be witnesses, and there is an unparalleled fulfillment in watching things grow. I’m learning this new labor, which is not planting, not harvesting, but simply watering and waiting. Watching myself and those around me transform, their gifts ripen, and their faith mature—it’s like witnessing a garden bloom all around me.

“[Urgency] is the enemy of peace, joy, and love,” as a woman in my spiritual collectives class reminded me. I can’t force the increase. I don’t make things grow. Not even myself. “God gives the increase.” All I can do is trust that the Life in me is already doing its thing, spurred on by Love. And who’d want to rush that?

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sail

I was introduced to this poem by Joseph Fasano in my Image Poetry Seminar, Poetry and Civilizational Decline, taught by J.C. Sharl. I think the poem illustrates simply and beautifully the central message of this newsletter, that life [and love]—everything real— becomes truly ours in the growing. The poem below has been reprinted from Poetry.org and the Academy of American Poets.

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper — Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back

in the grasses.

I hear you. I know

this life is hard now.

I know your days are precious

on this earth.

But what are you trying

to be free of?

The living? The miraculous

task of it?

Love is for the ones who love the work.

Anchor

Fear not, O Zion:

Let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you by his love;

He will exalt over you with loud singing. — Zephaniah 3:16-17

Sea

*This newsletter owes much to the many insights and conversations of my spiritual collective group at Convergence and to our facilitator and spiritual director, Patrice Gerideau. For more, click here.

It’s growing season. I love spying in the garden of my heart, all the budding flowers and trees just beginning to fruit: peaches of passion young on the stem, different varieties of corn, underripe and colorless, and grapes yet to turn wise in the sun. A garden in the early stages, not yet ripe but looking good.

I walk with the Holy Spirit, a hose in one hand, watering each plant as it needs. In the other, I set traps for the pesky foxes and hungry bunnies who love to munch on the delicate shoots. Some sections we’ve been working on for years are finally beginning to show promise: that stubborn bed of impatiens is transforming into rows of long suffering, steadfastness, and humility.

I notice there is beauty here and beauty still arriving. When I look at immature fruit not yet edible, our Gardener God says to me, “Do not look for ways to shorten your growing season. Do not hurry my slow work.”

Patience is an uncelebrated form of passion. God makes use of both as he coaxes life up from the dry places in our souls. The whole “Be fruitful and multiply” bit can’t be rushed. And sometimes it takes more than a single growing season to get the whole harvest. Sometimes it might take several years before you see the first fruits at all.

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But the encouragement in it all is that seeds grow. Period. Each one is pregnant with the DNA of God’s first invitation to the natural world: “Be fruitful and multiply.” They grow because they are created to. And God says, “I don’t mind [having to] repeat myself until the work is complete, for when I do this, a command becomes a song.”

Think about it, we don’t mind when the chorus of a song we like repeats over and over again. In fact, we relish it. The repetition adds something. Repetition seems to strengthen the force of the song into a swelling tide. Each time it wells up and washes over us, the more we believe it. The more it’s repeated, the louder we sing and the surer our notes.

A sigh (and for some of us a seethe) can easily replace the song of our lives. But there is a joy in the work of living and growing. What’s so interesting to me about the song metaphor is that we get joy while we sing the song, not just once it’s over. We’re not looking for the end so we can turn off the music and jump into bed, we’re celebrating as it happens. And our joy goes as far as our willingness to participate fully—even if we sing off key—it’s not about how perfect we sound or how quickly we can sing it.

Whatever makes us think that God is a boss with a deadline rather than a composer with a melody? We might as well get rid of that right now because Genesis 1 is a psalm, not an instruction manual. It cycles and repeats to call us forward gently, gradually yet faithfully. It doesn’t do so to point out our flaws continually.

Let this sink in: the timeline in your head belongs to you, not God. What would happen if you saw the lack of fruit not as a delay but rather as a way to cash in on a bigger harvest? That’s precisely how the Bible sees it when it comes to salvation. God wants faith and repentance to spring up in each person. He wants every person to bear spiritual fruit.

• But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. 2 Peter 3: 8-9

• Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” Romans 2:4

• Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rains. James 4:7

God’s repetition serves a purpose. Repeatedly, the Bible refers to faith [in God and God’s word] as a seed. Our hearts are like soil. Have you ever seen hard, dry dirt? You can pour water on it, and the water can run right through. It doesn’t even have time to nourish a plant’s roots because it runs out too quickly.

When I’m away for a long time, I sometimes have to run water through the soil of my fiddle leaf fig and baby rubber plant multiple times before they are ready to absorb any water at all. Sometimes, God repeats things to soften our hearts and prepare us to receive God’s word in faith. He’s watering us, and he doesn’t mind having to do it again and again because he is after the fruit of his word. Isaiah 55:11 says, “My word will not return void.” God waters the soil of our hearts to implant the word within us. He delights in watching it grow and bear fruit, not merely a single plum, but thirty, sixty, a hundredfold harvest.

Did you know plants grow better when you speak to them? What or who needs you to sing over them rather than sigh? Moreover, know that your Great Gardener God offers you His song rather than His frustration with your progress. So close your eyes, breathe deeply, and let it grow.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sail

God, as you send us forth,

As little signs, little seeds,

Into the hungry dark earth,

Help us to trust what You put inside us.

Help us to remember that a burial

Is the last step before a breakthrough.

Help us to know that nothing You do

Returns void. Command us to be fruitful

And we won’t be able to resist.

Sing Your victory song and instruct us

How to harmonize until we reach the crescendo.

Remind us that we are that one houseplant

Impossible to kill.

Tell us to grow, and we will.

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Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. — Revelation 21:1

Sea

Tomorrow is my 37th birthday. Globally, I am happy and relieved. Locally, it’s all weather. 

33 was supposed to be my Jesus year. 2021: my year of resurrection. Nothing profound happened, so when August 2nd came around the following year, I said I was turning 33 again, to allow God more time to begin (and end) the transformation. 

Thirty-three 2.0 was not the resurrection I hoped for, but it was undoubtedly a crucifixion. I lost sleep, confidence, and damn near lost my mind. Thirty-five came, and it was the first day and night in the tomb. It was particularly hard being fired from the magazine I helped build. Thirty-six came, and I spent that birthday weeping by a river, saying goodbye to a version of a relationship I spent everything trying to keep. 

My 36th year has been mainly about reacquaintance with myself. Cultivating capacity, leaning into joy, stewarding passion. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been worth it. 37 already feels like it is going to be slightly different, but I’ve learned resurrections don’t do timelines, and the grave is still a part of my story even if it’s not where my story ends.

This birthday I’m spending at home with family—after 9 years of spending it elsewhere. Yesterday was a great day. My mom, my boyfriend, and I went to a pottery class. We watched flamenco. We had good food and even better drinks. We talked deeply and laughed together.

Today, though, I’m more in my feelings, moody and tender and pre-menstrual.

Still, there is a kind of peace I feel sitting on the couch that has occupied my mother’s living room for the past 30 years. It represents both softness and stability, even as outside, the dark verdigris clouds threaten rain. Let it. Some of us have survived storms. We’ve learned thunderheads are a natural occurrence. We’ve learned a bit about the weather patterns of our own lives. 

Most of my life, I’ve been a traditional Southern season. Hot and sunny with frequent bursts of high-intensity storms. I get older and I feel the climate change.

As I begin to pray in gratitude and for guidance, I come back to the text. The text being the past 37 years. I look to them not for answers but for patterns. I’ve said before that our lives are poems, and I am searching mine for the rhymes, the words that repeat, the extended metaphors: God, language, love, Christ, difference, conversation,  travel, local, revival, joy, steadfastness, passion, patience, poetry. These rhymes do not tell me the next move so much as they give me a sense of the writer’s heart behind the words. They remind me of this poem’s ethic and form. And that gives me trust more so than comfort, boundaries rather than borders, a little bit more wonder than worry. 

Some of my friends, especially the artists, want endless unhindered exploration. That feels a little too overwhelming and destabilizing to me. Either like a herky-jerky conversation full of graceless starts and stops or a chaotic monologue whose swirling tangents eddy rather than reveal. I wish I could say that with a full chest. I say it knowing fear is mixed in with belief. I’m a work in progress, a spoken word poem halfway spit. 

I’m a person who welcomes change as long as it cycles. It’s not that I don’t want to experience new notes in my life, but I typically feel uncomfortable until I hear how it can harmonize with the other chords that have been guiding the music. Some melodies won’t change: Christ’s love for me, my love of words— but how they’re arranged might. I’m just hoping to sway in that space rather than stray, knowing the difference between the two is only a few letters. 

Over the next year, I might be writing a newsletter or performing poems or writing about the arts. I might be sharing the gospel, or silently letting the love of God flow through me to my neighbors, or delving deeper into inter-religious engagement. I might be learning how to receive my partner’s love or learning how to love myself. Or all of the above. 

We look at the differing notes and movements in our lives and think paradox, contraction, rather than dialectic, dialogue. That’s the hidden beauty of or. Or is not logically exclusive, even though it often functions that way in practice. It doesn’t mean this or that. It means this, that, or both. 

Or doesn’t have to rule out and, but then again it doesn’t mandate it. Or can refer to the entire Venn diagram. And is just the intersection. So funny that we like to think of and as naturally inclusive, but when you’re reading through a page of logical proofs, and looks like a wedge. Or looks like an opening. 

Tomorrow I’m 37. I am a poet, or a linguist, or a prayer warrior, or a psalmist, or a scholar or a doubter or a believer or a lover or a celibate or a dreamer, or a planner, or a woman, or a girl, or a saint, or a sinner, or an or with and somewhere inside. 

Sail

The sail for this week is a poem I wrote in 2018 called “Sway.” I’ll give you the whole thing, but really, it’s the last stanza of this poem that’s the prayer for myself this year and for you, my friends.

Revelations 2:1 says that in the new heaven-earth, there will be no sea. The sea for the ancient Jewish people symbolized chaos. For John in exile on an island, the sea may have meant punishment, separation. But in the new heaven-earth, it seems there will be no sea to separate or drown us.

SWAY

Sun-suckered between two mates

in the spring-chicken days of summer

I catch a brunette boy mid laugh,

eating the last of his ice cream cone and an ocean

dribbles down his face.

He takes it all in, gobble and swig,

when the glad harbor bids him come.

A gaggle of young feathers

this fluff and swagger of 3 bird-chests.

They puff their lungs and stumble breaths,

tongue slick with the talk of girls

who strut Manly Beach toes to earth,

shoulders braised with salt and surf—

The girls wild, and the boys, not exactly wary.

And none are old enough,

nor ungrateful enough

to question the new gods

who gave them these scaleless bodies

these summer skins.

This class of acolytes won’t forsake

the sand or white-gapped grins long enough

to regard, in the shadows, 100 meters off,

the pines in orans,

needled palms raised sunward in worship.

But I look towards these trees,

admire their stature, crave their faith,

wish for that kind of sturdiness.

Because the years have made me motion sick.

And because I’m 30.

And the scales have come where softness was.

Because I’ve laid down in a withering salt-bed

when the tides were out,

and the lights were low,

and the sea didn’t feed me,

and the shore couldn’t reach me, so I’m skeptical

of these new gods,

who retire the young.

Because 20-something and dumbly possible,

I know the ones who were lost to the waves.

The ones who placed their faith in a message

in a bottle, who at 15 drank the river,

then the gulf, and are still downing, mid-atlantic,

puking up their guts

and holding back their blonde.

I know the ones who believed the mirage,

who waded in the water with stones in their pockets,

the ones who trusted fame and its terrible vacillations,

the ones who lowered their anchor

into the depths of love

and found it wouldn’t catch,

or hold

or keep

or salvage them from drifting

in the current’s whiplash. It all happened so fast—

bare toes and bird chests—the girls became

women, and the boys became addicts. And weren’t we

just 16? We were just at the beach;

We buried our friend last week,

and her hair was still drying.

So I no longer believe the sea.

But I’m too old to trust in my parents’ buoyancy.

Youth but bikini strings, these days

I need a little more stability.

I dip my feet in, but sit a little closer to shore,

so I can walk amongst the pines, mesmerized by their height,

these mature giants that learned to be rooted,

how to be rapt with passion but not ruptured by it

how to grow strong and steadfast.

Not timid but humble.

Not rigid but anchored.

Unafraid and undaunted.

And if you look closely, when the wind glories,

you can detect in their branches subtle movement,

the limber confidence of age,

a posture that leans in whatever comes what may.

Dear Lord, make us like these,

so we don’t drift but sway.

“When I Look at You Without Speaking, I’m Drawing a Map” is a poem about my friendship with a poet, J, from El Salvador. This newsletter explores specific lines from this poem through the lens of life and Scripture. Here’s a recording of my recent performance at Poetry International in Rotterdam.

Anchor

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. —Hebrews 11:9 -10

Sea

I used to have anti-immigrant views. But I wouldn’t have said it like that.

I would have said that I support legal processes for immigration, which sounds fine, but it quickly becomes slippery.

Focusing on the process of immigration rather than immigrants meant I didn’t have to think about people: entrepreneurs, ideators, and sufferers, tired, sacred, hungry, funny, ingenious, believing people. Instead, the focus was on immigrants, things in transit that haven’t been properly invited in yet: objects that the process labels illegal.

Once, there were others who were also equally concerned with the law. In Jesus’ day, the religious elite obsessed over procedure. They even tried to prevent Jesus from healing sick people because he did it on the wrong day—never mind that some of those people had been suffering for decades or even their whole lives.

Others weren’t so concerned about the law but rather how to make it lucrative. Businessmen made money off this purity-obsessed culture. They capitalized on people’s sins and desperation, preventing Gentiles and women who wanted to worship God from entering the temple courts during Passover so they could make a buck.

I thought I was morally unimpeachable when I stressed that there was simply a right way and a wrong way to enter the country. But Jesus warns us of an unhealthy fixation with the law, especially when we value man’s laws and currency above God’s.

Share

What made my views sneakily anti-immigrant was how easily I privileged the law of nations above the dignity of a person. Legality allowed me to quickly bypass the image of God in the face of a stranger in favor of scrupulously attending to the jot and tittle of a manmade text.

It was a short conversation with my friend J. that completely changed the way I saw immigrants. J and I met while in graduate school at NYU. He had been living in the States for 14 years after walking to the US from Central America at age nine.

J said maybe all of two sentences about his experience. But then left me with a question that I have sat with ever since. “You think anyone wants to leave their home?”

Love not as origin but as exodus.

Many of us do think that! But what if people didn’t want to leave their homes but had to? What if an El Salvadorean looks at the blooms of the jacaranda trees the same way you remember the pines in which your father built you a treehouse? Newsflash: people love their grandmother’s fiery wit and compassion-wearied face the same way you love yours.

Trump says migrants come from “shithole countries,” and some take his word for it. We don’t know anything about where our neighbors come from or feel anything for their place of origin, except pity, so we never bother to consider that they might just LOVE their countries and their families, and that the pain of extended separation grieves them to the marrow.

So what if your love for family and home begged you to stay, but God’s love for you commanded you to go? Can we see people’s exodus not as a lack of love but as a greater faith in the Divine unfolding in their lives?

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance...By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise…These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. 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 them a city. - Hebrews 11:9 -10; 13-16. 

When I was 20, I spent six months living in Egypt. Though I loved Egypt, when I returned to the States, I knelt down on the ground and kissed it as if it were holy.

Home como ancla, no como cadenas,

Home should be an anchor, not a ball and chain. Good parents want their children to be grounded by the values and teachings of home, not locked inside it. People hope their children will travel, explore, build homes, and find their callings. Borders imprison certain people while allowing us to freely traverse them, anchored to safety by the weight of our American passports. We applaud missionaries for fearlessly (and illegally) preaching and proselytizing in non-Christian nations but condemn foreign workers who break manmade laws to provide safety and food to their families. Aren’t both trying to save lives, some spiritually, others physically?

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My former pastor says if a stranger has just lost their mother, do not say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but ask, “What was your mother’s name?”

What do we ask someone who has fled their home, left their family, and lost everything, even their own language?

If immigrating is loving two women,

which one of us do you dream in?

My Jordanian friend, who fled to the UK to escape religious persecution, laments that she no longer dreams in Arabic. Her poems are only in English. I want to ask her what she misses about Arabic. What exquisite words do you long to feel in your mouth?

A way to love people who are torn between two places is to let them remember. Re-membering with people gives them the gift of your witness. It allows them to put things back together, temporarily, make things whole.

Maybe immigrants enjoy one another’s company because it helps them remember. Perhaps it blunts the grief of what they left behind and lifts the burden of being a stranger in a foreign land. When I lived abroad, I too spent most of my time with Americans and South Africans. Being together alleviated the pressure of having to translate and the anxiety that comes with living in a place you are constantly reminded is not your home.

We share our memories of being with the Lord. It eases the rejection and frustration we face in the world. All of us are longing for heaven, but it’s not our time to go yet. Sometimes all we can do is get together and say, “Yeah, me too.”

The gospel truth is that we’re all exiles in some way— political, racial, spiritual. And God cautions us on how we should treat exiles.

“Don’t oppress or take advantage of sojourners [foreigners]; you, remember, were once strangers in Egypt. Don’t mistreat widows or orphans. If you do and they cry out to me, you can be sure I’ll take them most seriously; I’ll show my anger and come raging among you with the sword, and your wives will end up widows and your children orphans.”  - Exodus 22:21-24

Since “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him,” no one made in His image is illegal. That is good news for exiles.

God is the only judge who can declare a life just or unjust, clean or unclean, but She never uses the word legal. I guess because when it comes to God’s law, we’re all cut off, standing on the wrong side of the border crossing, needing someone to let us into the Promised Land.

Sail

Our sail for this week is the full text of my poem, “When I look at You without Speaking I’m Drawing a Map.” I encourage you to read it aloud for yourself. It may be a disorienting experience. All the better to grasp the heart of this week’s newsletter.

Most of my newsletters to date have centered on the Bible and spiritual truths, but today I want to discuss poetry. As always, though, we will start with our anchor in Scripture, before heading out to sea, and finally setting sail with a poem.

Anchor

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

Sea

When I conceived of Chasing After Wind, I envisioned interweaving Scripture and poetry, testimony and personal confession into something that could minister on multiple levels: to the body, soul, and spirit. 

Poetry’s ability to do just that is why I first fell in love with language. A good poem about bread can make me salivate just as if I were smelling bread. A deft poem about pain can make me weep as if I were wounded myself, and precisely because I have eaten, I have smelled, I have ached, does the poem have power. 

Grammar refers to the abstract mental organization of language in the brain that we use in everyday speech. The language that takes place in poetry (and prophecy) is something more. Like the genres of history and journalism, poetry and prophecy describe temporal facts. These facts could describe anything from the fall of Babylon to the exact quality of light on the water at dawn. However, each genre uses these facts for different ends. Poets and prophets use them not only to situate us in what is but to lay bare eternal truths. Prophecy stimulates the spirit. Poetry stimulates the soul. And so much of the Old Testament is poetry.

I don’t just mean it’s metaphorical; I mean literal poems: the book of Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, much of the Prophets. When the prophets recorded their “Thus-said-The-Lord’s”, they did so in poems. 

Reading poetry has helped me see that God’s Word shouldn’t be treated as a means to an end only. Like a good poem, God’s Word is meant to be savored, enjoyed, explored, inhaled. God’s Word, like God Himself, is rich, decadent, delicious, and intoxicating. God isn’t just useful or powerful; She is also beautiful. Poetry first cultivated that sensibility in me towards language. I now recognize it is also true of  God. 

When we deeply attend language, we pressurize grammar in such a way that we get something beyond mere communication. We get beauty. We get art, a way of allowing life’s meaning and depth to surface out of chaos and noise. (Sound at all like Genesis 1?)

Poetry is an embodied kind of language, language that doesn’t just describe but makes one experience the thing described. If you aren’t seeing the parallel to the Incarnation, it’s right there on the surface. Jesus is the Word, the embodied love of the Father that comes alive so that we can see, touch, and even smell it. 

If Ephesians 2 is true and we are God’s workmanship (poiēma) created in Christ Jesus (the Incarnate Word) for good works, what exactly are the poems of our lives supposed to reveal?

Our lives are meant to reveal eternal truths about Christ and his coming Kingdom.

I’ll give a recent example. 

Two weeks ago, I got to travel to the Netherlands to perform as part of Poetry International. PI is a festival that has been bringing poets from around the world to Rotterdam for the past 55 years. This year’s theme was “Laureates and Legends.” Since I’m not a laureate yet, I am one of the “legends.”

I had the opportunity to share space with Warsan Shire and poet laureates Simon Armitage (UK), Kwame Dawes (Jamaica), and Esther Phillips (Barbados). It was beautiful to listen to poems written in Ukrainian, Albanian, Dutch, and French.

Maltese-French poet Nadia Mifsud made Maltese sing, the Arabic and Italian vocabularies blending and troubling one another. It was like eating the perfect lemon tart: the chiffon and overly sweet Italian meringue perfectly balanced by the Arabic’s sharpness, a sensation you feel in your jaw and the back of your mouth. 

Listening to Egyptian-Dutch poet Benzokarim break English’s closest cousin according to the sensibilities of Kaaps, a Colored South African dialect of Afrikaans, riveted me. He turned the language in ways I couldn’t understand but imagined I could, as if I was somehow sensing a memory of the language from millennia ago, when Dutch and English were the same.  

I rarely get to engage all my sensibilities at once—poet, linguist, believer, lover— but at Poetry International, I got to be more myself at the same time and in one place. And this was a gift from God. 

You see, for the last year and a half, I have been underemployed. Of course, I still write articles and perform on stages, but I haven’t had a consistent paycheck since I was let go from Scalawag Magazine. For the past two summers, I have traveled to the Netherlands to spend time with my boyfriend, a Dutch poet, artist, and creative director. 

I’ve been trying to find work to do in the Netherlands that could help offset the expense of traveling back and forth overseas. But for two years in a row—nothing. I applied for jobs, pitched magazine articles, and tried to organize shows and workshops. Nothing.

Last summer, M and I broke up. I thought I would never go back to the Netherlands, never see him or the Lowlands again. But God has a funny way. In February of this year, I received an email from Poetry International asking if I would perform at their festival in Rotterdam in June, with all expenses paid and a $1000 honorarium.  

M and I still weren’t back together yet, but I had to say yes to this opportunity. The check from Poetry International would double what I had made in six months. 

He provided a way to earn some money, reunite with M, utilize my gifts, and fulfill my dream of performing on more international stages all at the same time. That’s a real poet at work who can do all that with such economy of movement. The truth of that is God provides. He is working it ALL together for my good.

God did what I could not do for myself. For that, He deserves my wonder and praise!  

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Over the course of a few days, I got to talk with Nadia about a paper I wrote in graduate school about Maltese. I got to hug Warsan. We’d been Twitter friends before either of us was a big name in poetry, but had never met in person. I got to make connections with poetry organizations in Poland, Barbados, and Italy. I got to go on scooter rides and long walks with my love. I got to talk about the difference between religion and Jesus with M’s good friends, whose opinions about God are as different as their ethnicities. And I got to be reminded of the power of my poems. That even when I’m not writing poetry consistently, I am still a poet made in the image of the One who spoke the world into being. I’m a metaphor for His meaning. He is the beauty of my story and the grammar holding it all together.

Verily,

Alysia

Recent + Upcoming Appearances: Catch me out and about!

New Interview on The Ethically Immoral Podcast 

June 14, 2025 | Online 

Upcoming Appearance: Listen Here Open Mic 

July 10, 2025 | Corsicana, TX

Upcoming Workshop: Right 2 Write Festival 

August 30, 2025 | Dallas, TX 

Upcoming Performance: When Poets Pray

September 12, 2025  | Fort Worth, TX

Sail 

Here is the video for one of my performances at Poetry International: “When I Look at You Without Speaking, I’m Drawing a Map.” Given the nationalistic fervor that is turning borders into thin red lines, exing and exiling whole peoples with the stroke of a pen, I picked poems that make every effort to bring people into the country of love from which no one can be cast out. My next newsletter will explore some of the spiritual themes present in this and other poems. Stay tuned.

Also coming soon, we will have a guest feature from my friend, sculptor Eóin Burke. Eóin and I conducted ministry out of his studio for artists and 20-somethings in New York back in 2012. But more on that later. 

Anchor

“The most important [commandment],” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[c] There is no commandment greater than these.” - Mark 12:29-31

Sea

So I was reading day 13 on day 14 of a 40-day devotional and fast. The Scripture for the day was love your neighbor as yourself. A classic. What more can I learn from this basic building block of Jesus’ teaching that I’ve heard over and over since I was a child? 

Apparently a lot, especially as it pertains to love and justice.

In the devotional, the writer explored various examples of loving our neighbors, noting that the expression of love adapts to the needs and realities of each individual. “Sometimes love might look like buying someone a meal who is hungry, or giving someone a listening ear who feels burdened, or advocating for a child’s wellbeing, or standing up to unjust governmental laws.” 

These can all be defined as acts of justice, attempts to right wrongs and inequities. But the author didn’t describe them that way. He described them as acts of love. And then a revelation sorta dropped down into my spirit: The goal is not change, the goal is love. 

Mind-blowing. 

Process before Progress

When most of us on the left say we want change, we mean justice. Change refers to the beneficial result of a more just society, not the process by which we arrive there. It’s an unfortunate and lazy slip because it’s the process that mainly requires our attention.

It is not always in our power to make a situation, a system, or even a human heart arrive exactly where we want it to. It is, however, through the Holy Spirit, always in our power to love the person in front of us amid the mess, right where we’re at.

I am not saying that we should not hope for change. However, the expectation that my actions must make an immediate and substantive difference on the macro level often discourages me from taking even the smallest action. If what I can do is not enough to change the world, I don’t bother doing it. In the process, I deny love to those who need it the most. 

Let me put it another way. I’ve been so convinced that my single meal to someone on the street, my one hour of listening, my intervention, and my protest won’t immediately solve a person’s problem that I’ve declined opportunities to show that person love. 

Conversely, I’ve also done a complete 360 and arrogantly believed that my action is all that’s required for accomplishing change, totally ignoring the person’s agency and the situation’s complexity. 

In the past, I’ve wanted change for my loved ones precisely because I loved them, but it got all switched around somehow, and eventually I just wanted them to change. Their biggest problem became, in my mind, their unwillingness to listen to me. I ended up acting out of impatience to alleviate my sense of urgency, anxiety, or need for validation, caring less and less whether my actions were loving, as long as others acted as I thought they should to improve their lives (and mine). 

The apostle Paul rebukes me, showing me the difference between caring and controlling: “Love does not insist on its own way.” 

What if instead of focusing on changing the outcome, I committed to loving when and where I can? What if instead of trying to ensure, shield, overturn, resist, etc. I just expressed meaningful and straightforward acts of love that may, at various times, involve shielding and resisting.

For me, this might mean I show up to a pro-Palestinian protest not necessarily to get the US government to stop supporting Israel—the US government has already shown again and again that it does not care about our unorganized protests or the people of Palestine. But showing up to demonstrate my love to the Palestinian people. To say with my presence and prayerful intercession:

• Your life is valuable to me and to Jesus.

• Your suffering grieves me and Jesus.

• Your children are precious to me and to Jesus. 

• Your safety and your home are important to me and to Jesus.

• Your joy matters to me, even if I can’t secure it for you.  And even if my government disagrees with me, I want you to know, you matter to me. 

When the goal is to love people, we can always be successful, no matter what exists outside of our control.

Justice: A more romantic idea than love?

I used to serve on the board of an anti-child trafficking organization, and they made a very clear distinction between people who hate child trafficking and people who love children. They hired and worked with people who loved children. To love children means so much more than stopping traffickers and trafficking. It means you are committed to seeing every child and all children as young beings made in the image of God and working to see them thrive mentally, physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually, and economically. That’s a much more complete vision than simply busting down doors and rounding up pedophiles.

The idea of a place where all children thrive is undoubtedly a better vision for the world, but also a messier one because our ideas of “getting justice” can be more romanticized and entrenched than our commitment to love. 

When we become fixated on “getting justice,” we take it upon ourselves to judge between right and wrong—in this case, children and traffickers. But loving children also means figuring out how to love children who have groomed other children. Loving children means accepting the fact that the children you are called to love are not all perfect victims, and that not all situations are so clear-cut. That’s where mercy and compassion come into play. 

Love and Humility as political commitments

Ultimately, the Bible is clear. Vengeance belongs to God. I think here vengeance refers to the ability to right wrongs, to punish the wicked, and to vindicate the righteous. All of that belongs to God alone.

How can we do that? By following the commands of Jesus. 

Abiding humility and life-animating reverence before God is the first commandment Jesus mentions in Mark. This recognizes God as the final authority on all things and the One that deserves our full allegiance.

The second command is love. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor. He did not command us to change political structures. Not because they don’t need to be changed, but because that involves judgment and only God has the wisdom, power, and authority to execute it. In the Biblical narrative, we see that God is the one who takes credit for changing the political structures, and change they do. He emancipates the Israelites from Egypt, destroys the empire of Nineveh; orchestrates Nebuchadnezzar’s exile of the Jews and Cyrus’s return of them, and topples Babylon. This is good news because God is going to change these unjust systems and we have a role to play.

But the changing of the guard only changes hearts, when the new guard is Christ. When we follow his command to love our neighbor, we replace the rule of law with his rule of love. We uphold it, not by forcing others to do the same, but by carrying it out ourselves. By its nature, love does not insist on its own way.  

The psalms and prophets are chock-full of the people’s prayers for God to move on behalf of the oppressed. I see kings praying for their people. I hear exiles lamenting. I read the confessions of sinners. I witness curses called down when justice is miscarried and praise rushing forth when wrongs are made right. My only question is, are those of us who wait for the Lord’s triumphant return also yearning (and fearing) for his justice?

• Humility = I acknowledge that the Lord God is One, and he has appointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth as the coming king of the world. I recognize him as the governing authority of my life and actions.

• Love = Jesus Christ rules not through the elevation and maintenance of earthly kingdoms but through a dynamic and diverse spiritual family bound together by his lifeblood. As a member of his family and body, I share his care, respect, righteousness, unity, joy, and generosity with others.

I never want to let go of my hope that God will change things and is indeed changing them for good. Leaving the fulfillment of my hope up to him, I humbly focus on diligently building others up in love until the appointed time that Justice rolls in like a mighty flood. In the Lord’s Mercy, I pray not to drown in His wake. 

Verily,

Alysia

Sail

A Prayer for Justice

Lord God, Creator of the Universe,

Lover of Lilies, Commander of Armies,

put an end to this unspiritual division that says 

the Lord’s gospel and social action 

are at odds. 

Love is only ever a social act.

It can never be at odds with Your Person who is Love.

It can be experienced without Your Presence which bears Love. 

We who are ruled by and rooted in your love, 

participate in your justice 

when we turn eye, heart, and hand to “the least of these.” 

When we refuse to turn away from those who are suffering,

we attend your cross. 

And when we are faithless in our looking,

we confess nothing is veiled from you.

You see those who suffer,

those who create suffering, those who despise suffering,

and those who would alleviate the suffering

that is within their power to alleviate. 

You are the one who sees 

material conditions and spiritual interiors.

You are the one who saw impotent Abraham,

impatient Sarah, and haughty Hagar,

and in the boundless creativity of your love,

you blessed each. 

You gave Abraham a promise.

You gave Sarah laughter.  

You gave Hagar spiritual sight.  

Let our love not be ideological. Let it be spiritual. 

Rain on the just and the unjust.

Make your sun shine on the good and the evil.

Remind us that the course of your blessing

includes discipline and correction.

Give us a humble mind,

a compassionate heart and a creative eye

toward faithful prayer and diligent action

on behalf of the world you love.

And bring us justice 

by making us just. 

In Jesus name I pray,

Amen.

Anchor

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” — Nehemiah 8: 9 &10

*

When Jesus came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” — Luke 19: 37-40

Sea

Last year, I celebrated Good Friday by releasing my newsletter Chasing After Wind. It all began with a guest post I wrote for my good friend Julian’s newsletter, Julian’s Note.

Julian's Note

Good Friday and Other Menstrual Moments

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2 years ago · 4 likes · Julian Davis Reid and Alysia Nicole Harris, Ph.D.

This year, Holy Week has felt somewhat different. My friend Aysha and I decided to share meditations on the seven last words Jesus uttered while hanging on the cross.

I expected this Holy Week to be somber, especially given the reality that Palestinians are still being executed, blown apart and burned alive; given that people in our country are being disappeared without due process of law; given that most of the world still lives with hunger, and 60% of sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t have clean water. 

Jesus wasn’t the only person processing into the Holy City two thousand years ago. I just learned this past Sunday that Pilate and Herod also had processions that day. The former represented the military might of empire, and the latter represented the wealth, prestige, and intellectual curiosity of the cultural elite. Jesus represented a third way into Jerusalem: down the Mount of Olives, through a graveyard. 

Today I walked a mile to a graveyard: Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. 48 acres of sprawling burial grounds, including a historic African-American cemetery, a field of unmarked graves, a Jewish Cemetery, and a Confederate Cemetery. The original African American cemetery called Slave Square was desecrated, the graves having been dug up to resell the plots to white families after the cemetery had run out of space. Black people’s remains were scattered and dumped in the paupers’ field.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. 

A few years ago, my friend Max gave me a game and a mandate whenever I visit a graveyard: snap a picture of the grave of someone (other than an infant or a stillborn) who died on their birthday. Four years in, I’ve found tombstones in Atlanta, Corsicana, and the Netherlands.

The game gives me an excuse to go where I want to go anyway. Why do I like cemeteries? I couldn’t tell you. I always have. At the beginning of the pandemic, I would walk to Oakland Cemetery, lie beside my favorite tombstones, and take a nap. It was so peaceful.

While life felt fragile and on hold, spring was not. The flowers were as alive as they’d ever been. Azaleas, Peonies, Tea Roses, and California Poppies. Eventually, I started going to the cemetery for the flowers as much as the graves. 

This time of year, the irises are in bloom—the biggest irises you have ever seen in your life. Ghost trains and Guilt-edged Bonds, Slovak Princes, and Restless Spirits—yes, those are the names of some of the bearded iris varieties. 

I love this time of year because flowers grow on the graves, even the graves of dead children whose names no one remembers. And they grow well, a sign that the promise of life exists not just after death but through it. 

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. 

Today, a phalanx of His Royal Highness Irises caught my eye and led me to a cluster of graves I’d never visited before. Walking past one, it was so weathered I had to rub my fingers over the lettering to make out the date. 

Samuel Mueller Born July 8, 1853 Died July 8, 1904. 

I found one—the grave of someone who died on their birthday. A surprise? A parable? Or both.

God never leaves anything incomplete. Creation started good, and it will end the way it started. Sometimes you won’t see it; you’ll have to trust and feel your way through… like Jesus did on Good Friday.

I thanked God, snapped a picture, honored the dead, turned a corner, and walked about 100 feet towards a beautiful tree of pink and red flowers. Then I looked to my left: 

Nancy R.  King

Nov 7, 1921 - Nov 7, 2008.  

Ok, wow! Stunned, I said out loud to the Lord, “Shall we make it three?”

Three graves later:

Not even a full minute had passed. This was truly bizarre. I’d found two such gravestones once before on a visit to a large graveyard like Oakland Cemetery, but never three. And within five minutes! God must be playing the game with me. In a graveyard. On Good Friday. But how? Why?

Sometimes it seems like evil’s power to crucify is greater than God’s power to resurrect. Yet Jesus reminds us: In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world! 

The truth is, I do not think I would find peace in a graveyard if I didn’t know that one day graves will open—that in the past they already did. I could not have peace in this world if I did not know that the Son of God suffered in solidarity with me, not because He had to, but because He chose to. And when empire and religion and racism and biotry and sin and death had done all it could do, Jesus said, “It is finished….” You are finished. Then He rose three days later, scarred and sovereign. 

God graciously extends Christ’s victory over me and to me so I can confidently say: Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. 

For all those troubled by what is happening in our world, for all those who have lost someone they love, it is ok to grieve and weep. Indeed, it is appropriate. Still, I am reminded of what side of the empty tomb we are staying on. The joy that He had for Mary Magdalene early that Sunday morning, He has for me now—monumental joys and silly, sparrow-sized ones. 

Verily,

Alysia

Sail

An old poem of mine that I am falling in love with again. Exegesis with a Line from Richard Siken. The audio sucks in the first 15 seconds but it clears up. The words are below with a slightly different ending than the one in the video. Poets are constantly revising. This one needed a different ending given the times.

Exegesis with a Line from Richard Siken

People ask me about the world 

whether I think the world is worth 

saving. I think the world is first 

worth loving.  For it is just a marble 

of the human heart. Turn it and behold 

all its contradictions. Sometimes it is azure sapphire, 

sometimes it’s downright gangrenous. Singular, always,

this tiny gem of life in a fist of dark, 

the earth and the human heart. 

People ask me why 

believe in God? 

Why have faith at all? Why not just do 

good deeds? Faith is the pillow

on which all of my good deeds sleep—

And whose true religion is not an attempt 

to recover the Beloved

to their bed? 

So when I say Amen,

when I say,  “The dawn is breaking the bones of your heart like twigs,”

look at every fall we’ve taken, and remember we are still august. 

Consider the tiniest sparrow:

its belief in its seeming invincibility. 

Its ringing throat. 

Its eggshell bones.  A body so feeble 

all it has is song. Well, there may be no 

gorgeous harmony for us at the end of the day

but predators I pray, won’t you feast on this praise?

What I mean is, 

Creation will kill you 

it is so beautiful. Look at how brightly 

it unmakes

all its children.

So when I say humanity is my first love, 

I mean 276 girls studying physics, 

80,000 Palestinians and a black boy. 

When I say burial, ashes to ashes and dust to dust 

I mean I also saw life today. It fasted 

from sun up to sundown and broke 

with much joy, and there is no shroud

white enough to smother the muzzle 

of spring, its fatness, its pink.

So when I say feast, 

I mean quince, parabolic 

pear, or peach 

or perhaps 

my tongue,

or lower,

my breasts,

or lower,

my 

flesh like a claret ribbon in your mouth

because it’s all love & it tastes good 

to me, it tastes 

good to me it 

tastes good to me. When the fruit in your hand becomes red meat, 

what do you need to know 

about the sine or the cosine, except 

the apple curves to fit 

the vivid frame of your lips.

And that’s another amen. 

When I say Let's stay 

marooned in this here chapel 

of a few hours, remember how we 

have all kissed someone in the scratched-out

light. They became a fountain, 

and our mouths were full 

of pennies after. 

When I say hell, 

I mean He’ll heal. 

Look around you at this forgiving miracle:

to burn one day and not burn out. 

When I say alleged heaven, remember 

the crime they have tried to make of our living. 

Remember the body 

has so many things to apologize for

for which it is not sorry. I am not

sorry 

for bearing witness.

For loving what I could not 

love, for living in the creases

of your palms like salt. I am your excess

tears and I am not sorry. I am 

not sorry for turning this into a lament

or for using familiar words to comfort you, 

for taking up language as the prosthetic.

A prayer for a phantom limb so that I can hold this world 

with extra hands. That’s how much I want 

to keep it. 

How much 

I want to keep you safe. 

We continue exploring women in Scripture and the insights they offer us about God and ourselves. This week, I reimagine Sarah’s story as an invitation for women to recover their role as heirs of Christ and smash the household gods that rob us of rest and keep women enslaved.

Anchor

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” — Luke 10: 38-40

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

— Matthew 11:28-30

Sea

On every nameless altar to every social, sexual, and spiritual power imaginable, women are being sacrificed— and very often sacrificing themselves. 

My friend is being sacrificed bit by bit to the cult of likeability. The deity of dutiful daughters had my mom in a chokehold. I watched others bow to the merciless mother goddess. I’ve seen women serve as temple prostitutes, giving others indiscriminate access to their bodies. I tried to trade my whole life for the perfect man and relationship, believing that marital bliss would bring me fulfillment, self-actualization, and honor. And once I got him, my life somehow did not feel worth living. 

Like countless women before me, I have burdened myself with the weight of expectation and buried my soul in feelings of undeservedness. Unless I can achieve perfection—satisfying everyone’s desires for me, even at the expense of my own needs—I’m worthless. This is a spiritual and psychological problem, but it’s also a social problem endemic to every household, every generation, and every culture, including those of the Bible. 

The Story of Sarah

Picture it: the land of Ur several thousand years ago. One night, after another jab from her mother-in-law about not having children, a middle-aged woman walks up to the cooking hearth. The men have all gone to sleep, full of her food and merry with wine. After stacking the pile of used dishes and utensils, the woman, beautiful by the day’s standards, watches the fire dwindle down to nothing. Tiny embers that barely breathe. Another miscarriage. Another month without a period. Another hot flash. Another dead end. 

She wipes the sweat and tears from her face. In frustration, the woman slams things around as she cleans up. Ceramic pots and jars of oil hastily shoved into corners. The rage keeps building.

Slamming them isn’t good enough—her anger burns as she starts to smash things. Religious statues and censers of incense, wooden looms, brooms, and casks of wine. Offerings to the god of rain, the goddess of love, fertility, and prosperity still sitting there: All of these worthless idols demanding tribute and attention. All of these empty expectations and vain traditions she has sacrificed to, and yet they remain deaf to pleas for help. She takes each statute down and throws it against a stone. “Get out, get out, get out, miserable comforters!”   

When her extended family wakes up the following day and sees the desecrated altar, they drag the woman outside to question her. “What happened to our home and our deities? Who did this to them? Perhaps, at that moment, the woman understood she was meant to do more than maintain a well-kept tent. She was meant to do more than die slowly on the altar of culture and tradition. Her heart was meant to be the dwelling place of a living god, the Real God. A God who sees her. A God who inhabits her.

Fury softened to self-love. She responds to their outrage with a sly smirk:  “I smashed them. Zeal for my father’s house consumed me.”

In the Islamic version of the life of the great monotheistic father of faith, Abraham smashes all the pagan idols after hearing from the One True God. I know it’s only my imagination, but in my version, it’s his wife, Sarah. Sarah cleansed her tent as Jesus cleansed the temple.

I imagine Abraham walking into this clean space. Cleared of all the competing demands, he hears a singular voice for the first time, a still small voice. “Go from your country, your kindred, and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” Get away from all these household gods. Follow me. “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.”

Allegiances to Idols

Although we don’t usually make offerings to statutes, we, too, have our god. Capitalism, Prestige, Ideal Bodytypes, and the Cult of Domesticity. Patriarchy, White Supremacy…the list goes on. 

Sometimes, we need to obey God instead of all the distractions demanding our devotion. Their calls for physical, moral, gender, and relational perfection are crushing us.

While men and women might both be bound to ideas of “duty,” men are allowed to make mistakes. Women, not so much. Perhaps this is an attack on the completion of God’s creation. Women were the last thing God made in the Genesis account—the completion of God’s good work. However, rather than receiving the grace of our completion as a part of our inheritance, perfection has become some abstract ideal that we try to live up to —as daughters, as lovers, as beauties, as moms, as friends, as wives, as caretakers, as feminists, as activists, as Christians. These relations tug at us with all their different demands. Pretty soon, we forget that we were ever a person in our right—free and made in the image of God. Perfect as we are.

On a drive to Petersburg, VA, this summer, I asked my dad a question that had been festering inside me: “Daddy, do men feel the need to be perfect, to be good?” “No, we don’t,” my father said with startlingly little reflection time. 

By good, I meant something like pleasing. Do men feel the need to please? Men might fear being perceived as weak, so they clamor for tasks and situations that allow them to exert their strength; however, they don’t fear being good.

Women feel this impossible shame around not being enough and simultaneously being too much. We must be pretty but not too glamorous, bright but not brilliant. Strong but not too independent. Like Baby Bear’s porridge, neither too hot nor too cold, neither too hard nor too soft, but just right. 

For women, every good thing easily becomes another standard we fail to meet. Think about Martha from the Scriptures. Martha was busy trying to appease all these social and personal expectations while the Lord of Heaven and Earth was in her living room waiting to talk to her. Martha even goes to the Lord and tries to get him to command her sister to help her. She wants to enlist another woman in this life of burden and bondage. We do this, too, to husbands, children, and even random people on the street.

But what does Jesus say to Martha in Luke 10? “Dear friend, you are so upset over all these details! There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it—and I won’t take it away from her!”

Mary had offered Jesus her burdens, and he was giving her rest.

What if we understood ourselves as the Cosmic Ruler’s daughters? Do you believe that God speaks the same words to you that he speaks to Jesus, “This is my [heir] with whom I am well pleased.” What if you heard your Father’s praise clearly over all the accusing and belittling voices? To answer to God instead of living at the beck and call of every demand made of you.  

Women as Heirs

When the Bible calls women heirs of God (Romans, Galatians, 1st Peter, etc.), it confirms that God affords us the same status and ability to self-determine as men. A son of a ruler isn’t dictated to. They are the ones destined to rule, rest, and inherit.

Even in the Old Testament, women were always coheirs of God’s promises. When God established the covenant of blessing and changed Abram’s name to Abraham, he also changed his wife’s name from Sarai ‘ my princess’ to Sarah ‘princess.’ Dropping the possessive pronoun could indicate that Sarah inherits the status of a ruler in her own right. Interestingly, the name Sarah is related to the name God bestows on his people, Israel. Both come from the root s-r-r, meaning to govern or rule. 

The promise God gives Sarah to be a ruler in her own right is significant, considering how many times she had been given to a foreign ruler as property. Abraham tries to pimp out his wife to Pharoah to preserve his own life, but as it is written, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” says Exodus 20:2. “Out of Egypt I called my son [child],” says Hosea 11:1. 

God wants to set his daughters free from the pantheon of idolatrous expectations we’ve been bowing to. Daughter of the Most High, I say to you, NO MORE.

When society or your conscience tries to bury you under piles of shoulds, tell it, I am not a slave. 

It’s time to smash the household gods—the gods of our fathers and mothers, our oppressors and bosses, our lovers, our children, and our Disney fantasies.

And may the God of Sarah bless you and keep you, for He has come to make you a ruler. He has come not to give you perfection but to give you peace. 

Verily,

Alysia

Sail

This poem is from Mohja Kahf and is called “Hagar Writes a Cathartic Letter to Sarah as an Exercise Suggested by her Therapist.” I picked it because we can’t hear from Sarah and not also hear from Hagar, the woman who Sarah used and exploited in her efforts to get a child. It made me ask the question: what would happen if women, instead of trying to enslave one another, worked together alongside Christ to offer each other freedom?

Dear Sarah, life made us enemies
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
What if we both ditched the old man?
He could have visitation rights with the boys
alternate weekends and holidays.
Yeah, especially the Feast of the Sacrifice—
everybody has forgotten anyway
that it began with me abandoned in the desert
watching my baby dehydrate for days—
I dared God to let us die.

Anyway, you and I,
we’d set up house,
raise the kids,
start a catering business, maybe.
You have brains.
So do I.
We could travel.
There are places to see
besides Ur and this nowheresville desert
with its tribes of hooligans

No. Your lips always thin when you disapprove,
like the mother I can hardly remember
from before I wound up in your house.
I was barely more than a girl. You are the one
Who brought me there from Egypt.
You used to laugh back then. In those days,
You could bear to look at me.

Oh, Sarah, you need years of therapy
Can’t you admit that what he did to me was cruel?
Admit it – for just one second
It won’t make you hate him forever
just long enough to know the world won’t fall apart.
Long enough to pity him, yourself, me
Laugh, Sarah, laugh
Imagine
God, the Possibility.
Sincerely Love,

Hagar

Anchor

[The LORD told Moses,] “Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go so that he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’”

At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it.^[“Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the LORD let him alone. (At that time, she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.) — Exodus 4:22-26

Sea

* Many thanks go to Pastor Howard-John Wesley of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA, and Pastor Steve Elkins of Grace Community Church in Corsicana, TX, for their sermons, which profoundly influenced this newsletter. Their teachings have helped me recognize women’s often overlooked but significant contributions to the Exodus story.

When we think of Moses, we see him as the Great Deliverer of Israel. But God delivers Moses five times by the hand of six different women, all before ol’ boy utters his first “Let my people go.” Don’t Believe me?

• Puah and Shiphrah, the midwives, devise a plot to defy Pharoah and save the Hebrew baby boys from state-sponsored genocide.

• Moses’ mother, Jochebed, successfully delivers him, discerns a special call on his life, and floats him down the Nile in a basket to avoid Pharoah’s detection.

• Pharoah’s daughter, Bithyah, rescues Moses from currents and crocodiles and raises him as her own son in the lap of Egyptian luxury.

• Bithyah needs a wet nurse for the child. Miriam, Moses’ sister, suggests none other than Moses’ own biological mother, reuniting her family and ensuring that Moses understands his Jewish identity, all while getting her momma paid $$.

• Zipporah stands in the gap and intercedes for a disobedient Moses in front of an angry YHWH—a tactic we see Moses copy in Exodus 30.

Thus, before Moses can deliver anyone, he must first be delivered. Zipporah’s valiant intercession on behalf of her family illustrates some unique insights that deserve further study.

Zipporah Comes to the Rescue

So let’s recap: After God speaks to Moses in the burning bush, He tells Moses to go back to Egypt and implement God’s plan to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In Exodus Chapter 4:17, Moses is pregnant with this calling. But by verse 23, he’s about to miscarry.

In one of the most bizarre twists in Scripture, Exodus says, “At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him.” Apparently, God is considering an abortion; he’s about to put His newly chosen deliverer to death.

Moses fell into the trap of so many men. He is called to deliver Israel, “God’s firstborn son,” but Moses has forgotten his own son. As a Jewish man, it was his job to circumcise his sons, preferably on the 8th day after their birth. However, Moses hasn’t done this. He wants to bring a nation into a new covenant with God, a covenant his son won’t be a part of because Moses failed to carry out his fatherly responsibility.

No doubt, Moses’ oversight/deprioritization wasn’t lost on Zipporah. Zipporah wasn’t Jewish. Nevertheless, she knew that Jewish identity was based on two things: the identity of one’s mother as a Jew and/or circumcision. With Zipporah being a Midianite and without Moses circumcizing their sons, her children had no part in the people of God—and thus had no part in Moses’ future or his future calling.

Husbands, you know how wives are. This was probably not the first, second, or third time Zipporah asked Moses to circumcise their son. I surmise this from the speed and precision with which Zipporah acts to appease the wrath of God.

Moses is struck by God, and without even a conversation, Zipporah steps in as a deliverer, circumcising their son and saving Moses from the wrath of God. Zipporah had rightly perceived God’s heart in her heart. She discerned that God had the same care for her family as she did. And she knew integrity was missing from Moses’ ministry. How was he going to represent God as the loving father of the nation of Israel when he was missing fatherly care for his own children? How could he help fulfill God’s promise to Abraham, the original father of Israel, when Moses had forsaken the sign that God had given Abraham of that very promise?

In failing to carry out his responsibility to those closest to him, Moses puts himself and his loved ones in danger, forcing Zipporah to act in his stead. Something she did in a heartbeat but, as Pastor Steve Hayes pointed out, probably resented.

Though Zipporah was not the one who was supposed to circumcise—she carried out her role as Mozes’ ezer kenegdo, his Rescuing Help, anyway. (Note that the name Zipporah is the Hebrew word for ‘bird.’ In the New Testament, the symbol of the Holy Spirit is a dove. Just another example of last week’s connection between the role of women and that of the Holy Spirit.)

Moses and Zipporah both function as rescuers, and one could argue that Zipporah has the more courageous faith. Moses stood before an angry monarch, but Zipporah was the one who saved Moses from an angry God. Who can rescue anyone from God’s wrath? Who would even dare stand before the Holy One and plead for mercy? Jesus comes to mind.

For her obedience, God honors Zipporah, just as he honored the other women who worked deliverance in Moses’ story. God established the midwives as heads of prosperous families of their own; Miriam became one of Israel’s leaders and prophets; in the Jewish tradition, Pharoah’s daughter became a believer in YHWH and is saved alongside the Israelites; Zipporah and her sons were not left behind in Midian but were graphed into the house of God. When we look at their stories, we see that God’s work was never limited to just one man.

Delivery as the Beginning of Deliverance

Both men and women are integral to God’s work of liberation, which is etymologically related to the word deliverance. But for most of my life, I heard about deliverance as a (primarily male-driven) political action involving a whole nation, forgetting about the word’s other meaning of delivery, the bodily action of giving birth to another person.

Deliverance originally referred to childbirth, and this is especially important because, according to Scripture, collective, public deliverance does not happen without personal and intimate delivery. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus says to the religious teacher in the 3rd chapter of John’s gospel, “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” God works from inside out, from unseen to seen, from seed to fruiting tree, from singular to diversified.

Puah and Shiphrah assisting women with individual births was the first time Hebrew people experienced rescue from Pharoah’s tyranny. Without the actions of these midwives, there might not have been a people to deliver.

God’s vision for collective deliverance, what some might call liberation, is accomplished through individuals. God’s blessings are often given to a single person but usually include others: “I will make you a father of nations, and all the peoples of the world will be blessed through you.” Like the adage of the Black church, we are blessed to be a blessing.

God acts through individuals. When God wants to deliver the world from man’s wickedness, He calls one man, Noah, and his family, who then recruit individual representatives of each species and gender onto the arc. When God wants to bless the entire world, He starts with one man and one woman, Abram and Sarai. These become the father and mother of the faith. When God wants to rescue the world from famine, He raises up one son of Jacob, Joseph. And when God wants to deliver the world from sin, He uses one mother and child.

God’s ultimate plan for redemption concerns all of us but He must first accomplish it in each of us.

We are God’s Midwives

In a post-modern era, we rightly question the lone hero narrative. But this is because we have lost the central context for the Biblical understanding of a hero. Biblical narratives cannot be read through the stoic Greek lens of personal integrity or moral character.

God calls old men and barren women, sex workers and murderers, cowards and hotheads, not to lift them up as the glorious exception but to lift God up as the most creative, loving, and powerful being worthy of praise. If God worked through whole people groups, we would be tempted to put our trust in majorities, culture, political organizing, monetary resources, philosophy, or cunning statecraft. I think God prefers to work through individuals— failed and imperfect individuals like Moses—so that it is clear that real liberation is His doing and His alone.

From the stories of the women God uses to save His children, we learn that deliverer is just another word for midwife. After all, it is God—not Moses—who truly delivers Israel. As the Mother of Israel, God labors, performing signs and wonders to rescue Her people— “I will deliver them with a mighty hand.” Moses plays the role of the midwife and is there to witness and assist God’s birth of Her firstborn son.

We know Moses saw God as Israel’s mother. In a heated exchange, Moses exasperatedly says to God in Numbers 11:

Pastor Wesley first brought my attention to this. Moses struggles with the maternal aspect of being a deliverer—a role that Jesus pined for in Matthew 23:37: “Oh Jersualem, Jerusalem… how often I would have gathered you like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not come.”

Ultimately, though, Moses learns about the midwiving quality of a deliverer from some of the most skilled practitioners in Scripture. Each of these women was an individual expression of God’s character. God collected their faith and obedience into the plan She would use to free Her children from slavery and ultimately birth a people who would one day believe in Her name.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sail

The sail for this week is an invitation. Consider the women in your life who have been deliverers, defying systems of oppression, confronting lovelessness, and interceding on your behalf with the ferocity of their faith. Write them a thank you. You can even send me a copy if you like! I’d love to read.