Walk the back 40 in the evening when the fog off the Green River has lifted from the water and settled in the low spots. Slip off the high ground into the valleys and enjoy the cooler air. Stand there and watch the deer in the neighbors bean fields fill their bellies with unearned pods, lifting their heads with unhurried rhythms: up, down, up, down.

Let your body lie in the hammock. Absorb the dappled light that comes through the locust trees. Read a book you already know, and mouth the words by memory as your eyes retrace a well worn path.

Give your brain an extended break. Fill it with someone else’s best work. Feed it like your mother fed you and your sister - pork chops and gravy - fried apple pies on your birthday - the crispy bits of bacon that dissolve without an ounce of chewing.

Lean on your wife. Tell her all your troubles. She is as soft as a washed cotton shirt but strong as Osage Orange. True love is sharing and bearing burdens - the dense fibers of years and miles can hold.

Put a fence around some ambitions. Hustle will get you out of bed, but too much will put you down. Let the sap of spring and summer come up, but let winter do what only it can do. Allow some portion of life go underground, below the frost line.

Let the fields lie fallow. Leave a corner unmanaged so that the rabbits have a place to hide. A hedgerow of wild blackberries is not the worst thing.

The main things I learned were:

• Truss the bird with a bit of twine…but if you’re running behind, forget it.

• Let the bird warm up on the counter for a while before cooking…knocking the chill off makes a huge difference.

• Get everything as dry as possible, no added oil or fat.

• Lots of Kosher salt on the skin

• Throw it in a hot oven so the heat can blister the skin and render the fat onto some potatoes and onions.

• You will not be sad.

I mean, you might still be sad, but it will be some other problem in your life and not the delicious chicken fat soaked Yukon Gold potatoes that sit on your plate.

This is a story principally about three things:

1 - Focus // Whatever I focus on gets better, sharper, and more compelling. Even chicken.

2 - Time // There is no substitute for doing a thing over and over for a long time. How many of us have given up because we were not good, when really we were not experienced?

3 - Simplicity // Thomas Keller’s recipe for roast chicken is amazingly simple. Nothing stuffed into the cavity. No special ingredients to procure. Instead it’s a meditation on the most modest ingredients - a $10 chicken and some coarse salt. Learn the fundamentals first, then riff.

I could draw out a few more thoughts here, but that’s not necessary. Instead all we really need is an organic chicken, a bottle of decent white, and a couple hours at home putzing around the kitchen sipping wine. I’d also recommend putting together your own playlist for cooking…nothing truly great was ever made while receiving suggestions from the algorithm.

Also, here’s a link to a playlist to get you started and Thomas Keller himself teaching you everything you need to know.

KITCHEN TIME

KELLER RECIPE

Get a dog, he will piss on your new rug. (Ask me how I know)

Go to dinner to connect with your wife, get seated by a table full of people you know who want to chat you up.

Fly to Mexico for the sun and clear water only to find seaweed on the beach.

Plant a garden, grow tomatoes, and weeds.

That’s life.

Start following Jesus, now you have to forgive your enemies.

It’s always something. And it always will be.

We burn through so much energy trying to smooth out every surface and clean up every splatter, only to end up with a spotless room and very little left in reserve to enjoy it.

Life isn’t a perfection project. Some things need fixing. Some things you leave a little crooked.

The other day I saw a momma deer and her two spotted twins on my morning run, bedded down in the clover on the edge of a field beneath the shade of some brush and an oak tree. That evening the heavens opened and my basement drain didn’t want to work so water backed up and made a mess that the wife and I had to clean up at 9:45.

Praise God. It was an okay day.

In the moment I wasn’t praising - I was asking my wife, “Why the hell does the basement flood when I want to take a shower and go to bed?!” But whatever, I ran the shop vac and she pushed the squeegee. If you have a partner in a mildly flooded basement, you are a rich person.

Fish are for swimming.

But what are people for?

It's a worthwhile question in a world where progress promises to make life easier while quietly separating us from the work of our own hands, the places that formed us, and the people closest to us.

Biology says people are for passing on their genes.

Economics says people are for producing.

Politics says people are for ordering society.

Philosophy says people are for seeking meaning.

Psychology says people are for becoming whole.

Technology says people are for optimizing.

Advertising says people are for buying things.

Social media says people are for being seen.

There's a kernel of truth in each of these answers. Each discipline manages to grasp a piece of reality. Yet none of them seems large enough to account for the whole person.

How, then, should we understand the good life?

Genesis offers an answer that feels as modern and necessary as anything I've encountered.

The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend it and watchover it.

Before there were kings or cities, markets or governments, before there were universities or algorithms, there was a garden. And in that garden God gave humanity its first vocation. To tend, and to watch.

Those words feel alive to me in a world where entropy and neglect always seem to be winning - where systems decay, relationships fracture, and even human hearts can slowly become overgrown.

Here's the conviction that has slowly settled into my bones: God has given every one of us a measure of the garden. Our calling is not to fix the whole world but to faithfully tend the plot entrusted to us.

There's more to be said than can fit inside a short essay, so let me simply offer a few observations.

• The world is still a garden of possibility, no matter how weedy and overgrown it has become.

• Tending is another word for responsibility. It is love with dirt under its fingernails.

• Watching is more than seeing. It is paying attention—keeping our eyes and our hearts open.

• Whatever we notice is broken may also be where we’ve been called to tend.

• Gardens flourish through constant care. Their fruit becomes a blessing not only to the gardener but to everyone who gathers beneath their shade.

We are called to tend the parts of the garden closest to us. It is easy to become consumed with problems on the other side of the world while overlooking the neglected corner that has been entrusted to our own care.

This is what people are for. To keep watch. To plant and cultivate, to weed and prune, to harvest and enjoy. This is what it means to be human.

The ancient paths have become modern invitations.

This is my basic test for maturity these days: when we sit down together, are we curious enough to ask someone else around the table a question? Are we interested in anyone beyond the borders of our own minds? Can we look another person in the eye and listen with a modicum of genuine interest?

It is a low bar.

I know.

But I’m willing to start right there.

I have this one friend with a million questions. He’s great because he’s just loaded with a sort of vibrancy and interest that makes him a magnet for wonder and opportunity. There’s a gravity to him, even though he’s not trying to be the center of anything.

Right now the pull is towards isolation and self interest. I think there’s a reason those things tend to go together. Life is another word for connection. Want more life? Seek more connection. And connection rarely happens by leaning back, instead it’s the tendril that reaches out and actively looks for something solid to hold on to.

Here's a habit worth cultivating: show up in life loaded with curiosity and a sense that there’s wonder, learning, and something compelling living inside the other people we are sharing space with. That one little thing not only makes one's life less lonely, it supercharges a million other things inside us.

Curiosity is evidence that something in us is still green - still reaching, still growing, still convinced there is more life beyond the borders of the self.

As a wise man once said: if it’s green, it grows; if it’s ripe, it rots.

We are nothing if not forgetting machines.

Lunch plans. Zoom calls. Anniversary dates.

We forget everything all the time.

The strange thing is that this tendency isn’t limited to the ordinary details of life. It’s deeply spiritual.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading through Exodus while preparing a sermon and noticed something I’d somehow never seen before.

In chapter 14 God parts the Red Sea. Israel walks through on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army disappears beneath the water.

What a story.

The next chapter opens with singing. Miriam grabs a tambourine. Moses leads the people in worship. It’s one of the great celebrations in all of Scripture.

Then three days pass.

Three.

Israel is thirsty. The water they find is bitter. And almost immediately they begin to grumble.

Sometimes I imagine that if God would just do one undeniable miracle in my life I’d trust him forever.

Exodus suggests otherwise.

Isn’t it remarkable how quickly crisis returns? How quickly fear pushes gratitude out of the room?

Apparently you can walk through a sea on dry ground and still forget who God is by Thursday.

Pressure has a way of revealing what is already living in our hearts.

I think Exodus is trying to teach us something about human beings.

We forget.

More specifically, we forget God.

We forget his faithfulness. We forget his deliverance. We forget the prayers he answered only days before. Even miracles have a surprisingly short shelf life in the human memory.

Maybe that’s why, on the night before his death, Jesus took bread, lifted the cup, and said, “Remember me.”

Not simply because remembering is sentimental, but because it is essential.

He tied remembrance to eating and drinking—the two things we do every single day to stay alive.

As though he were saying, Make remembering as instinctive as your next meal.

How long can a person go without food?

Without water?

Without remembering?

Maybe not nearly as long as we think.

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

I memorized this whole Robert Frost poem when I was in 8th grade. It was honors English and halfway through the year I got kicked out into the hallway. Not officially removed from the class, just placed out of the actual room. My teacher would leave the door open and make me sit outside, far enough away to not bother anyone, close enough to hear.

“I love you Adam, but you are not coming back into this class room…”

“Deal.”

I didn’t love literature or memorization when I was in 8th grade…but I did the work and now, years later, those words are in my bones. I was walking through some brush on my father’s farm a few months ago and all of a sudden the words percolated up through my being…. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

I even said out loud… “Where did that come from?”

Honors English. 8th grade. Mrs. Moore.

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same…

I wish I had been more a more serious student. I wish I had put my nose in a few more books. I wish my head had a bit more of the classics stuffed in and a bit less of everything else. I wish I understood how good my brain was in middle school, and how the things I received in those years would go with me the rest of my life.

I read The Yearling my freshman year and it shattered me. Would it still work on me in middle age? I have no idea, but I’m glad it did then.

My grandmother learned Latin in high school and read all the classics. I once asked her about Homer and she gave me a synopsis of the Odyssey while making a sandwich. She never went to college and spent her later years watching The Price is Right.

On the backside of my father’s land there is a spring that runs out of a hill. 600 acres are collected at that one point, filtered through limestone and sedimentary rock placed beneath the soil by Yahweh himself. The rain falls, waters the crops, disappears into the dirt, and goes quiet for who knows how long. Then one day they reemerge on the edge of a pasture where the sycamores stand tall and point the way to Pinch creek. I remember the afternoon I found that little spring, dammed up and walled off from the cattle by my uncle’s father. I reached in to feel the water and could not believe how cool it was. Relief in July. So I cupped my hand and took a drink.

Offer a scrap or two back to the feral beasts who live outside your window.

A doe and her fawn have spent most of the summer in our hay field. The little one has such bright spots, but somehow disappears when it steps into the clover and orchard grass of the front ten acres. Sometimes I like to drink my first cup of coffee and watch the pair glide like slow fog out of the woods and over the hill. My dog lies at my feet and pays them no attention.

I know a dozen hard things happening to people right now. Some of it is a bad decision all grown up, but most of the trouble is random wind that blew in like a summer storm. All you can do is get under a roof somewhere and wait it out. This too shall pass. That is true, but unhelpful. So I’ve mostly stopped trying to explain things. I just read Psalm 23 aloud. The Lord is my shepherd...

My truck has developed a squeak somewhere in the front suspension. I can’t quite locate it. I think it’s coming from the driver’s side. My mechanic greases everything when I get my oil changed. That helps for a few weeks, and then the noise returns like Lazarus from the dead. It’s been going on for over a year, and I’ve finally surrendered to acceptance. At first I was in denial, then anger...now acceptance. Is this grief?

My oldest and his wife are moving to California next week. It’s great and terrible, like the Old Testament Day of the Lord. I’m glad they are pursuing the things in their hearts. I’m sad I’ll have to hear about most of it on the phone. I’ve been testy lately. Probably because I know they’re about to leave.

A couple weeks ago we celebrated my brother-in-law turning fifty. A couple bottles of decent wine and more food than any party could eat. After sharing stories about the early days, some of my kids started arguing over the best Radiohead album. Eventually the room was divided. Civil war. Half on the side of In Rainbows and half defending the merits of OK Computer. I sat on my stool.

“What about A Moon Shaped Pool?”

No takers.

There are two hawks screaming high above our heads, patrolling the river bluff. The heat in the atmosphere pushes them higher and higher. There must be some sort of current because they are barely moving their wings. One is almost perfectly still, a sky statue. The barn cats have come in from the open country and laid down on the porch. Probably best with two raptors watching.

So I get them a scoop of food.

Jesus goes where he is invited.

A wedding in Cana. Someone invites Jesus, and he shows up.

Jairus, desperate for his dying daughter, asks Jesus to come. Jesus goes with him.

Matthew throws a banquet, and Jesus is the guest of honor.

Simon the Pharisee invites him to dinner. Jesus accepts.

Mary and Martha welcome him into their home. (After someone raises your brother from the dead it’s the least you could do)

There are plenty of other examples too - many of them, surprisingly, involving Pharisees.

When someone opens the door to Jesus, he has a habit of walking through it.

That makes me wonder about two things.

First: We should probably invite Jesus into more of our lives.

Invite him to the wedding.

Invite him to the dinner table.

Invite him into the hospital room, the funeral home, the board meeting, the long drive home, or a regular Tuesday afternoon.

He seems remarkably willing to come.

And wherever he goes, something changes. Sometimes it’s healing. Sometimes it’s forgiveness. Sometimes it’s truth. Sometimes it’s simply joy. But his presence has a way of turning ordinary moments into places where the kingdom of God breaks in.

Second: Don’t spend your life trying to force open locked doors. Walk through the open ones.

Jesus seems strangely drawn toward welcome.

This isn’t an argument against perseverance or hard work. Some things are worth fighting for.

But there is wisdom in noticing where you’re wanted.

So much of our energy is spent trying to convince people who have already decided “no,” while somewhere else a door is standing wide open.

Look for the welcome.

Pay attention to receptivity.

Walk toward the places that are making room for you.

Jesus often did.

Inherited momentum.

It goes something like this:

A person steps into a favorable situation. Could be a healthy business, a strong family, a thriving church, a successful team, or a well-built organization…

The machine is already moving.

The momentum was there before they arrived.

The wins keep coming. The rewards pile up. The results look impressive.

But instead of recognizing the momentum they’ve inherited, they begin attributing the success primarily to themselves.

The movement was already underway.

The train was already rolling downhill.

The soil had already been cultivated.

And yet success has a way of convincing us that we caused more of it than we actually did.

Once you start noticing this, it’s hard to un-notice.

Which makes me pause.

How much inherited momentum exists in my own life?

How many of my victories are really someone else’s muscle?

How many opportunities were created by another person’s sacrifice?

How many doors were opened by someone else’s discipline?

How many times have I been congratulated for something that was actually the cumulative result of another set of brains, another set of hands, or another person’s years of faithful work?

I guess what I’m saying is that a little humility would do us all some good.

A pause before the victory lap, or a moment of introspection.

Who helped build the thing I’m standing on?

Who carried the load before I arrived?

What is upstream of the good things happening in my life?

I suspect there’s almost always an answer.

And acknowledging it may preserve not only our humanity, but our vision.

Because momentum has a way of disguising reality.

Winning can make us less observant.

Success can make us careless.

And when the momentum eventually slows…and all momentum eventually does…people who understand where the success came from have a chance to adapt.

People who believed they were the source are often blindsided.

A few weeks ago we were headed into conference playoffs, and I asked one of my assistant coaches to give the team a short talk at the end of practice.

He mentioned that before our last game - a divisional championship - several of the boys had come up to us and admitted they were nervous. It was out of character for the team. In three years of coach this group they had never mentioned it before. It was a moment of tender vulnerability that’s rare from young boys.

From there he launched into a thought that transcends soccer.

“You can’t buy the butterflies.”

You can buy a new gaming system.

You can buy a snack at the gas station.

You can buy movies, vacations, concert tickets, and just about any experience that can be packaged and sold.

You can buy clothes.

You can buy dinner for your date.

You can even buy a trip to low-orbit weightlessness if you’re a billionaire.

But you can’t buy butterflies.

Championship moments come from preseason work and midseason grind.

Standing in the middle of a hinge moment, where everything can break your way or break against you, isn’t for sale.

Those moments have to be earned.

They’re buried deep beneath the surface, and most people either don’t want to…or can’t…do the digging required to uncover them.

If you’re about to walk on stage in front of a thousand people and give a talk that sorta makes you want to die...

If you’re twisted up because you’re about to deliver your first child...

If you’re walking away from a steady career toward something closer to the marrow, but far less settled...

If you’re standing in a circle with your team, moments away from stepping onto the field with everything on the line...

Some of what you’re feeling is the ephemeral weight of a moment that money can’t buy.

The butterflies are not a sign that something is wrong…or that you are weak…

Instead, they are a sign that you’ve found yourself somewhere that matters.

And places that matter are rarely for sale.

My big takeaway is this: the things that make me anxious do not make Jesus anxious.

This isn’t to say he doesn’t care. Of course he cares. But he’s not panicked. He’s not pacing. He’s not unraveling.

And of course one might say that’s convenient because he’s JESUS, and he’s better at anxiety than most.

Well, thank God.

For the rest of us who sometimes feel the pressure of storms, let me make a little list that might be helpful regarding this story.

1 - You can be with Jesus and still have unexpected storms hit your boat. (Yeah!)

2 - My own emotions in moments of pressure, conflict, anxiety, and difficulty might be very different than the emotional life of Jesus.

3 - If storms are guaranteed, one would do well to have Jesus in the boat.

That’s the list.

And honestly, sometimes that’s enough.

Whatever the machine gives you will eventually have to be paid back.

And it will be with your soul.

The broad road is crowded now. Endless lanes of content, optimization, branding, growth hacks, engagement farming, synthetic personalities, manufactured outrage, performative vulnerability, dead-eyed smiling, and meaningless slop shoveled endlessly into a machine that cannot love you back.

You can leave whenever you want.

The back roads are still there.

The slow route.
The scenic route.
The road without signage.

Do not pay internet gurus for their course.
Do not contort yourself into a marketable identity.
Do not build your life around metrics.
Do not dance for TikTok.
Do not manufacture virality.

Because you just might get what you asked for.

And what if the crowd gathers around the false version of you?

What if your success becomes attached to the very thing that betrays the fire in your bones?

What if relevance becomes a contract you can no longer afford to break?

Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of beans because he was hungry in the moment. Most people do not lose themselves all at once. They trade themselves away in tiny transactions. One compromise at a time. One accommodation at a time. One little performance at a time.

Be careful what begins to feed you.

Some deals cannot be undone.

Stay steady.
Hold fast.

If nothing comes of your work this year, think nothing of it. Two years is barely enough time for a real dream to wake up.

Fermentation is mysterious. Yeast does its work in darkness. Roots grow underground. The truest things in life often appear dead before they rise.

The machine demands constant visibility. But most meaningful things are formed hidden from view.

Art is not made in public. It is made in the marrow of a life pressed on all sides.

Constraint. Pressure. Limitation. These are the wedges that force something honest out of us.

If the electric bill is due and the insurance payment is late and you are struggling to make the thing you feel called to make, understand this clearly:

This is not an interruption to the work.

This is the work.

Now I can’t remember what it was.

Oddly enough, I remember having the idea. If that’s not a kick in the teeth I don’t know what is.

Similarly, I was in conversation with a friend last week and they said something brilliant. I remember thinking, self, remember this. There’s a good riff in there somewhere…

Poof. Gone.

I can remember where we were standing, which running shoes I had on, and the smell of concession stand popcorn hanging in the air.

But I cannot remember the turn of phrase.

Is this early onset dementia? Is this lack of discipline on my part? Do I need to carry a little notebook everywhere I go?

I honestly don’t know.

I am beginning to suspect that creativity has more in common with weather than machinery.

You don’t manufacture lightning.

At best, you stand outside long enough to catch it when it comes.

You can be excellent without becoming robotic.
You can build systems without losing your humanity.
You can show up well without crashing behind a curtain somewhere.

I was on a Zoom call with a leader a while back, and they were lamenting what their leadership had become.

They had built something that was, by all accounts, very successful.

But it felt like an assembly line.

“I don’t want to work in the machine,” they said.

I don’t either.

So here’s a thought:

Leave some corner of your life unmanaged.

Cordon off a portion of your week for the impractical.

Right when you’re tempted to construct a more elegant system - pause.

A few months ago, I was with a leader who gave me the most curious and wonderful advice about something in the church I was trying to fix.

“What if you just leave it alone?”

I paused.

“Like, what if you don’t grow it or tune it for maximum feedback?”

Still paused.

“Why mess with what’s working good enough? I mean, you and I are standing here watching our daughters play soccer…what if you make it better, and then I’m here enjoying sunshine and soccer…and you’re off somewhere managing?”

It was the first time in my life someone suggested that good enough was good enough.

What a gift.

I’ve been sitting with that ever since.

It felt like an invitation out of the machine.

What if the best thing isn’t the most optimized thing - but the most human one?

Because let’s be honest - our “thing” is never going to be perfect.

There’s a looseness built into the world.

Not everything tightens.
Not everything scales.
Not everything needs to.

Some things are meant to be enjoyed while they last.

It’s possible “good enough” is where the best life is happening

Manage what matters as best you can -

and then go watch the game.

There was a rather long line of people gathered in the funeral home to wait and walk the carpeted aisle and give the living members of our family their condolences. I sat on the front row sort of bewildered by the whole thing. Some people cried. Some people kept the tears collared by telling funny stories about my grandfather. It sounded as though these people were speaking in another language. I could hear their words, and their stories, but the content was utterly foreign to me. I never knew my grandfather in the ways that these people spoke about him. All their words glistened.

All I knew of ‘Paw-paw’ was sickness. He was never happy. He was a sullen bull of a man, weakened by a diseased heart and a suitcase full of medicine. His skin was yellow like his fingernails which were stained by the cigarettes that he smoked. His tone was harsh, especially towards my grandmother who served him like a king, always smiling, never slow. Looking back, it seems as though having a bad heart in the 1980’s had made him bitter and angry. He was a strong man, now weak. He was a farmer, brought indoors. He was a hustler with no energy. And all that was crushingly disappointing.

But there in the receiving line were stories and laughter and tears that told a different story. People talked about my grandfather in the way that one might talk about a friend. I distinctly remember one of my uncles telling my grandmother that he was going to miss my grandfather. That was a shocking moment for me. Why on earth was anyone going to miss him? He wasn’t fun, or kind, or caring, or anything. He was angry, and distant, and scary.

I once picked up one of my grandfather’s prized pocket-knives when he wasn’t looking, and from across the room, without turning his head to see me, he yelled, “Dammit, put it down!”

I did put it down. I was so startled that I dropped that pearl handled knife on the carpet where it bounced twice. I looked down in horror.

“Pick the damned thing up and don’t touch it again!”

I think that was the most my grandfather ever said to me in one moment, and it was shouted in his signature hot tone.

The most awkward thing was that later, when we were leaving, my dad made me go and give paw-paw a hug. I didn’t want to hug him and I’m pretty sure that he didn’t want to hug me either. It was obligation and the one thing that shouted louder than my grandfather were the prods of forced affection.

Looking back I can see that I really didn’t know my grandfather at all, at least not the way others in the funeral home knew him. He had become someone that I’m sure he never planned on being. Most people aren’t hoping to become sick and emotionally disconnected. Most people’s life goals don’t include dying early and unhappy, yet people do all the time.

Life has a way of happening that even the most prepared can’t plan for, which begs the question - why do some of us wither and others of us flower, even while facing death and hardship and the angles of life that we did not consider?

Funeral home receiving lines are amplifiers, shouting in quiet whispers, loving embraces, and the preachers eulogy who a person really was. And often who a person really was is almost nothing like the body lying in the casket, or even the body that was breathing and hanging on just a few days ago.

Tragically, most people never get to hear the sound of their own life. That amplifier gets turned on only after they are gone. The words are right, the timing wrong.

Eulogies are for the living. Life and lives were meant to be celebrated, out loud, in front of others, long before that sad day when aunts and distant cousins gather. Our words about one another are not merely descriptive, they are creational. They hover over the deep waters and draw together elements that we did not know existed. They declare beauty over the ashes, and in doing so, grow a garden, a garden of love.

Joseph was his father’s favorite son, clothed in love, a coat of many colors that all his brothers could see. Heaven declared Jesus to be the beloved son before he had healed the sick or preached even one sermon. Some things simply cannot wait.

Joseph is also the son who was beaten, thrown into a hole, and sold into slavery. Likewise, Jesus was beaten, and nailed to a cross. Joseph knew hardship and pain and the unfair happenings of life. Jesus was the most innocent man in all history treated like a criminal! Yet both Joseph and Jesus did not wither, they flowered, and I’m convinced that they were able to flower because they had been planted deeply in the soil of affection and affirmation.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to my grandfather if he had heard the sound of his life before he died. What if the 17 year-old Arnold Russell had heard his mom and dad and friends say what they really thought and felt about him? Sadly, I’m afraid he probably did hear quite a bit of what people really thought and it was most likely not the celebratory song that gets sung at the end of one’s life. Perhaps those, harsher words were actually the seeds of anger and discontent, planted in vulnerable soil, all grown up in the end, squeezed by pain and sickness.

Timing matters. Some things simply cannot wait. Eulogies are for the living.

A small thing. But new for us.

And for some reason I remembered praying for that very thing.

So I went digging through my prayer journals to find it.

Thirty-five months ago.

Nearly three years.

Long enough to forget…
and then suddenly remember when I was, in a sense, standing inside my own prayers.

What a strange thing, prayer.

And before we go any further, let me clear something up: my prayer journals are nothing to behold. They are collections of names and lists and half-legible scribbles. Phone numbers. Reminders. One-line thoughts about a Bible passage.

No mystique. No polish.

Just a record of asking.

But back to the strangeness.

You pray something.
You write it down.
You speak it into what feels like empty space.

You hold a thought before God.

And you feel…little. Maybe nothing.

Then life moves.

You stop praying for that thing.
You forget.
Something else takes its place.

A diagnosis.
A bill you didn’t expect.
Something at church that won’t sit right.

And time keeps going.

Summer, then winter.
Christmas turns into the Fourth of July.
Another anniversary passes.

And somewhere along the way you lose the thread.

Side note: I think this is why people lose heart with prayer. Answers come slowly—and often sideways. We don’t connect what we asked for with what eventually comes.

There’s not much dopamine in it.

But God seems to work in long arcs of time.

Thirty-five months for this one small thing.

Three years feels like a long time to wait.
But what is that to God?

In the span of eternity, it doesn’t even register.

We’re conditioned for immediacy.
Work and return.
Plant and harvest.

But prayer doesn’t move at that speed.

Its seasons stretch.
Its rhythms feel out of sync with our instincts.

We end up living inside answers we forgot we asked for.

My body is tuned to hunger pangs and flashes of sudden inspiration.

But God…

God is working in the background—

slowly, steadily—

like honey falling from a spoon,

taking its time
on the way to the cup.

The beginning of a thing is often a miracle…but the next thing that happens is a long arc of maintenance.

Read that again, and put it in your phone as an alarm that goes off on the day before your birthday or something.

For instance - Moses gets a call from God in a burning bush! A burning bush folks! And he gets miracles, and plagues, and a divided sea, but what follows is complaints about food and water…endless conflict resolution…judicial systems (thanks Jethro)…and tabernacle specs, measurements, fabrics, and a handbook on how it all works. The second half of his life is basically, how does one hold this fragile, grumbling people together?

Joshua - Begins in the lingering presence at the tent of meeting. Then conquest, and victories, and the walls of Jericho come falling down! It’s all very dramatic and exciting. Then the rest of his life is land surveys, boundary lines, tribal allotments, and administrative faithfulness. The books slows down on purpose.

The disciples of Jesus - sent out with power in the gospels. Even the demons submit…wow! But by the time you get to Acts it’s food distribution (Acts 6), appointing leaders, and writing letter to solve the many church problems.

We could play this game all day.

Here’s what I think is actually going on underneath this very real pattern -

1 - God uses spectacle to initiate - but rarely to sustain.

The dramatic moment get’s your attention. But It’s not the engine of long-term faithfulness. If it stayed spectacular, it wouldn’t form depth…and in fact *might* actually harm us.

2 - Formation, like growing in the actual fruits of the Spirit, requires a kind of friction, not fireworks.

Admin, details, people problems…that’s where we grow in things like patience. The long hum of people being people tests our love. Humility is often worked into us in ways that feel quite uncomfortable.

3 - The real work is building something that lasts.

Anyone can win a moment, but very few can cultivate culture, or sustain health and vitality across time. That’s the real work.

It’s the shift from do something powerful to build something durable.

4 - Faithfulness eventually gets…ordinary.

God’s kingdom often advances through unremarkable consistency. We all overestimate what can happen in a season and underestimate what can happen in a lifetime.

If God started something in your life that felt like a wildfire, and now you find yourself tending a bed of glowing embers…

Watching. Turning things over. Keeping it alive.

You haven’t failed. Nothing is wrong. This is just how it works.

• If it could have been figured out, handled, or resolved at a lower level, it would have been. Leadership is, in large part, problem-solving at the edge of complexity…over and over again. Plainly put, the higher you go in any organization the more complex the problems become. That’s just how it is. Leadership isn’t freedom from problems, it’s accepting larger ones.

• You will make decisions that get second-guessed by people with less information and less responsibility. Being misunderstood isn’t always fair - but it is part of the assignment.

• Like quarterbacks and point guards, leaders receive too much credit when things go right and too much blame when they don’t. That imbalance comes with the role.

• Leaders go first. They step toward the risk, move into the pressure, and take responsibility for what’s happening. Going first means being willing to do the new thing…even imperfectly…so that people following can learn from a leaders example. It’s not about modeling perfection, it’s about imparting courage.

• Leaders are willing to have the hard conversation. There is always something uncomfortable that needs attention. Leaders don’t avoid it. They lean in. Great leaders not only move towards thorny topics, but can manage them in a way that brings people back to their highest good.

• Leaders are thinking about the future. Most people are thinking about today - the challenges and the needs of the current moment. Leaders are holding that, but with an eye towards the horizon. Leading effectively today means calling people towards what’s next.

This is why real leadership isn’t about glamor and getting my way, it’s about service. There are privileges and wins associated with leading, no doubt, but you have to count the cost.

Right now if you are a leader in any sort of organization I would encourage you to throw yourself into the complexity and the swirl (there’s no avoiding it). The world is undergoing massive shifts every few months - it’s time for the leaders to show up and point us towards the highest good.

Leadership is often lonely work. Not because people aren’t around, but because responsibility has a way of shrinking the circle. This means a few brave people with an eye towards the future and a heart filled with love can make a real impact.

Embrace it. Someone has to go first.

If paradise itself had a wily snake - spinning tales and causing problems - then it’s unlikely any of us will ever live a life where every single thing is just right.

I’m not trying to be a buzzkill.
And this isn’t doomerism.

I’m trying to right-size our expectations for reality.

Everything going well?
Marriage filled with love and connection?
Kids out of diapers and playing nice?
Work fulfilling and profitable?

Soak it up.

Because there’s probably something tricky in there somewhere.
There will be little challenges somewhere.
If things are good in big swaths of our lives, there will almost always be a corner that feels like a problem.
You can be on vacation and still have a little thought about something back home that seems to rub against your peace and joy…

Just when it all clicks, there may be a voice interjecting doubt.
Or insecurity.
Or restlessness.

And you might find yourself thinking:

What the hell is this?

It’s the serpent in Eden.
It’s the temptation in the middle of having everything.
It’s the insatiable desire for more.
It’s the quiet suspicion that you’ve been left behind.
It’s the bit of danger at the center of paradise.

Two thoughts:

1. Keep your eyes and ears open.
Not every voice is trustworthy - especially during Eden days.

2. Don’t panic when there’s a little chaos in your otherwise pristine garden.
Don’t waste too much energy trying to remove what cannot be fully eradicated.

The goal was never the total absence of the serpent.
The goal was learning to trust the voice of God in its presence.