Before we begin, I want to say a quick thanks to everybody who subscribes and invite newcomers to come along. Everything at The Woodlands is always free. If you would like to help support our ministry to at-risk youth and other ministries in under-resourced communities, consider a paid subscription. That’s where all the proceeds will go.

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Now, let’ move on to…..

Where Forgiveness Begins

A stream of anger ran steadily below the surface of my younger self. Occasionally I would lash out at perceived slights or insults. Mostly I just kept my guard up around others and struggled with resentment and loneliness. I’ve talked previously about my father’s abusiveness and the struggles my mom and I faced after we had fled.

Like many of us, I held those early childhood experiences and the dysfunction of my family of origin to blame for my inner turmoil. Eventually it dawned on me that blaming my father and my mother for my personal misery wasn’t getting me any closer to tranquility. So, forgiveness seemed to be my best option. Only, try as I might, I couldn’t do it.

One night I reluctantly attended an Episcopal healing service. Initially, I intended to remain a spectator. But with a seatmate’s gentle encouragement, I stood up and asked the priest and those around me for prayers.

The priest asked, “What do you want to pray for.”

I said simply, “I can’t forgive my parents.”

He replied, “Can you ask Jesus to forgive them?”

When I said yes, I was swept up into a mystical experience that I cannot adequately describe nearly four decades later. To paraphrase the 19th Century Revivalist Charles Finney, the Spirit washed over me in great waves of liquid love. I was left speechless and weak-kneed for a while.

Contrary to what you might expect, I did not suddenly experience a forgiving heart. Actually, I felt something more like this: “Wow! What the heck was that?” And I was left to pray and to study Scripture to discern the message I was sure I was meant to receive.

After months of reflection, the message came to me undramatically in a kind of calm aha moment. I heard it as this: “You’re forgiven.” That’s it. Just, “You’re forgiven.”

As you probably noticed, that’s not what I was asking for. I had prayed for God to help me to be able to forgive. And it took me another stretch of time in prayer and study and reflection to begin to get the point. I am somebody who has needed and will repeatedly need God’s forgiveness. Even though I may make progress, perfection will remain a heavenly aspiration.

To put that another way, I am somebody who has needed and will continue to be sustained by God’s mercy. When I forgive somebody else, I’m just sharing with them what God has already given me free of charge.

Jesus is not soft on sin. And he doesn’t expect his followers to be either. That’s because he understands that sin is more than rule breaking. Love is his supreme commandment. As Paul puts it, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:10) Sin is the opposite of love. Love weaves the community together in bonds of mutual affection and braids the individual soul into the divine life. Sin is a way of being that erodes community and diminishes the soul.

And that’s why Jesus teaches us to hold sinners to account. He says, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” (Matthew 18:15) But Jesus is not instructing perfect people to condescend to the flawed and the blemished. He’s urging us to think of forgiveness on analogy with what D. T. Niles said about evangelism. Instead of a well-fed person doling out bread to a beggar, it’s one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

No one in the Christian community is higher or lower than anyone else. We are radically equal in our need for God’s mercy and in the infinite love that God pours out upon us. None of us is to be exempt from accountability. And none of us possesses moral superiority. We need each other as we stumble along the way of Jesus.

The paradoxical demand that Jesus places upon us—strange in a world ready to condemn and to exclude—is that we hold one another accountable with love. Our aim is always restoration and reconciliation. But it’s crucial to understand that reconciliation requires hard and serious work by sinners: contrition and amendment of life.

Contrition is genuine remorse for actions that have caused harm to someone else. We’ve all heard lame non-apologies.

Mistakes were made.

I’m sorry you feel that way.

I hate that this happened.

All of these formulas evade responsibility. A genuine apology owns the harm we’ve done. It’s more like this: I have done wrong and by all rights you should spit in my eye. Please forgive me.

In addition to genuine remorse, mending a relationship requires sinners to change behavior. Thieves stop stealing. Liars tell the truth. Abusers respect boundaries. And crucially, sinners accept that relationships are not merely resumed but transformed. To paraphrase Lewis Smedes, just because you’re forgiven doesn’t mean you get your old job back.

The church is acting like the church when it takes Jesus at his word, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13) Or, as the popular saying goes, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.

And now, to this week’s spiritual practice…

A Spiritual Practice: The Jesus Prayer

Sit in a quiet comfortable place. Close your eyes. Take a couple of minutes to let your body, heart, and mind settle. Repeat the Jesus prayer in rhythm with your breath:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Inhale: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God

Exhale: have mercy on me a sinner.

Breathe normally. Repeat this ten or twenty times or set a timer for five or ten minutes. Expect your mind to wander. That’s natural. When it does, gently come back to the practice.

You can carry this into your day. While you’re doing ordinary things like washing dishes, taking a walk, or waiting in line, let the prayer run in the background of your mind.

That’s it for this week friends. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. If you would like to invite me to lead a retreat, offer a talk, participate in a webinar, or preach at your event, just send my colleague Holly Davis an email.

Schedule Jake

And before we start, a reminder about scheduling me for your event. My colleague Holly Davis is now working on my 2027 schedule. If you would like to invite me to lead a retreat, offer a talk, participate in a webinar, or preach at your event, just give her a shout.

Schedule Jake For Your Event

Overcoming Evil: How God Works with Imperfect Material

The church is a mess. Sometimes it looks nothing like Jesus. I know people who have been hurt by the church. You may be one of them. I don’t blame you if you wouldn’t dream of darkening the door of any congregation.

But here’s something I invite you to consider. God works with the material that God is given. You know, people. Maybe you get it right all the time. I have to tell you, I don’t.

We’re supposed to be the grace people, we Christians. And even when I happen to get that love thing right, it’s really not because I’m so perfectly pure of heart. Actually, is speaking for me when she says,

I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way. (Accidental Saints, p. 9)

Here’s what church is: imperfect people drawn together by God so that we can learn from each other that we are loved in our imperfection. To draw on Nadia again, it’s “like being thirsty and having someone you don’t even like give you water.” (p. 48) That’s just the sort of thing that makes us humble, repentant, and eventually more capable of loving.

Look, there’s nothing really new about this. Church has always been a mess. Because we human beings have always been a mess. You can see this in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Let me give you a little context and then I’ll explain.

Paul wrote Romans in around 57 AD. The Emperor Claudius had expelled all the Jews from Rome in 49 AD. Decades later the historian Suetonius reported that Chrestus had created civil disturbances. Scholars interpret this as a reference to conflicts in the Roman synagogues between those who followed the Way of Jesus and those who didn’t.

After Claudius died, his nephew Nero ascended the throne in 54 AD. Claudius’ edict expired, so Jews began returning to Rome. What the Jewish Christians found when they got there was that Gentiles had formed and were leading congregations shaped by their own customs, theological understandings, and spiritual practices. Conflict followed.

So you see, Paul was writing to a messy, conflicted church. Since he had not founded the church in Rome, Paul spent time laying a theological foundation and explaining how God remained faithful to his covenant with the Jews.

Only then did he turn to the practices that define the Christian life. And he quoted Proverbs 25:21-22 to crystallize his main point: “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” (Romans 12:20)

Paul is not suggesting some backhanded way to get back at someone who has injured you. Instead, commentators trace the passage in Proverbs back to ancient Near Eastern customs. For instance, in Egypt a person publicly displayed their feelings of remorse by carrying a clay pan containing hot coals on top of their head. Likewise, Paul is suggesting that unearned acts of kindness and generosity in response to someone’s cruelty may invite them to self-reflection, contrition, and amendment of life.

Our aspiration as a Christian community, as church, is to embody the virtues that Paul outlines. “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection.” (Romans 12:9) We cannot achieve this on our own. God helps us each stumbling, hesitant step of the way.

God’s help generally comes in our honest, vulnerable interactions with one another. You may read Paul telling you to bless those who persecute you. And he is saying that. But he’s telling us that we’ll probably learn to do that—gradually and grudgingly—only after we’ve received a blessing from the very one we’ve judged, neglected, or harmed. We are able to overcome evil when, through some other person’s good toward us, our own evil has been overcome.

Before moving to this week’s spiritual practice, a quick thanks to everybody who subscribes. The Woodlands is always free. If you would like to help our ministry to at-risk youth (as well as others in under-resourced communities), consider a paid subscription. Louisiana has been rated as the state with the highest population of at-risk youth in the US.

Subscribe now

And now for the spiritual practice:

A Spiritual Practice

At the start of the day, read the passage below three times (aloud or silently).

On the first reading, notice which word or phrase stood out for you.

Read the passage again slowly, then spend a few minutes meditating by repeating the word or phrase to yourself.

Read the passage one more time and talk directly to God. Share your hopes, desires, thoughts, and fears.

“If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:20-21)

Now, sit quietly with God. Let go of thinking. Just rest in God’s presence.

At the close of day (or at some point that seems right to you), take ten minutes to examine your day.

First, take a few minutes to let your mind and your body be quiet, to rest.

Review your day:

• Where did you receive a kindness today? Where did you offer one? Give God thanks.

• Where did you feel joy, peace, or energy? Where did you feel anger, frustration, or regret? Where was God in that?

• Choose one moment from today and talk to God honestly about it. Express sorrow for mistakes, unkindnesses, or kindnesses left undone. Ask God for mercy.

Look toward tomorrow. Ask for grace and perseverance.

Close with the Lord’s Prayer or with something like this:

Gracious God, you continue to shape me through the love that others give me and the love that I give to others. Help me to receive love with an open heart in whatever form it takes, especially when I feel unworthy to receive it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That’s it for this week, y’all. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

And before we start, a reminder about scheduling me for your event. My colleague Holly Davis is now working on my 2027 schedule. If you would like to invite me to lead a retreat, offer a talk, participate in a webinar, or preach at your event, just give her a shout.

Schedule Jake For Your Event

Faithful Presence: Christ and Culture

Bob misses his CDs. Back in the day, you know, back when people actually had CD’s, he had a huge collection of rock and jazz albums. Since he was a gifted guitarist, Bob preferred groups that featured intricate guitar work and blazing solos.

Bob and his wife Jen had sought out a church that would help them build a strong marriage and raise their three young children. Their new pastor routinely warned the flock about the evil, even the demonic influence of popular culture. The same message was echoed by their fellow worshippers. So, Bob and Jen threw away the entire CD collection, gradually replacing it with contemporary Christian music. The children’s VCR tapes followed those CDs to the garbage dump.

These days Bob streams most of his old favorites on Apple Music. As he puts it, “Christian music sucks.” His grandchildren watch the Disney Channel along with Netflix and Hulu. I’m not sure that anyone in that extended family goes to church on a regular basis or at all. If being Christian meant separating themselves entirely from the surrounding culture, the Christian thing is clearly not for them.

As it turns out, I’m a fan of Mumford and Sons, Billie Eilish, and Howlin’ Wolf. My reading includes the Gray Man series and British detective novels by Peter Grainger. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you what movies I watch and which series I’m streaming on Prime right now. Let’s just leave it at this, I enjoy a lot of popular culture.

Nevertheless, I take Paul’s words to the Romans seriously. He writes, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2; NRSVUE) Some translations read, “Do not be conformed to this world.” But Paul wasn’t pitting our souls against the cosmos or the physical universe. The word he used refers to the times, to the culture. To the values prized and the purposes pursued by the surrounding culture, to we might call a Zeitgeist or spirit of the times.

There is a distinction between the community gathered around and formed by Jesus and the wider culture. Bob and Jen’s pastor urged his congregation to withdraw because he saw culture as essentially evil, anti-Christian. They could maintain their holiness only by purifying themselves of cultural influences.

Christian Nationalists take a dim view of our age. However, unlike Bob and Jen’s pastor, Christian Nationalist like Doug Wilson urges the church to purify the surrounding culture. He is the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and founder of a small denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelicals (known as the CREC). His connection to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has moved him from the fringes to a position of significant political influence.

The explicitly stated agenda of CREC is that biblical law should be the actual law of the United States. To be clear, they are advocating more than the use of scripture as a personal moral code. For instance, Wilson advocates the repeal of women’s right to vote (the 19^th Amendment). He has said that slavery was not uniformly evil. And homosexuality should be criminalized.

The irony of Christian Nationalism is that the church stops being the church. Christian nationalists seek to impose their preferred social order on everyone else. In other words, they are unwittingly allowing themselves to be animated by the spirit of this age. As I’ve written elsewhere, the spirit of this age is the will to power. The will to power strives for dominance and demands submission.

By contrast, the church is a community shaped and animated by the power of love. Christ’s love is freely given to us. We freely and actively receive it. And that love transforms who we are as individuals and as a community. In the Jesus community, all are equally the beloved in their differences. The good of each cannot be separated from the good of all. And none of us belongs by coercion. We belong through the free acceptance of Jesus’ invitation.

The Jesus community is differentiated from the wider community. As Augustine tells us, we recognize that we live in the City of Man—the contemporary cultural context—and yet we are citizens of the City of God. Our highest allegiance is always to the Kingdom of Heaven, not to any civil state.

We take our place humbly and courageously in the public square, whatever that square’s contours and dynamics may be. As the sociologist James Davison Hunter puts it, the church’s posture should always be faithful presence. The Jesus community does not simply withdraw. Neither do we seek to dominate.

Instead, we follow Jeremiah’s advice to the exiles in Babylon: we “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7) Sometimes, we’ll find ourselves cooperating for a shared good with people whose belief differ from our own. At other times, we resist injustice even at great cost. But the power we will exercise is always the same. The power of love.

Before moving to this week’s spiritual practice, a quick thanks to everybody who subscribes. The Woodlands is always free. If you would like to help our ministry to at-risk youth (as well as others in under-resourced communities), consider a paid subscription. Louisiana has been rated as the state with the highest population of at-risk youth in the US.

Subscribe now

And now for the spiritual practice:

A Spiritual Practice

Walk back through your day and reflect on how you responded to people and circumstances

Where did you feel the pull to withdraw: to stay silent, to avoid a conflict, to leave the room?

Where did you feel the pull to control: to fix the problem, to win an argument, to run things your way?

And where were you faithfully present: simply listening, speaking an uncomfortable truth, pitching in?

Don’t judge what you find. Just notice it and hand it to Christ. Close this examen with the following prayer:

Gracious God, you send us to be an instrument of your love in this time and in this place. Give us the wisdom to hear where our presence is needed each day, the humility to serve without controlling the outcome, and the perseverance to endure when we grow weary; in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

That’s it for this week, friends. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

And before we start, a reminder about scheduling me for your event. My colleague Holly Davis is now working on my 2027 schedule. If you would like to invite me to lead a retreat, offer a talk, participate in a webinar, or preach at your event, just give her a shout.

Schedule Jake for Your Event

And now on to…..

Who’s Really One Of Us?

Bill corrected my pronunciation of Tolkien. He said, “It’s Tol-keen, not Tol-ki-en.”

I said, “Oh Bill, that’s just because your Irish.”

He laughed and said, “Well, Jake, that does explain a lot of things. But not this. He was one of my professors. And that’s how he said it.”

We were both still untenured assistant professors and enjoyed eating lunch together. He taught English Lit. I was a philosopher. Over one of those shared meals he said something that left me thinking at the time and that I think has renewed relevance in these unsettled, unsettling times: “You know why we Irish tend to get on so well with you Southerners. We both grew up in a conquered nation.”

What Bill meant was that we both knew what it was like to grow up in a context viewed as intellectually and culturally inferior by our country’s elites. True enough. But it occurred to me that a conquered nation is one that is going through a period where its existential bearings have been disrupted. It will struggle to get a clear sense of its identity. Who are we and who is really one of us?

What triggered my memory of that exchange with Bill was reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It may be familiar to you: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7) And that passage got me thinking about what it must have been like for the Israelites to return to their conquered nation, to Jerusalem, from Babylonian Captivity. That’s not just a random thought. It’s crucial context for understanding the passage and, as it turns out, for finding a way through the social turmoil we’re experiencing today. Put a pin in that last bit and let’s turn to the historical context for Isaiah 56.

You may recall that the Babylonians defeated Judah and took many of its residents captive. They lived in that foreign land for fifty years or so, all the while hoping to be restored to their home. Eventually, Cyrus the Great’s Persian armies conquered Babylon, and he decreed that the Israelites could return to their beloved Jerusalem. What they found there was poverty, sickness, and destruction. The city’s walls had been destroyed and the Temple lay in ruins. They would have to start all over. And at the foundation of this reconstruction project was an existential question. Who are we really?

Isaiah’s answer stands in tension with the response given by Ezra and Nehemiah. And as we’ll see below, this biblical tension prefigures the tension we’re experiencing as a nation right now. According to Ezra and Nehemiah, what makes someone an Israelite is basically blood and history. “They excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent.” (Nehemiah 13:3) Any man married to a foreign woman was ordered to divorce her. (Ezra 10:2-3)

By contrast, Isaiah was saying that faithfulness to the covenant with God defines anyone and everyone a child of God. They could offer sacrifice in the Temple. Whereas Deuteronomy had excluded foreigners and eunuchs from the Temple (23:1, 3), Isaiah said that God’s salvation comes to “the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants.” (56:6)

Jesus took up similar language. He was teaching a crowd. His mother and his siblings showed up and sent someone to tell him that they had arrived. As Matthew records:

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50)

In other words, loving what God loves how God loves it braids us into the family of God. Not our blood or our heritage.

To summarize the contrast between Ezra/Nehemiah and Isaiah briefly, the former uses heritage and history to exclude individuals from Israel. Isaiah recognizes faithfulness to the covenant as the principle of inclusion in Israel.

We’re having a parallel argument now. What makes somebody a real American?

Drawing on the work of Yoram Hazony, those in the national conservatism movement insist that citizenship claims should be rooted in ancestral ties to this land. Vice President J.D. Vance has reportedly said as much directly: those whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a greater claim to America than any new arrival to our shores. Blood and history, again, is the answer.

Lincoln answered differently. At Gettysburg he called this a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Not one conceived in blood. Four years earlier he’d put it this way: the Declaration of Independence is the electric cord that links the hearts of all Americans together. When new immigrants commit to the proposition that “all men are created equal,” the cord connects them to the Founders and to everyone else dedicated to that proposition.

There are echoes of Isaiah in Lincoln’s vision. And it brings to mind Jesus pointing at a room full of strangers and calling them his mother and his siblings. According to Lincoln, an immigrant is one of us not because of bloodline or heritage. But because of faithfulness to the sacred ideal that defines us and binds us into one: each human being is equal in the sight of God.

We’re not actually living in a conquered nation. Nevertheless, these are tumultuous, uncertain, and anxious times. So, we are working out the question of our identity. And it is no surprise that we find ourselves focusing on immigrants. Are they really one of us?

Jesus does not provide a detailed immigration policy for us. And for that matter, there are Americans who are not Christians anyway. Nevertheless, he shows his followers the spirit that we should embody in our approach to the question.

First, every stranger we meet is already the beloved child of God. It doesn’t matter where they came from, how they got here, or what language they speak. Treating them as such is who we are.

Second, what makes any person one of us, what makes them American, is not how long they’ve been here, who their great-grandparents were, or their ethnicity. Rather, it is their faithfulness to our shared ideal of freedom and equality.

None of this is to say that we should impose our Christianity on this nation as a whole. However, our faith is more than a merely private matter. Our relationship with Jesus informs how we enter into the public square. And he has taught us to treat strangers as part of the family of God.

Everything at The Woodlands is always free. Paid subscriptions are voluntary. Proceeds are used to support ministries in under-resourced communities. Those include providing food, adult literacy, and educational support for children and youth at places like Alma Redwine Elementary in Sonia Quarters.

Subscribe now

A Spiritual Practice

Find a quiet few minutes at the end of the day. Breathe. Let your body settle before your mind does.

1. Gratitude. Where did you feel genuinely welcomed today — not tolerated, not merely included, but wanted? Sit with that feeling a moment before moving on.

2. Review. Walk back through the day. Who crossed your path — in person, on a screen, in a passing thought? Notice, without judging yet, who you moved toward and who you moved away from.

3. The harder question. Was there a moment today when you measured someone by where they came from, what tribe they belonged to, what side they were on — rather than by whether they were trying, in their own way, to keep faith? Don’t rush past this. Let it be uncomfortable if it needs to be.

4. Sorrow, honestly held. If you drew a boundary today that Isaiah wouldn’t have drawn — around ancestry, party, class, or grievance — name it to God plainly. No performance. Just honesty.

5. Grace and resolve. Remember that you, too, are one of the ones let in on nothing but fidelity — not pedigree, not merit, not the right family. Ask for one small chance tomorrow to extend that same welcome to someone you’d normally overlook.

Close, if it helps, with:

Lord, you have never once asked me for my ancestry. Only my faithfulness. Let me offer others what you’ve offered me. Amen.

That’s it for this week friends. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

But before we start, a quick word about scheduling me for your event. My colleague Holly Davis is now working on my 2027 schedule. If you would like to invite me to lead a retreat, offer a talk, participate in a webinar, or preach at your event, just give her a shout.

Schedule Jake for Your Event

And now on to…..

What They’ll Say At Your Funeral

I believe it was George Burns who used to say, “The first thing I do in the morning is read the obituary. If my name’s not in there, I’ll have breakfast.” That old gag came to mind the other day as I read the obituaries of two old friends. It’s just the sort of thing we laughed together about.

Both were retired priests who had served faithfully in my diocese. They had died only days apart. And my role as their bishop includes presiding at their funerals.

When I prepare to preach someone’s funeral, I spend a lot of time remembering who the person was. I mean, who they really were. Sometimes, obituaries help me do that. Mostly, they don’t.

That’s because so many of them provide a list of the person’s accomplishments. And what I focus on is their character. Because it’s in their character that we can see what Jesus had made of them over a lifetime. Let me explain. I’ll start with what I mean by character.

Our character is comprised of our habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. These are not inherent personality traits like quick-tempered or even-keeled, introverted or extraverted. Instead, they are the patterns of how we navigate the various contexts of our lives.

We know a person’s character when we see how they are at work and with their grandchildren. What they’re like at church or at dinner with friends or in the gym.

In other words, character is formed over time. We’re not born with it. And there are broadly speaking two very different views about how our characters are shaped.

In his book The Road to Character, David Brooks subscribes to what he calls the crooked timber tradition. It goes like this. Each of us is born with gifts and flaws. We are crooked timbers. The character we end up with is a result of how we have dealt with those gifts and flaws. A virtuous character emerges from a long struggle of self-control. We admit our flaws, resist our worst impulses, and devote ourselves to acts of service again and again. Among others, Dwight Eisenhower and Dorothy Day serve as Brooks’ examples.

I’ve tried to live that way. Fought my own crookedness, called it discipline, called it grit. It got me somewhere. But it never got me to beloved.

The Gospel offers us a radically different view of character formation. Instead of looking within for our gifts and faults to find the source of character, the Gospel teaches us to look beyond ourselves. We are not first and foremost either our abilities or our worst impulses. Instead, we are Jesus’ beloved. Because, well, Jesus. That is our root identity. And yes of course we are born with various personality traits, and we will wrestle with desires and impulses, fears and fantasies. But our starting point is the realization and acceptance that we are the beloved of Jesus.

We habitually open ourselves to that love through our spiritual practices in the community of the faithful. Through prayer, worship, and works of mercy. Jesus’ love shapes the pattern of our lives through these practices.

Paul calls this love-formed pattern of life the fruit of the spirit. He writes, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Consider the story of Peter walking on water. The disciples are at sea in a pitched storm. Jesus approaches their boat walking across the waves. Peter says, “If that’s you, call me out there with you.”

And sure enough, Jesus invites him over the gunwales. Peter makes it a few steps before sinking. Jesus then says, at least in my reading, “I know you hesitated there. Just keep believing.”

In other words, Jesus wasn’t inviting Peter to have self-confidence about his water-walking abilities. He was teaching him, and teaching us, that he can makes us what we cannot make of ourselves.

And that is the sort of thing I try to convey in funeral homilies. I don’t look to celebrate a life of personal achievement. But I do intend to highlight and celebrate a life. A life of gracious humor and tender affection for all of God’s people. A life formed by the power of Jesus’ love.

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A Spiritual Practice

Sit in silence for a few minutes at the end of the day. Let your mind settle and the quiet settle in.

Before you sleep tonight, walk back through today. Find one moment you were trying to prove something — your competence, your worth, your grip. Then find one moment someone simply loved you, or you loved them, and nothing was being proven at all. Sit with the difference.

Bring your quiet time to a close with this prayer:

Lord Jesus, this day is past. Help my restless heart to rest in you, not in what it has proven or earned. You have made me for yourself, and however far I wandered into striving today, hold me now simply as your beloved. Amen.

That’s it for this week, ya’ll. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

P. S. Everything at The Woodlands is always free. Paid subscriptions are voluntary. Proceeds are used to support ministris in under-resourced communities. Those include providing food, adult literacy, and educational support for children and youth.

Subscribe now

P.P.S. I just signed a contract for a new two-book project with Abingdon! More on this later, but it looks to hit the shelves in fall 2027. Stay tuned…….

Before we start, thanks to all of you who already subscribe. If you’re new, please consider join us. Everything at The Woodlands is always free. Paid subscriptions are voluntary. Proceeds are used to support ministris in under-resourced communities. Those include providing food, adult literacy, and educational support for children and youth.

Subscribe now

And now, let’s turn to….

Wrestling With God

My maternal grandparents were post-WWII immigrants from Austria. Like my mom had done two years earlier, they had crossed the Atlantic in a ship’s steerage compartment and entered the United States through Ellis Island. I lived with the three of them until I left for college.

After supper on Saturday nights, Grandma and Grandpa would sit in the living room and watch Live Atlanta Wrestling on their tiny black and white TV. I joined them sometimes.

This was the 1970’s. WWE had not yet turned wrestling into the entertainment spectacle that we know today. Back then, a local station broadcast the matches from one of their studios in front of a small live audience.

My grandparents loved it. It just looked fake to me. And that remained my enduring impression until I watched my son Andrew’s first high school match. As soon as the whistle blew, my heart was in my throat, and I had to remind myself to breathe.

It wasn’t just the speed and the power of the grapplers. It was their ferocious determination to win. And the realization that the winning and the losing were entirely on the shoulders of each individual wrestler.

Of course, there are weight classes for the sport. Fourteen classes are designated by maximum weight. Lighter wrestlers can move up one class, but no wrestler may fight down. Somebody in the 144 lb. class can move up to 150. But officials won’t allow a 113 lb. David to square off with a 215 lb. Goliath.

To sum up: From a human point of view, wrestling is about winning and that’s all up to each individual wrestler. Taking on a significantly oversized opponent is out the question. And since moving down could give the bigger wrestler an unfair advantage over the smaller, heavier wrestlers don’t have that option.

I’ve raised all of this to help us think about the story of Jacob wrestling with God in the dark along the banks of the River Jabbok. (Genesis 32: 22-31) Let’s start with the most obvious contradiction from the summary above. Jacob is a human being. God is the Supreme Being. This looks like an infinite mismatch. You might even say that God was moving a long way below the divine weight class. But as I’ll explain below, Jacob’s idea of wrestling is not God’s idea of wrestling. So, let’s turn to Jacob.

Given what we know about him up to this point, it’s safe to say that he got into this match with the intention of winning. I mean, just look at a few biographical details. Jacob was the second-born of twins. And even as he emerged from his mother Rebecca’s womb, Jacob was grabbing at his older brother Esau’s heel to take his place. Later, as a young man, Jacob swindled Esau out of his birthright, conning his blind father Isaac unwittingly into the deal.

At Rebecca’s urging, Jacob fled his brother’s murderous rage and got on his Uncle Laban’s payroll in another town. While he was tending Laban’s flocks, Jacob married both the older man’s daughters and managed to swindle his uncle out of a good portion of his wealth.

Once again Jacob had to make a run for it. This time he headed back in the direction of his old home and the brother he had cheated. The River Jabbok marked the boundary of Esau’s territory.

Jacob sent an advance team of hired hands with gifts to appease his brother. They returned with the news that Esau was on his way to greet his brother Jacob. With four hundred men in tow. That doesn’t sound like a welcome home party. It sounds like war party.

Anticipating a possible massacre, Jacob split his entire household into two groups. Then he sent the groups ahead of him along separate paths hoping to save at least half of them.

Throughout his life, Jacob had counted on his own wit and cunning to get what he wanted. He was a winner. There were significant setbacks and no small amount of anxiety, but Jacob always managed to turn things to his advantage. Not this time. This was a catastrophe of his own making. And he couldn’t see a way out.

He turned to God. ^“Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.” (Genesis 32:11) But importantly, he turned to God retaining his habitual spiritual posture. He was going to win God over. Hence, he had an all-night wrestling match to get the blessing he wanted. To wrench a blessing from God with his own cunning and skill. After all it had worked with his brother and with his father Isaac years before.

Admittedly Jacob did do all sorts of religious things up to that point. He prayed and erected altars and offered sacrifices. But that’s doesn’t mean that Jacob related to God as “the rock that is higher than I” or “my fortress … and my high tower.” (Ps. 61:2, Ps.18:2) Jacob relied on Jacob.

In the dark, at water’s edge, Jacob and God wrestled all night. Seeing that Jacob was never going to give in, God threw his hip out of joint. And yet Jacob struggled on. As dawn approached, the stranger said, “Let me go.” Jacob refused to let go without getting the blessing he was grasping for. He never seemed to quite get the point: that’s not how blessing work. You don’t grab. A blessing is freely given. You receive it.

And so, the stranger asks, “What is you name?” Jacob tells him. The stranger responds. “You’re not Jacob anymore. From now on, you’re Israel.”

You see, Jacob means the one who grabs what he wants for himself. Israel is the one who wrestles with God. A name is not just a tag that can be swapped out with no effect on its bearers interior life. It indicates a person’s true self. Jacob had always defined himself in relationship to himself. Israel defines himself in relationship with God.

Crucially, that relationship is not meek, unquestioning submission. It involves struggle, reflection, interpretation, lots of stretching, and it will probably leave a mark. But God isn’t taking advantage of a power differential. God is engaging Jacob’s restless, often confused soul as long as it takes. As long as it takes Jacob to learn to love what God loves how God loves it. God is doing just the same thing for you and me.

And that can take a long time. Probably an eternity.

Let’s turn to a brief spiritual practice. Set aside five or ten minutes.

A Spiritual Practice: Letting Go to Receive

1. Sit in a comfortable chair for a minute or so. Both feet on the floor. Eyes closed.

2. Clinch your hands tightly into fists. Hold them that way. Name to yourself what you’re grasping for or clinging to. It could be a result you want. A person. An image of yourself. Don’t judge yourself. Just name it. Breathe. Stay with it, even if it begins to feel uncomfortable.

3. After a few minutes, relax your clinched fingers. Open up your hands slowly and gently. Rest them on your knees, palms up. Breathe for a few minutes. Feel the tension in your hands lessen.

4. Open your eyes slowly and close with the following:

A Closing Prayer

O God, give me the grace to let go and to open myself to what you are always already giving: to your loving, liberating, life-giving presence. Remind me daily that the blessing of your love is received, not seized or achieved. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

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That’s it for now, y’all. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

P. S. I'm serving as the leader for this Fall’s EfM Alumni Retreat at the Solomon Episcopal Retreat Center of Louisiana (October 23-25). The theme is drawn from my latest book A Full-Hearted Life. I would love to see you there. For details press the button below:

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Part 4: Where the Infinite Finds Us

To start my last sabbatical, I got out of town for a week. I needed to slow my internal pace, and a change of scenery seemed like a good way to start.

When I told friends I was heading to Portland, they lit up—until I clarified: Oregon, not Maine. They didn’t say anything outright, but their faces said it all: Why would you go there? You won’t find what you’re looking for in that place.

Well, just for the record, I did. But this reflection isn’t about the merits of the Pacific Northwest. It’s about the spiritual destinations we set our hearts on—and whether they can truly satisfy us.

As I’ve discussed throughout this series, a holy longing animates our lives. We’re all on a path toward something we believe will make life meaningful in an enduring way.

Each of us is devoted—whether we know it or not—to reaching what theologian Paul Tillich called our Ultimate Concern. The pressing spiritual question isn’t whether we’ve chosen something evil. It’s this: Have we set our sights too low?

Will our chosen destination truly satisfy our longing—for love, meaning, belonging, and transcendence?

Colossians urges us to aim high:

“If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:1–2)

In other words, direct your devotion toward the living God—not a substitute. Not an idol.

An idol is a phony god. It promises to fulfill our deepest longings in exchange for our total devotion. And often, the “earthly things” we give ourselves to aren’t obviously bad. They’re familiar: possessions, power, and status.

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Some chase wealth to feel secure. But money can lose value, markets can shift, and enough never feels like enough.

Others seek safety in power. But the more we depend on our strength alone, the more we obsess over threats we can’t control.

And status? That’s applause we have to keep earning. It fades as soon as someone newer, shinier, or louder comes along.

These idols can’t deliver what they promise. They’re fleeting. Finite. And our longing is for something infinite. Something more.

In Christ, the beyond—the infinite—meets us in the midst of our finite lives.

Spiritual Practice: Where the Infinite Finds Us

This week, pay attention to the ordinary moments of your day.

A conversation. A meal. A walk. A task at work. Time with family or friends.

At the end of each day, ask yourself:

• When did I feel moved today?

• What moment stayed with me?

• Where might God have been present in those moments?

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, open my eyes to your presence in the ordinary moments of my life. Help me to notice where you are at work in the people I meet and the experiences of each day. Amen.

That’s it for now friends. Next week, we’ll be turning to Jesus feeding the multitude. In the meantime, be well and God bless.

Jake

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Part 3: Rethinking Your Spiritual Path

The woman sitting across from me was warm, sincere, and intelligent. She belonged to the church I was serving and had asked to meet so we could get to know each other better.

“I’m not exactly Christian,” she said.

When I asked her to say more, she explained that no single tradition—including Christianity—could claim the whole truth. “So I’ve woven together a spiritual path that fits who I am,” she said.

Her approach was thoughtful and intentional, shaped by a desire to live authentically. In many ways, she was doing what our culture encourages: finding a path that expresses the self within. But I’ve come to believe that the deepest authenticity is not something we construct—it’s something we receive.

At the risk of oversimplifying, let’s say she walks the path of self-expression. I walk the path of vocation. Here’s the difference:

• The Path of Self-Expression: We look inward to discover and accept who we are. We choose a spiritual path that helps us express and affirm that inner identity.

• The Path of Vocation: We respond to a voice beyond us. A call draws us forward, and by walking that path, we become who we truly are.

The letter to the Colossians urges us to walk the path of vocation:

“As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” (Colossians 2:6)

Just as Jesus once called the first disciples to follow him, he now calls each of us. The way of Jesus is not something we choose to validate who we already are. It’s a life we’re invited into—a way that reshapes us, that forms us into who we’re meant to be.

At the same time, Colossians warns that the path of self-expression can become a dead end:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

The Colossians were cobbling together a spiritual mix from various sources. It was a kind of religious buffet: a little of this, a little of that—whatever seemed helpful, appealing, or empowering.

But when we pull isolated practices or ideas out of their original context, we cut them off from the deep roots that gave them life. What we’re left with may look spiritual, but it often lacks the power to sustain real transformation. We end up wading in shallow water.

What’s more, when we select only what aligns with our preferences, we risk turning our spiritual life into a mirror of our own desires. A faithful spiritual path doesn’t just affirm us—it confronts us. It names our limits. It surfaces our sin. And in doing so, it opens us to grace. That’s how growth happens. That’s how we become more than we already are.

Those of us who walk the path of vocation believe that we discover our true selves not by curating a spiritual identity, but by answering the call of the One who already knows us and loves us.

Spiritual Practice: The Next Step

Set aside a few quiet minutes each day this week.

Ask yourself:

What am I being drawn toward?

What am I feeling compelled to do?

Which of these leads toward greater love, truth, or faithfulness?

Don’t worry about the whole journey. Simply notice the difference and take one small step in the direction of what is calling you.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you call us to follow you. Quiet the voices of fear, pride, and distraction within me. Help me to recognize your invitation, trust your guidance, and take the next faithful step. Amen.

That’s it for now friends. Next week, look for Part 4: “Rethinking Your Spiritual Path.” Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

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Part 2: What Makes Your Life Meaningful

Modern life tells us that our worth depends on how much we produce and what we achieve. But the Christian story tells us something deeper. In the Incarnation, God crossed the universe to connect with us—and in doing so, gave our lives meaning.

This is at the heart of what the writer of Colossians is saying:

“Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15–17)

I realize that the idea of the Incarnation doesn’t resonate with everyone. Some people don’t believe in God. Others may accept the idea of a divine presence but struggle to see God as personal—or to believe that Jesus was God in the flesh.

Still, there’s a place where many of us meet: we are spiritual beings. As I explored in the first reflection, we long for love, meaning, belonging, and connection to something beyond ourselves. The practices we follow to pursue these longings form what I call our spiritual pathway.

There are countless spiritual pathways in today’s world. And yet, at the deepest level, I believe they fall into two basic types.

The first sees meaning as something we must achieve. On this path, we try to create significance through career success, social influence, power, or wealth. We are told that human life is about becoming somebody—earning our place, proving we matter.

The second kind of path sees meaning as something received. It flows from relationship—communion with something or someone beyond ourselves. We find significance not through effort, but through being loved.

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The first pathway depends on constant striving. Andrew Root describes this as the will to power—the relentless drive to overcome limitations, conquer challenges, and assert control. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa adds that in our accelerating world, we must move faster and do more just to keep up. This path often leads to exhaustion and alienation.

By contrast, the second path is marked by expectation, openness, and trust. We don’t seize meaning. We wait for it. As Simone Weil put it, “We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.” That’s the essence of Christian spirituality.

This doesn’t mean followers of Jesus are passive. Colossians urges us to be deeply engaged in this relationship:

“Continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard.” (Colossians 1:23)

Our lives become a response to the love we actively receive. The Benedictine motto ora et labora—“pray and work”—captures this rhythm. We open our hearts to God in prayer. God sends us into the world in love. And then calls us back again to deeper communion.

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Spiritual Practice: Receiving Life as Gift

Once each day this week, pause for a moment and ask:

What in my life today is gift rather than achievement?

Notice whatever comes to mind, and give thanks.

Prayer

Loving God, help me receive what you freely give. Amen.

That’s it for now friends. Next week, look for Part 3: “Where the Infinite Finds Us.” Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

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Part 1: Our Holy Longing

We yearn for love, meaning, belonging, and transcendence. This is our soul’s holy longing, whether we name it that or not. And we remain restless until we find what we seek.

If you’re not especially religious, you might wonder why I’ve included transcendence in this list. Love, meaning, belonging. Sure. But transcendence? That sounds like God-stuff. Not everybody seeks God. Or at least not God as Christians understand it. Right?

Let’s reframe transcendence for both the spiritually curious and those who reject the idea of a higher power. In its simplest terms, transcendence means beyond.

We yearn to connect to something beyond ourselves.

• Beyond our ego.

• Beyond our achievements.

• Beyond applause that fades.

• Beyond the stuff we’ve accumulated.

• Beyond even our death.

This is more than just religious longing—it’s a universal spiritual desire. A search for meaning and purpose that outlives our circumstances.

Surveys reveal how widespread this longing really is. Take Generation Z, the people born between 1997 and 2012. They are the least religious generation in modern history. They rarely attend worship services. They often doubt God’s existence—or reject it completely.

And yet, 83% of Gen Z believe in an afterlife.

They believe in something beyond this life.

(See the @ryanburge essay “Is There A Religious Revival Occurring Among Generation Z?”)

To me, even the barest belief in life after death isn’t just intellectual. It’s emotional. It’s existential. It’s a yearning—an ache for something eternal. A desire that no social media feed or career milestone can satisfy.

In our time, there’s no single way to talk about this. No shared language for soul hunger. No consensus on what spiritual experiences mean. But the yearning itself hasn’t disappeared. It’s what keeps us looking for a spiritual pathway.

Longing for transcendence isn’t about escaping to a better place. It’s about anchoring ourselves in something real. Something deep. Something that fills this life with meaning that doesn’t fade.

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The letter to the Colossians offers a glimpse into how the transcendent guides and informs our everyday existence.

“We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” (Col. 1:4-5)

Hope for what’s beyond shapes how we love in the here and now.

Our connection to the transcendent molds our character. It forms our patience, our courage, our capacity for joy—even in suffering.

Colossians says it like this:

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father.” (Col. 1:11-12)

This longing isn’t a drive to be satiated. As we’ll see in the next reflection, it’s our finite soul’s longing to be stretched—to have more and more space within us to receive the infinite God.

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Spiritual Practice: Listening to Your Longing

This week, whenever you find yourself restless, disappointed, or wanting something more, pause for a moment and ask:

What am I really longing for?

Don’t try to fix anything. Just notice.

Prayer

O God, guide my deepest longings toward you. Amen.

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That’s it for now friends. Next week, look for Part 2: “What Makes Your Life Meaningful.” Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

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Speaking of July, I’ll be on vacation all month. So during that time I’ll be dropping a revised 4-part series from the Archive called What We’re Looking For. New stuff will head your way starting again in August.

Today’s reflection is drawn from the Epilogue of my last book A Full-Hearted Life. It’s called…..

Sweet Tea and Jesus

Wearing my clerical collar and pectoral cross, I was ordering lunch at a Southern big-city restaurant with a friend. No tables were available, so we sat at the bar.

When our twenty-something server asked for our drink order, I asked for sweet tea. Tongue in cheek, I added, “I’m not sure Jesus will love you if you don’t have sweet tea.” Without missing a beat, she smiled warmly and said, “Well, I’m an atheist, so that really doesn’t matter to me. But we do have sweet tea.”

I immediately liked this woman. More for her response than for the sweet tea. And she seemed to enjoy the brief exchanges with my friend and me each time she stopped by to check in with us. If time had allowed for a serious conversation, I might have asked her about her beliefs.

I believe that we all want to lead a full-hearted life. We need to have a sense of identity: a sense of who we are and that we are worthy of love and respect. Authentic relationships are vital to a meaningful life, and we flourish when we’re passionate about some purpose. These are the elements of a joyful life. And all of these elements arise from our foundational beliefs.

You see, our waitperson was no unbeliever. Everybody believes something. And that offers us a key to living in this secular world of ours. We will regularly encounter others who believe something other than our own Christian faith. Instead of perceiving those beliefs as a disrespectful challenge or a threat to our faith, we can recognize them as different. And difference is an opportunity to be curious, not judgmental or defensive.

In my book A Full-Hearted Life, I shared my memory of a conversation with one of my philosophy students named Ellen. Her family of origin had been thoroughly secular. She had grown up with no personal experience of religious traditions and no acquaintance with traditional spiritual practices.

But you could see that she navigated her way through this world on the basis of a belief system. That belief system did not include God, but I’m convinced that it was in essence a faith. A non-religious faith. But a faith nonetheless. To draw on William James’ definition of faith, she believed in “an unseen order, and [that her] supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting [herself to it].”

She had been shocked by the suggestion that I was, at least symbolically, a cannibal because I ate the Body and Blood of Christ. The idea violated her moral code. And since I taught philosophy and commended the importance of rational analysis to my students, she judged my attachment to an apparently irrational superstition to be hypocritical. From her perspective, hypocrisy counted as a serious sin, even if she wouldn’t have used the word “sin” to describe it.

In other words, she had basic convictions about how we should treat one another and about what counts as a virtuous character. Her judgments rested upon a story she had about the grand scheme of things, about how reality works.

That theory of reality leaves no room for the supernatural. Psychology, social science, and natural science tell us all we need to know about the human condition and how best to lead our lives.

What I discovered is that she was not anti-religious. Her story of reality simply made no room for the supernatural and told her that religion was passe: an artifact from an era plagued by primitive thinking.

Crucially, she had received her secular faith passively. From parents, friends, media, and teachers. She hadn’t yet done the hard work of asking whether or not her faith story really held existential water. If it supported her distinctions between good and evil, provided a purpose in this life, or gave her an authentic sense of self. She hadn’t asked, does my story really work?

For instance, how can someone insist on the equality of every human being when their perspective is limited entirely to the natural world? Individuals are clearly unequal in physical strength, eyesight, hearing, and intellectual ability. We Christians, by contrast, can say that everyone is equal because we believe that everyone is created in the image of God and that God loves each of us infinitely.

Here’s how my faith urges me to approach the Ellens of the world and everybody else I meet. Remember that Jesus loves them. And so, I should, too. An important expression of love is to take the time to listen to another person’s faith story respectfully and to engage with it honestly on its own terms. In other words, does their story really work?

That’s what I did with Ellen throughout her college days. It’s what I imagine would have been interesting to do with our busy atheist server that day. Additionally, once we’ve listened, we may have the opportunity to explain how the story of Jesus helps us to make sense of our life and to navigate its complexities.

Or, as C. S. Lewis once put it, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In this way, we may be able to convey how Christianity could help them to make sense of their own lives. But remember, all of this begins by listening respectfully and actively.

The principle I try to follow is this: any friend of Jesus’ is a friend of mine. And Jesus has befriended everybody, whether they realize it or not. Now I admit that this is easier in some cases than others.

A priest friend of mine once told me about a meth addict who violently disrupted a worship service she was leading. He stormed into the church, threatened her with a string of obscenities, and eventually slammed the door on his way back out. Her prayer in that moment has proved helpful to me a few times: “Well Jesus, you better show me what you love about this guy, because I’m really not seeing it right now.”

Following Jesus means to navigate our way through life with the Spirit of love, because we know ourselves to be loved beyond reason. The way of love is a way of intentional response to the risen Christ who walks along with us as the Good Shepherd. Through thick and thin. In moments mundane and exhilarating.

The Way of Jesus is a radical alternative in this world. We are God’s beloved, and so is everyone we encounter. However bruised and battered and disfigured by circumstances they may be. No matter the language they speak, who they love, their country of origin, the color of their skin, or the beliefs they hold dear.

Each step we take can be a response, a response to the love we’ve been given as gift. Pure, unearned, unachieved, unconditional love. That is the essence of the full-hearted life.

And to be clear, we do not achieve a full-hearted life by loving hard enough or loving just the right way. We participate in that life, the life that the risen Christ shares feely with us, when we open ourselves to his love and have the courage and the humility to pour that love out to the world.

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Spiritual Practice: Any Friend of Jesus

Sometime today or through the following week, notice one person you would normally overlook, dismiss, or simply pass by.

Pause for a moment and pray:

“Jesus, show me what you love about this person.”

Then continue your day, carrying that question with you.

Prayer

Jesus, help me to see others as you see them. Teach me to listen with respect, love without fear, and remember that every person I meet is someone you love. Amen.

Book News

I’ve been working on a manuscript that grows out of many of the themes we’ve explored together here at The Woodlands, and I’ve begun a conversation with a publisher. The book is meant to be a companion for anyone who wants to slow down, pay attention to God, and grow into the life that Christ is already sharing with us. I’ll keep you posted as things develop.

That’s it for now. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. If you haven’t read it yet or want to gift it to a friend, you can grab a copy of A Full-Hearted Life here.

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Part 4: What Shapes the Soul

Her surprise bordered on shock.

We’ve known each other for years. She’s heard me say that God is love countless times. So, she assumed that she was echoing my own sentiments when she said, “There is no hell. A loving God would not torment anyone for eternity.”

I gently responded, “Well, actually, I do believe in hell.”

She said, “What do you mean? How can you say that? Coming from you that doesn’t make sense.”

You might be thinking the same thing, and I don’t blame you. That’s especially so if you think of heaven and hell as celestial destinations. As places that God ultimately sends us as either reward or punishment for the kind of life we’ve lived.

I’ll turn to C. S. Lewis to help me explain what I’ve got in mind.

In his novel The Great Divorce, he imagines a bus ride from hell to heaven. The residents of a dreary gray town are given the opportunity to visit heaven and even remain there if they wish.

To their surprise, heaven is not soft and ethereal. It is solid and real. The grass feels like needles beneath their ghostly feet. The visitors themselves are thin and insubstantial by comparison.

Again and again, they are invited to let go of their pride, resentment, self-pity, and illusions so that they can become real enough for heaven. Many refuse. They return to the bus and ride back to the gray town.

Lewis’s point is that heaven and hell are not about where God sends us after we die. Instead, heaven and hell are about where we’ll want to be. And where we’ll want to be hinges on who we’ve become. Lewis puts it like this:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

There are two ways of being in this world. Two sorts of love. One is love of God and love of neighbor. Paradoxically, we find ourselves not by centering on ourselves, but by giving ourselves away in love. By contrast, there is love of self above and even at expense of all others. Isolation and misery are its result.

Heaven is about becoming more real, more alive, more fully the person God created us to be. Hell is the tragic alternative—a life that grows smaller, thinner, and less real because it cannot surrender itself to care.

Look, I feel the pull of self-centeredness. To be honest, I’ve succumbed to it more often than I want to admit. Maybe you have, too. But that doesn’t condemn us. We can, to use Lewis’ image, hop the bus to heaven anytime we choose. But we cannot choose what heaven will actually be like. Reality does not bend itself to our wishes. Learning to become real—and to accept reality as it is—can be both difficult and painful.

I think Jesus was getting at something like this when he said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28)

Jesus seems less concerned here with what might happen to us than with what might happen within us. Some ways of living gradually deform the soul. They make us smaller, less alive, less capable of love. They lead to what Søren Kierkegaard called despair.

Externally, we may appear to be flourishing. And yet our inner life can be filled with turmoil or feel desperately hollow.

People have always compared themselves to others. Neighbors, classmates, church members, colleagues at work. Now—in this digital, algorithm-driven era—we compare ourselves to billionaires, celebrities, and influencers on Instagram and TikTok. They have resources that most of us cannot access. And besides, the images they present are curated to present only the most flattering perspectives.

So, our age urges us to rush forward to curate our own best lives now. To construct a life for ourselves. And so, we are haunted with fear that we will fall behind or fall short. We will never be enough or measure up. Someone is always getting ahead of us or catching up to us. Windows of opportunity are closing and expectations are shifting. We’re weighed with dread that we’re not really living our best life now.

Jesus urges us to take up another way of being. The true self we yearn to be is not something we achieve. It’s something we receive. We become real by opening ourselves to, and being shaped by, God’s love for us. We are already the beloved. To live into that reality is to love with the love that we are always already being given.

To illustrate my point, I’ll turn to another story. Here’s a slightly lengthy passage from Margery Williams Bianco’s, The Velveteen Rabbit:

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Like I said above. I do believe in hell. In moments of self-centeredness, I’ve had foretastes of it. By grace, I mostly stumble and scooch along a different path. Walking the way of heaven is neither easy nor pain-free. At times, I do feel a bit loose in the joints and more than a little shabby.

I still have a long road ahead of me. But I can’t imagine using my return ticket.

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Spiritual Practice: Becoming More Real

Once each day this week, pause for a moment and ask:

What made me feel more fully alive today?

Notice whatever comes to mind.

Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, make me more fully alive in your love. Amen.

That’s it for this week, friends. Next month we begin a 4-part series called What We’re Looking For. Part 1 is “Our Holy Longing.” As usual, posts will drop each Friday. I’m revisiting and revising posts from the Archives while I’m away on vacation. You may recognize the titles, but check them out. They’re going to be a bit different. Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

The Woodlands is always free. Paid subscriptions are a gift. They help fund ministry to children, youth and adults in under-resourced communities.

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Part 3: Sheep among Wolves

When she was a schoolgirl, my mother attended a mandatory mass rally in Linz, Austria. Schools had canceled classes. Teachers and administrators organized all the students and ordered them to march toward City Hall. Many of the children lined the approaching streets. Some, including my mother, stood looking up at a balcony waiting for the famous speaker to emerge.

It was March 13, 1938. Nazi Germany had just annexed Austria. Hitler had returned to his hometown for a triumphant speech. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people roared with approval. Two days later, Hitler spoke at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. There he was cheered by nearly a quarter of a million people.

Six years later, the Nazis had imprisoned my mother in Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

You don’t have to be the child of a Holocaust survivor to find this story chilling. And like me, you’ve probably wondered how the Germans and the Austrians had so willingly, even enthusiastically, followed such an evil person into genocide and war.

To be sure, there were frighteningly wicked, sadistic individuals among the ranks of the SS and the Gestapo. But the vast majority of Germans and Austrians were pretty much like the rest of us. Decent people groping their way toward the good life. So, what possessed them to embrace the Third Reich?

In the decade following the Second World War, the philosopher Eric Hoffer pointed to the emotional and spiritual condition of the German and Austrian people prior to Hitler’s rise to power. The citizens of these countries yearned for a good life that seemed out of their reach. Disappointed, frustrated, and resentful, they welcomed a story that made sense of their circumstances and offered them a path toward reaching the kind of life they desired. (see his classic The True Believer)

Central to that story was the identification of a common enemy on whom all their misery and unhappiness could be blamed. So, they were bound together by a shared resentment and a common cause: eliminate the enemy.

Hoffer identified this dynamic in Nazi Germany, but people have formed themselves into groups around shared frustrations and scapegoats since there were people. Another theorist, Rene Girard, is well-known for identifying the pervasiveness of the scapegoat mechanism in human societies. And he also urges us to see that Jesus invited us into a radically different kind of community.

Jesus gathers his disciples, gathers us, into a community of love. A community that experiences itself as the beloved and so engages the world with that love. Like all human beings, we long for the good life. A life laced with meaning, enriched by belonging, and animated by purpose.

Followers of Jesus recognize that things are not as they should be. This world is marred and burdened by sorrow, misery, and wickedness. But we do not look for an enemy to destroy. We look for a wound to heal.

To echo , our way of being in the world makes Christian community profoundly counter-cultural. Even weird. This is what Jesus was getting at when he said, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

We are sheep. Our sense of belonging derives from the one who already loves each and every one of us. We are bound together by the common cause of embodying the Kingdom through the love we show for everyone, especially those ground beneath the wheels of the powers and principalities.

But let’s be realistic. We are sheep among wolves. The world is still dominated by those who seek out enemies to destroy. By wolves. Their way is the way of power and violence. And sure, Christians have endured and may again endure persecution at their hands.

And yet, there is a far greater danger for us. We can identify the wolves as our enemy. Our outward actions may not resemble theirs. But the patterns of our heart can become wolflike. Perhaps that’s why Jesus also said this: love your enemy. In other words, others may see you as and treat you as an enemy. Don’t return the favor.

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon put it this way:

[The] cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God’s account of reality more seriously than Caesar’s. The cross stands as God’s (and our) eternal no to the powers of death, as well as God’s eternal yes to humanity, God’s remarkable determination not to leave us to our own devices. (see Resident Aliens)

My mother told me only once about being in that crowd in Linz. She remembered nothing about what Hitler said that day. It wasn’t like a celebrity sighting for her. More like a dull school assembly. Not exactly a highlight. Six years later the triangle affixed to her Mauthausen uniform designated her crime: antisocial element.

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Spiritual Practice: Seeing a Neighbor

This week, when someone stirs frustration, resentment, fear, or contempt in you, pause for a moment and ask:

Can I see this person as someone loved by God?

Don’t argue with the question. Just sit with it for a moment.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, teach me to see others as you see them. Amen.

That’s it for this week. We’ll continue the series Practicing the Kingdom next week. Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. You can contact my colleague Holly Davis to schedule me to speak at your event or lead a retreat. I love meeting readers in person and online. 2026 is probably booked, but there’s still space in 2027.

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Part 2: What’s The Hurry?

Ernest Hemingway wrote with a manual typewriter. Banging away on those stubborn keys—bottle of whiteout at my side—was my first experience with typing. In college I scored a used self-correcting electric model. These days I clack away on a MacBook Air.

Some writers still prefer using a manual machine. The tactile experience and the freedom from digital distractions help them bring their thoughts into words. That’s not true to my lived experience. For me, a manual typewriter feels obsolete. It gets in the way more than it helps. So, I just never think of using one.

According to Christian Smith, religion has become obsolete. That’s why worship attendance and membership in traditional religious institutions have gone into such marked decline. Sure, some people have rejected religion outright as rank superstition or as a source of harm and cruelty. But there’s a more common story.

Religion has become the manual typewriter of the spiritual life for many people. It’s not bad. And some still want to use it for nostalgia’s sake or to suit their own purposes. But generally speaking, religion has become one among many options, not an existential necessity.

You see, everybody is spiritual. We are all propelled by our unrelenting desire for the good life. Religion offers a pathway to that good life. But today there are many, many more pathways to the good life on offer. Religion does not have a corner on the market.

People seek meaning and connection in therapy, political activism, wellness culture, personal spiritualities, the arts, and online communities for instance. And in fact, these pathways increasingly resonate with more people than religion does.

And that’s why a conversation I overheard left me thinking. It went like this:

“I think I’ll go to church on Sunday.”

“Why would you do that?”

Exactly. Why would you go to church? Or, more precisely, what is it about the religious pathway that draws you toward it?

In a word, it’s the vision at the end of the religious pathway that sets it apart from all others and makes it indispensable for genuine human flourishing.

Before I say more, I want to be clear. I am not suggesting that therapy or wellness practices or the like lack benefits and virtues. On the contrary, they can be an enormously fruitful aid in walking the religious pathway.

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But here is the central point. The religious pathway acknowledges that humans are a desiring animal and that desire is infinite. Our souls will find the rest we long for only in the infinite. And union with God is the vision toward which our souls are inevitably drawn, even when we don’t realize it.

This realization is not, generally speaking, an intellectual insight. It’s an existential gasp of sorts. After following a path that we believed would lead us to fulfillment, we come to a place where we ask with our hearts more than our minds, “Is this all there is? Is this it? There’s got to be more to life than this.”

The author of Ecclesiastes put it this way. “Vanity, vanity. All is vanity.” The most accomplished musician, renowned statesman, psychologically enlightened mind will wind up in the same place as the rest of us. Six feet under.

Perhaps that’s why people kept leaving things behind to follow Jesus. Fishermen. Tax collectors. Outsiders and sinners of every sort. They had reached the point where the ordinary pathways through life no longer seemed enough. In one way or another, they had begun asking, “Is this all there is? There has to be more to life than this.”

Religious leaders of the day were puzzled by it all. They asked why Jesus would associate with crooks, sinners, and outcasts.

But that question misses the deeper point. The real question is this: what did those people see in Jesus that made them willing to walk away from everything else?

I suspect they recognized in him the possibility of the very thing their souls had been seeking all along. Not simply moral instruction. Not religious performance. But life itself.

I’m reminded of a story once told by the late philosopher Dallas Willard:

Flying at supersonic speed, a fighter pilot practiced a series of intricate maneuvers. She pulled back on the stick to make a steep climb. Instead, the jet slammed into the ground. She had become disoriented. Without realizing it, she had been flying upside down.

Willard used this story to illustrate our contemporary spiritual condition. Our lives move at a relentless pace. We hurry to get what we think will finally satisfy us. Yet we never seem to arrive. Instead, we become restless and anxious. Exhausted and lonely. Like the pilot, our bearings are off.

Hurry is a symptom. It points to our underlying spiritual dysfunction. So, what’s the hurry? What gives rise to our existential acceleration?

Created in the image of God, we have infinite desire. The true object of our desire is the Infinite. We yearn for God, in other words.

Our dysfunction is this. We seek to fulfill our desires for the infinite with finite things. Those finite things briefly satisfy us, but that satisfaction disappears. The desire resumes, or more accurately, the incomplete experience of satisfaction propels us to the next object.

And so, we hurry. We hurry to the next object. And the next. And the next. At an increasingly accelerating pace. In our hurry we grow weary, disheartened, alienated.

That’s the hurry. We keep rushing from one finite thing to another, hoping at last to find what only the Infinite can give.

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Spiritual Practice: What Am I Really Seeking?

Each day this week, pause once or twice when you find yourself reaching for something: your phone, a snack, a purchase, a distraction, a task, a piece of news, or even a conversation.

Before acting, ask yourself:

• What am I hoping this will give me?

• What deeper desire lies beneath this desire?

• What am I really seeking right now?

Don’t judge your answer. Simply notice it.

You may discover that beneath the desire for productivity is a desire for significance. Beneath the desire for entertainment is a desire for joy. Beneath the desire for reassurance is a desire for peace. Beneath the desire for attention is a desire to be loved.

End the day with a brief prayer:

“Lord, help me recognize the deeper desires of my heart. Teach me to seek in you what I so often seek elsewhere. Lead me into the life for which I was made. Amen.”

The goal is not to eliminate desire. Desire is part of how God created us. The goal is to notice where our desires are leading us—and whether they are carrying us toward the Infinite or merely from one finite thing to the next.

That’s it for now, friends. Until next week, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. I say more about the path that leads to a full-hearted life in my latest book by that title. Here’s what Will Willimon had to say: “A Full-Hearted Life is Jake at his brightest and most heartening. As always, Jake delights and informs, but most of all, during this often-discouraging time, he encourages.” Click the image to learn more and grab a copy.

Part One: What the Commandments Are Really For

Meredith was being a problem. That’s what our daughter’s third grade teacher was telling us.

“What do you mean?” we asked.

The teacher pointed to a large display at the front of the room. Across the top were twelve construction-paper rectangles, each numbered with a different rule beneath it.

“Do you see those? They are the twelve commandments of this classroom. Every time a student disobeys a commandment, I put their name under the tablet for everyone to see. Look how many times I’ve listed Meredith’s name. She talks too much.”

To ease the tension I said, “Well, I mean, even God has only ten commandments.”

Meredith’s teacher didn’t see the humor. Joy stifled a laugh but gave me the side eye. I got the message: “That’s hilarious. You’re not helping.”

Joy’s look stopped me from saying what was going to come next: that’s not how commandments work in the first place. At least not God’s commandments.

The Ten Commandments are not rules to follow in order to stay in God’s favor. They are practices that teach us how to live together as the kind of people God created us to be.

God did not give the commandments as a test to see whether we would obey and deserve punishment when we fail. The commandments are an invitation into a fuller way of living together. After all, to be fully human is to live in relationship: with God, with one another, and even with ourselves.

Jesus had some conflict with religious authorities about the fourth commandment: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. So, let’s use this commandment to illustrate the point.

On one Sabbath Jesus and his disciples were passing through a grainfield. The disciples plucked grain and ate as they walked. Some religious authorities criticized them for working on the Sabbath, clearly breaking God’s commandment.

Jesus famously replied that the Sabbath was made for humans. Humans were not made for the Sabbath. In other words, God gives us Sabbath for our flourishing, not as a rule to enforce rigidly. (Mark 2:23–28)

In our day, we often think Sabbath simply means taking a day off. But as John Mark Comer points out, many of us are just as busy on our days off as we are during the workweek. We cram errands, chores, unfinished projects, and even leisure activities into every available moment. We may stop working for a paycheck, but we never really stop.

But you see, that misses the point of Sabbath completely.

Sabbath means stop. Stop hurrying. Stop producing. Stop distracting ourselves with all the urgent but not ultimate things of life. The point is not merely rest. The point is remembering what is most real: our life with God. Set aside one day to practice remembering that. Over time, Sabbath teaches us to carry that attentiveness into the rest of our lives.

That is how human beings flourish. How we begin to feel in our bones that we were made by love and for love.

And it is precisely that kind of flourishing Jesus came to share with us. He is God in the flesh showing us what fully human life looks like. Jesus teaches us through his way of living, his healings and table fellowship, his death and resurrection. When he says, “Follow me,” he is inviting us to pattern our lives on his way of love.

As Jesus prepared to ascend, he told his followers to continue this work of formation by embodying it themselves. “[Teach] them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:20)

Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked. Not to prove our worthiness, but because this is what love does.

Resist evil with good. Be merciful even to the wicked. Remember that every person is more than the worst thing they have ever done.

Keep the main thing the main thing.

Jesus was not naïve. He knew this is not the way the world usually works. Ours is a world shaped by competition, distraction, fear, and the pursuit of more.

And yet Jesus calls us to another way. A way of mercy, generosity, courage, and love. A way of being human together that reflects the Kingdom of God.

To practice the life of heaven here on earth.

Next week’s post is called What’s the Hurry? We’ll be looking at the spiritual cost of busy-ness and how practicing the Kingdom restores our peace.

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A Spiritual Practice

Set aside ten quiet minutes at the end of one day this week. No phone. No television. No music. Just silence.

Then ask yourself:

• What shaped my heart today?

• What most captured my attention?

• What hurried me?

• What gave me peace?

• What helped me love God and other people more deeply?

What pulled me away from the main thing?

Do not judge yourself harshly. Simply notice.

Then end with this prayer:

Lord Jesus, teach me the way of your Kingdom. Reorder my desires. Quiet what distracts me from you. Shape my life by your love so that I may become more fully human in you. Amen.

That’s it for now, friends. Until next week, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. Thanks to all my wonderful subscribers! I’m so glad you’re here. A special shoutout to those who are supporting ministry in under-resourced contexts with paid subscriptions. You’re generosity is making an impact. More than twenty children and youth will be attending Summer Camp thanks to you.

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P.P.S. If you would like to schedule me for your event (in-person or virtually), my colleague Holly will be glad to help.

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Today we’re looking at how our spiritual practices help us to give sustained attention to the the God who is always already present.

We’ll start with a reflection and then turn to the spiritual practice of sustained attention. If you’re listening through Substack, you’ll find the practice in the written post. Apple Podcast and Spotify listeners can find the spiritual practice in the show notes.

So, let’s get started with the reflection:

Learning the Habit of Attention

Our dog Gracie tells me when it’s time to play ball. She gives me the look. Playing catch is her favorite thing to do. So, I stop what I’m doing, grab the ball, and head outside with her.

When she was younger, I took my phone along a few times. While she was chasing the ball, I would take a peek at email or an app. Not anymore. When she noticed me doing it, she would stand at a distance, hold the ball in her mouth, and refuse to come back. She was giving me a different sort of look.

Eventually I got the point. She was saying, “You’re not really present. You’re not paying attention. Being together is the whole point of playing ball. And to do that, you have to pay attention to me.”

As it turns out, Gracie has taught me to recognize the central message of the Pentecost story. Attention is at the heart of the spiritual life.

Let’s look at the story.

After Jesus ascended, the disciples gathered together in an upper room. For nine days they prayed together.

They understood that Jesus had entrusted them to continue his mission. To be his hands and feet in the world. But they didn’t rush immediately into action. Their first step was to pray. Prayer is how we pay attention to God.

Then the Holy Spirit came. A violent wind from heaven blew through the room. Tongues of fire danced on their heads. Peter preached to a crowd of people who had gathered from all parts of the world. Each listener heard him speaking in their own language. By nightfall, three thousand people had accepted his invitation to follow the way of Jesus.

But don’t lose sight of the lesson for discipleship. Before the disciples acted, they gave their attention to God. And through that attention came connection.

To be connected to God, we need to pay attention in a sustained way. That turns out to be easier said than done.

You might think that we simply have to use our willpower. Focus. Resist distractions. But our challenge is not so much that we can’t focus. It’s that we’ve been taught and even rewarded by our culture to focus on one thing after another after another in short bursts. We don’t maintain connection. That’s a mark of living in this digital age.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Imagine that you’re out to dinner with your spouse. Your phone or your watch vibrates. It’s a text message. You read and respond. Meanwhile a social media notification pops up. You stare at it just a beat too long before glancing back up at your spouse. They’re giving you the look. You’re not really present. You’ve lost the connection.

As followers of Jesus, we believe that the point of our lives is to be connected with God. God is present. But the world shapes us in a way that prevents us from focusing our attention.

I’m reminded of a passage in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

Screwtape is a senior demon. He’s writing instructions in the art of corrupting human souls to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. He says, “Like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy.”

The Enemy is God.

In our age, a demon doesn’t need to lead us down a path of spectacular sin to disconnect us from God. Our culture is doing all the heavy lifting by teaching us to give only shallow, fleeting attention to an endless stream of ads and images and posts and headlines.

Here’s how John Mark Comer puts it:

In the digital age, we make [Satan’s] job a breeze. Hurry, pathological busyness, distraction, smartphone addiction, the constant stream of alerts and interruptions—these all cut us off… Cue the axiom, “When Satan cannot make you bad, he makes you busy.” (John Mark Comer, Live No Lies)

Our spiritual challenge is to practice sustained attention. And Christians have long understood that attention does not happen accidentally. It requires intention and pattern. This is what Christian tradition calls a rule of life.

A rule is simply a rhythm of prayer and devotion that helps keep our attention centered on God. A daily time with Scripture and reflection. The Daily Office. Centering prayer. Regular worship with a community.

What St. Benedict and those who followed him understood is that momentary flashes of awareness can awaken us to God’s presence. But only a sustained habit of attention can make room for God at the center of our lives.

God is always present. We connect by learning the habit of attention.

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Let’s move on to the spiritual practice:

A Practice for Pentecost: Learning the Habit of Attention

Attention rarely happens by accident. Our days always take shape around habits and rhythms. In that sense, all of us already have a rule of life. The question is whether our current patterns are helping us stay connected to God.

This week, pay attention to the rhythms that shape your days.

How do you begin the morning?

What claims your attention first?

How do you end the day?

What patterns shape your week?

What helps you remember God’s presence?

What consistently pulls your attention away?

Don’t try to overhaul your life all at once. Instead, choose one simple practice that helps you reconnect your attention to God.

You might begin the day with a short prayer before looking at your phone. Pause for silence at midday. Read a Psalm before bed. Set aside regular time for worship, rest, or reflection.

The Book of Common Prayer offers a simple way to begin. It includes brief Daily Devotions for Morning, Noon, Early Evening, and Close of Day. These short prayers can help punctuate the day with moments of attention to God’s presence. You can find them on pages 137-139.

The goal is not spiritual perfection. It is learning to make room for God at the center of your life.

That’s it for now, friends.

Scheduling Me for Your Event

If you would like for me to lead a retreat, offer a workshop, or speak at your event, contact my colleague Holly Davis. I love connecting with you in-person or online. Holly is already scheduling 2027, but there are a few spaces left for 2026.

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Until next time, be well and God bless.

Jake

P.S. Just a quick reminder, if you’re looking for a way to do some good, proceeds from paid subscriptions fund ministry for children, youth, and adults in under-resourced contexts. All my book royalties and speaking honoraria fund those ministries as well.

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So, here’s Speaking Up

Some of you know that I struggled with a speech defect for the first two decades of my life.

Born without a soft palate, I spoke with an unpleasantly nasal tone and could not pronounce the letter s.

My voice is what it is today thanks to a long, complex surgery.

As a boy, my chest would tighten, my mouth would go dry, and my stomach would churn whenever a situation called for me to speak up in front of other people.

Experience had taught me that using my voice was likely to result in ridicule, rejection, and bullying. I was afraid, and so I had to make an intentional effort to speak up. I had to be brave.

You don’t have to have a speech impediment to find it hard to speak up. Jeremiah, of all people, initially tried to wriggle out of God’s call to be a prophet: “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

God didn’t fall for it: “Enough with the I’m-only-a-boy stuff. I’ve put my words in your mouth. Be brave. Speak up!”

And speak up he did.

Knowing the risks, Jeremiah confronted the powerful for exploiting the poor and neglecting the needy. He was certainly no coward. And yet, I wonder if he was often more brash than brave.

I say that for a couple of reasons.

First, courage is not the opposite of cowardice. It’s the golden mean between cowardice and brashness. Between too little and too much. Between timid silence and self-righteous scolding.

Second, consider the results. They’re what you might expect from brashness.

God sent Jeremiah to urge Judah to reclaim God’s vision as their own: to be a community governed by the law of love. That was the mission.

To accomplish that mission, Jeremiah mostly ranted about Judah’s wickedness. He might have painted a winsome picture of a love-shaped world to stir his listener’s desire for something better.

But that wasn’t the style he chose to use. So, people felt accused, not invited. That’s probably why he got tossed into a well.

Look, he wasn’t wrong about Judah’s injustice. And he is right about our injustice for that matter.

But remember the mission: to urge people to reclaim God’s vision as their own. For that mission to succeed, hearts have to be transformed.

Criticism didn’t turn hearts. Judah continued crushing the poor and the marginalized until the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and carried many of her inhabitants into exile.

Hearts aren’t generally transformed by accusation. Vision transforms hearts. A vision of the good life stirs our hearts and draws us toward it.

That is what Jesus brings. He announces that the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. In the flesh. The very life that we have longed for all along has come to dwell among us.

Instead of wagging his finger at us, Jesus invites us to join him in the full-hearted life we desire.

Yes, Jesus urges repentance. But here’s how he that works. Jesus first shows us a different kind of life. A life animated by love and rich with meaning. And he invites us to join him in it.

That vision allows us to recognize that a life motivated by self-fulfillment and driven by the will to power is actually killing us. With God’s help, we can finally let it go.

To follow Jesus is to proclaim the Gospel not only with our lips but with our lives in a world that sorely needs it. St. Francis famously told his friars to preach the Gospel and use words if necessary.

Giving voice to the Gospel can be pretty scary. There are powers in this world—even some who call themselves Christian—who will respond with contempt, malice and even violence.

Each baptized person has vowed to speak up anyway. To preach the Gospel with their lives. To walk the way of care, justice, peace, and truth-telling.

Deacons are forever shaped by the baptismal covenant. And they make additional vows that will define their role in the Body to which we all belong.

Deacons promise to be especially attuned to the needs of this wounded world. Not merely so that they can act as designated individuals on our behalf, leaving us to be admiring spectators.

Instead, Jesus calls them to organize the rest of us to serve the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely together.

In other words, deacons are the servant leaders of servants. They help the Body to speak up, to proclaim the Gospel in action. Together, our life should give the world a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Some who are ordained deacons eventually will take priestly vows. Let’s defer that discussion until an appropriate time.

For now, let’s look more closely at how to speak up faithfully and effectively.

Speaking up is more than expressing our outrage at the world’s injustice. That can feel awfully good, but it rarely changes hearts. More often, people feel dismissed or condemned, so they stop listening.

The purpose of speaking up is not to shame people or display our own righteousness. It is to bear witness to the Truth.

Jesus transformed lives not by condemning the world, but by embodying a better way. And he commissions us to do the same.

To give the world a glimpse of the full-hearted life shaped by the Kingdom of Heaven. A way of living shaped not by domination or self-interest, but by love.

And that requires more than passionate conviction. It requires humility, perseverance, courage, grace, and wisdom.

And now, I urge you all: Be brave. Be loving. Speak up. Use words if necessary.

That’s it for now, friends. I promise not to overload your inbox with extras like this. Watch for the usual Friday post: Learning the Habit of Attention.

Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

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And now let’s turn to Part 7: Living is More than Existing

During the height of Western colonialism, a European adventurer set out to explore the uncharted heart of Africa. He hired local tribesmen as porters.

For days they covered miles of challenging terrain at a relentless pace. The European was obsessed with reaching his goal on the ambitious timetable he had set for himself.

One morning, the porters refused to go one step farther. There was no drama, no revolt. They simply sat down.

The European tried everything to get them moving again. Shouting, offering bribes, making threats. Nothing worked. So finally, in frustration he asked, “Why aren’t you moving?”

One of the porters explained, “Our souls have fallen behind our bodies. We must wait to let them catch up.”

Our souls have fallen behind our bodies.

Today we might say: This isn’t living. It’s just existing.

We have to find a different way, a different pattern of life. A pattern that nourishes the soul even when our bodies grow weary.

The porters were not complaining about carrying heavy burdens. On the contrary, their ordinary lives had infused them with a wisdom that many of us have yet to learn.

In this life, we all carry burdens. Sometimes heavy. Sometimes light. But to be alive is to bear some burden.

To put that another way. A carefree life is no life at all. Humans are caring creatures. Care is what makes life meaningful.

In the West, the patterns of life we move through every day—at home, at school, at work, online—have quietly shaped us to yearn for fulfillment, for a life free from stress and strain, toil and anxiety.

We imagine that we’ll get there when once we reach our career goals, achieve celebrity status, hold irresistible power, or accumulate enough wealth.

In the meantime, we focus our energy and attention on doing whatever will get us to that carefree point.

Along the way, we leave our souls behind. We experience anxiety, exhaustion, and alienation. Sure, we achieve lots of things. We make immense technological progress and build historically large amounts of wealth. And yet our hearts feel troubled, our social network is fraying, and even our family ties unravel.

We reach for relief. A break. We grab the iPhone or take a drink or stream Netflix. Something to take the edge off. For a little while, that works. And then we’re back to work or at school or chauffeuring the carpool.

We’re rushing again. We’ve resumed the same pattern of life that left our souls behind in the first place.

That’s our default. A pattern of life built around the illusion that the good life is something we achieve by our own efforts.

Jesus tells us that this pattern of life is a dead end. Here’s how he puts it: “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:36)

On the night before he was crucified, Jesus tells his friends that he is the path to the good life. The life shaped by devotion to our heart’s true desire. That’s not a desire for things or status or influence. It’s the desire for connection. For communion. He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

Connection with Jesus is eternal life. It is knowing “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom [God has] sent.” (John 17:3) It begins in this life and continues beyond the grave. Eternal life is not an escape from the world. It is a way of knowing God that already shapes how we live in the world now.

Jesus lived that life. He made God known. He loved what God loves the way God loves it. He carried that way of life all the way to the cross. In doing so, he glorified the Father. And he continues to glorify God in and through us. In other words, the life he has lived, the way he has shown, the love he has embodied—he now entrusts to us.

We are not here to secure a life for ourselves. We are here to be present—to God, to one another, to the world. To learn to love what is before us. And in that way, to begin even now the life that does not end.

Be present, genuinely present to the world around you. To the people, the animals, the plants, the earth itself. We are here to care. To allow the well-being of everyone and everything we encounter to matter to us as if our own well-being were inextricably bound to it. Because whether we recognize it or not, it is.

This will break our hearts. We will grieve. And we will burst with joy. This is what it means to say that we are created in the image of God. And it’s what it means to truly live. Not to merely exist.

Jesus is no longer in the world as he once was. But we are. And the question is not whether we will carry burdens in this life. The question is which pattern we will practice for carrying them.

Death comes to you and to me and to all finite things. But Jesus shows us that the caring way—the way of the cross—is the way of life that transcends the grave. The way of life that, in the end, returns to the Creator who breathed life into us in the first place.

In this series, we’re not only thinking about the spiritual life—we’re learning to notice how Jesus is already present and at work in our lives. I’m including in Substack—and also in the Apple and Spotify show notes—a simple way to begin. Try it today and consider trying it for a few minutes each day this week. I would love to hear from you about your experiences and insights.

Spiritual Practice: How We Carry What We Carry

Set aside ten minutes.

Begin by becoming still. Sit comfortably. Take a few slow breaths. Let your body settle.

Then bring to mind something you are carrying right now—a burden, a pressure, a responsibility. Don’t choose something abstract. Choose something real.

Now ask yourself:

How am I carrying this?

Without judging, notice the pattern.

Are you tightening? Managing? Controlling?

Are you bracing yourself, trying to hold it all together on your own?

Sit with that honestly for a moment.

Then hear these words of Jesus:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Read the words slowly. Let a word or phrase stand out.

Now ask:

What would it be like to carry this with Jesus instead of by myself?

Don’t overthink it. Let an image, a feeling, or a simple shift come to you.

It may be releasing control.

It may be asking for help.

It may be taking one faithful step instead of trying to solve everything.

Sit quietly for a minute or two, holding that new pattern in your imagination.

Close with a simple prayer:

Jesus, I am carrying more than I can hold. Teach me your way. Teach me to carry this with you, not alone. Amen.

The Woodlands is always free. Upgrading to a paid subscription helps to fund ministry in under-resourced areas. You’ll help adults learn to read, send young people to camp, and provide food for hungry families.

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Thanks again for being here. Next week we’ll be turning to the story of Pentecost. Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

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And now Part 6: When It’s Not Clear What Love Requires

UPS left a bird feeder camera at my door recently. Since I hadn’t ordered it, I figured that my friends Jeff and Cindy must have sent it to me. During a recent trip to Nebraska, I had dropped by their house to spend a day with them. They have one of those feeders, and they noticed how much I enjoyed watching birds using the app that connects their feeder to Jeff’s phone.

I texted my thanks and told them that I couldn’t wait to set it up. Jeff responded, “You’re welcome and good luck. You need a *%@! engineering degree.”

He was right. It’s complicated. One look at the excruciatingly detailed user’s manual convinced me to look for some hands-on help. For somebody who already has the hang of it.

That’s how I feel about life. It’s complicated. And I navigate life’s complexities best when I accept help from somebody who already has the hang of it.

Jesus offers to help us navigate life’s complexities. He puts it this way: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16-17a)

To be clear, we’re not talking about moral choices: distinguishing between right and wrong, good and evil. Those choices are usually pretty clear. Don’t steal. Be faithful to your spouse. Forgive the kid who totaled your car.

The real complexities of life are different. They come in situations where there’s more than one right thing to do. Think about when to speak and when to stay silent; when to hold on and when to let go. The question is not good versus evil. It’s how to love. How to come closest to Jesus’ command: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)

Jesus did not give us an exhaustive list of dos and don’ts. He invites us into a way of being in the world shaped by love. He wants us to learn how to do whatever we do as an expression of love.

And so Jesus sends us the Spirit of Truth to teach us. Not a rulebook or a surge willpower, but the Spirit who teaches us wisdom.

Here’s how I have defined wisdom elsewhere: “Wisdom is the art of doing the loving, God-shaped thing in all the varied, changing, and nuanced situations that life hands us. (Looking for God in Messy Places, p. 101)

There is no lifehack for becoming a wise person. We acquire wisdom one step, one day, one messy situation at a time. It’s that 10,000-hour thing. You learn an art by doing it over and over and over. Acquiring wisdom takes a lifetime.

It also requires a mentor. Someone who knows the way, cares about you, and is honest enough to tell you the truth. When it comes to wisdom, the Holy Spirit is our primary teacher.

Life is complicated. We are imperfect. And we belong to one another. Love is how we make life livable. And wisdom is the art of loving. The Holy Spirit is guide and mentor, counselor and friend in the school of everyday life.

Here’s another way to understand the Spirit’s wisdom: friendship.

During the Last Supper Jesus said, “I do not call you servants any longer … but I have called you friends. (John 15:15)

Friendship is different from family. Family comes by birth. Friendship is chosen. And a true friend stays. As Proverbs puts it, “A true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin.” (Proverbs 18:24)

Jesus also described the Holy Spirit as an Advocate and a Helper. As one who will “teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26)

Jesus spent his ministry teaching his followers how to love in real situations. Proverbs calls that wisdom. And none of us can do it alone.

In fact, wisdom begins with knowing we are not God. That’s what Proverbs means when it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10)

Wise people recognize the limits of their own understanding. They let go of the illusion that they can figure everything out on their own. As Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5–6)

A true friend doesn’t just guide us. A true friend tells us the truth even when it’s hard to hear. Not to wound, but to heal. “Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts… Iron sharpens iron.” (Proverbs 27:6–7)

Some people use “truth” as a weapon. The Spirit never does. The Spirit’s guidance always comes from love and leads toward joy.

The Spirit knows us from the inside. Jesus said, “The Spirit of truth … abides with you.” (John 14:17) We are never left on our own. Whether things are going well or falling apart, the Spirit stays with us: guiding, correcting, encouraging, and leading us forward.

A friend’s counsel is “heartfelt.” The Spirit’s advice is always an expression of Jesus’ love for us. Jesus assured his friends, “I will not leave you orphaned.” (John 14:18) Whether the sailing is smooth or the seas are treacherous, whether we’re on the top of our game or at a dismally low bottom, the Spirit is there. Hanging with us, guiding us, and leading us to the next step of the path we walk together.

Wisdom is the art of doing the ordinary and the extraordinary things of life with love. Jesus has the hang of it. And through the Spirit, he stays with us. Teaching us, step by step, how to live that way.

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In this series, we’re not only thinking about the spiritual life—we’re learning to notice how Jesus is already present and at work in our lives. I’m including in Substack—and also in the Apple and Spotify show notes—a simple way to begin. Try it today and consider trying it for a few minutes each day this week. I would love to hear from you about your experiences and insights.

Spiritual Practice: Learning What Love Requires

Read the passage slowly. First out loud. Then quietly.

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16–17a)

Sit with that for a moment.

Bring to mind a situation in your life where it’s not clear what love requires.

Don’t try to solve it.

Just notice it.

What makes this situation complicated?

Where do you feel pulled in different directions?

What feels most important to you here?

Now, gently ask:

What might love look like in this moment?

Stay there. Don’t rush to an answer.

Trust that you are not alone in this.

When you’re ready, take one small step in the direction of love.

Close with this prayer:

Come, Holy Spirit. Teach me what love requires. Give me the wisdom to take the next step. And the courage to follow where you lead. Amen.

Thanks again for being here. Part 7 of Resurrection and the Shaping of Our Hearts drops next week. Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

P. S. The Woodlands is always free. Upgrading to a paid will fund ministry in under-resourced areas. You’ll help adults learn to read, send young people to camp, and provide food for hungry families.

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P.P.S. A portion of this reflection is adapted from my book A Full-Hearted Life. Click the image below to get a copy for yourself or a friend.

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And now here’s Part 5: When Things Fall Apart

When I was ten years old, my father, my mother, and I moved into our newly constructed house. Previously, my mother and I had lived in a series of shabby rentals. Sometimes my father lived with us. Mostly not. So, this 900-square-foot house seemed like a new start for me. We would be a family with a place I could always call home.

A few weeks later, I was sitting alone in my bedroom. My father’s angry voice echoed down the short hallway. I ran to the den and saw my father pointing a pistol at my mother’s head. Without thinking I stepped between my parents, putting myself between the gun and my mother.

With an unaccountably calm, steady voice, I said, “Don’t shoot my mother. If you kill her, you’ll go to prison. You’ll leave me an orphan.”

With a sneer, my father glared at me and said, “You’d be better off an orphan.”

I stood my ground.

Exactly what happened to break the tension escapes me now. I remember only that my father ended up in my parents’ bedroom. My mother and I holed up in my room with the door locked.

That night, my dream of home shattered.

When the school year came to an end, my mother and I slipped away from that tiny South Georgia town and escaped my abusive father. As I discussed in a previous post, we secretly boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Miami. We each had one suitcase. My mother had squirreled away only enough money to last for a few weeks. She had no job. No firm prospects. In time, we became homeless.

All of this taught me a stark truth. We live in a world where things fall apart. And that lesson left me a crucial question. So, now what?

Or to be more precise, how do I thrive, not just survive, in this unstable place? What is the path to the full-hearted life I yearn for? A life filled with enduring meaning and animated by a worthy purpose?

For a while, I tumbled into cynicism: nothing lasts so nothing matters. That worked for about fifteen minutes. But since I yearned for meaning and purpose, admitting the pointlessness of existence turned out to be an obvious dead end.

Some Christians urged me to believe that everything has a reason. It’s all part of God’s plan. Just believe and good things will happen in the end. Honestly, that just never worked for me. Maybe it’s because I’m the child of a Holocaust survivor, but there are some things that I cannot square with a divine plan. So that version of faith was a non-starter for me.

Gradually, I came to perceive the full-hearted life as something that I would have to achieve. The construct of my own effort, wit, and grit. Now this did result in a number of athletic, academic, and career accomplishments.

But the problem with accomplishments is that their glow inevitably fades. So, the pursuit of the next accomplishment is always part of this pattern of life. The pressure to achieve is relentless. It exhausts us.

Besides, forces well beyond my own willpower shape our world and our individual lives. Long stable democracies get shaky. Wars erupt. Economies crack. Disease, addiction, and senseless accidents can tear up the script we thought we were writing all along. And of course, the Grim Reaper comes for each of us.

No matter how diligently and responsibly we strive to erect the full-hearted life, things fall apart. We still yearn for a full-hearted life. And so the question remains. Now what?

Jesus offers a paradoxical way of being in the world: letting go. Letting go of the life we are trying to construct. The life we think we can hold together with enough effort, discipline, and faith. The life that depends, in the end, on us getting it right.

That is the life we are invited to release. Because we are not the ones holding it all together. Jesus put it this way: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” (John 14:1)

In other words, do not exhaust yourself trying to secure a life that you cannot achieve, no matter how hard you try or how faithful you are. Entrust yourself to God. Entrust yourself to Jesus. Receive the life that is being given.

But receiving this life is not passive. It is costly. Because the life Jesus gives does not simply supplement the one we are trying to build. It replaces it. And that replacement is not merely interior. It takes shape in how we move through the world.

It shows up in what we do when things fall apart. Do we grasp for control? Do we turn inward? Do we protect ourselves at all costs? Or do we entrust ourselves to God—and remain open, available, and present to the lives around us? Here’s how Jesus put it:

“Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12–13)

To receive our life from God is to be freed from the need to secure it for ourselves. And once we are no longer organizing our life around protecting it, we are able to give it. Not as a new burden to carry. But as the shape this life naturally takes.

• To tell the truth when it costs us.

• To remain present when it would be easier to withdraw.

• To stand with the vulnerable rather than aligning with power.

• To absorb a measure of the world’s pain instead of passing it along.

This is what it looks like to take up our cross. Not as an abstract ideal. Not as a private feeling. But as a way of being in the world.

We live in uncertain, harrowing, and rapidly changing times. Things do fall apart. Some surrender to cynicism. Others grasp for control. And both, in their own way, lead us further from the life we are seeking.

Jesus offers another way. Let go of the life we are trying to hold together. Entrust ourselves to God. And from that place, live a life we can give away in love, even when it costs us.

In this series, we’re not only thinking about the spiritual life—we’re learning to notice how Jesus is already present and at work in our lives. I’m including in Substack—and also in the Apple and Spotify show notes—a simple way to begin. Try it today and consider trying it for a few minutes each day this week. I would love to hear from you about your experiences and insights.

Spiritual Practice: Letting Go

Read the passage slowly. First out loud. Then quietly.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” (John 14:1)

Sit with that for a moment.

Where do you feel the pressure to hold your life together right now?

What are you trying to control or secure?

Notice what happens in you as you hear Jesus say, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Where might you be invited to remain open and present, rather than withdrawing or grasping for control?

Stay there for a few moments.

When you’re ready, close with this prayer:

Jesus, you know how easily my heart becomes troubled. I find myself trying to hold things together on my own. Teach me to trust you. Help me to let go of what I cannot control and to receive the life you are giving. Amen.

The Woodlands is always free. Upgrading to a paid will fund ministry in under-resourced areas. You’ll help adults learn to read, send young people to camp, and provide food for hungry families.

Subscribe now

Thanks again for being here. Part 6 of Resurrection and the Shaping of Our Hearts drops next week. Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake