On the south wall to the right, the life of Moses.
On the north wall to the left, the life of Jesus.

The paintings face each other across the chapel, making a clear theological claim: That what God once did for the Israelites through Moses, God has now done once for all through Christ.

Nearly 1,500 years before Jesus, God called Moses to lead his people out of slavery and into freedom. And through Moses, God led a great crowd of people safely across the sea. Moses then went up a mountain to meet with God. And as the people journeyed through the wilderness, God provided bread for their hunger.

For generations, the people of God told and retold this story. A story about,

The Sea
The Mountain
The Bread

Then John tells us about Jesus.

Jesus’ story here is also a story about,

The Sea
The Mountain
The Bread

John isn’t being subtle. He’s telling us that the God who rescued his people through Moses is now rescuing all people through Jesus. More specifically, he’s telling us that the God who delivered his people across the sea, offered his presence on the mountain, and provided bread in the wilderness wants to deliver us, offer us his presence, and provide for us today.

The Sea

In the Exodus story, the Israelites find themselves in an impossible situation. The Egyptian army is bearing down on them. An uncrossable sea is before them. No good options and no obvious way out.

Maybe you know the feeling.
A diagnosis you didn’t see coming.
A relationship that’s fallen apart.
A financial burden you can’t carry much longer.
A loved one who’s suffering in ways you can’t fix.
An addiction you can’t break free from.

Maybe there’s something in your life right now that simply feels impossible. In Exodus, Moses tells the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” Then God makes a way through the water.

But when John tells the story of Jesus, there’s a surprising twist. The disciples are in a boat. It’s the middle of the night and dark. A strong wind is blowing. The waters are rough. And then, “They saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water.”

In Exodus, God makes a way through the water.
In John, Jesus makes his way to us on the water.

Sometimes God parts the sea.
Sometimes Jesus walks across it to find us.
Either way, the impossible thing in front of you is not impossible for him.
So hold on.
Trust.

The Mountain

Sometimes what we’re most desperate for isn’t an answer or solution. Sometimes what we need most is assurance.

Assurance that we’re not alone.
Assurance that we haven’t been abandoned.
Assurance that we’re not forgotten.
That God still sees us and is with us and for us.

The Israelites knew this ache. They’d escaped Egypt, but now they were wandering through the wilderness. Freedom can be disorienting too.

So God calls Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain.”

Again and again, in seasons of uncertainty, God reveals himself to Moses. At one point Moses has moments of needing assurance, asking God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you,” which is a way of asking, “Are you still for me and with me?” God replies, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14).

Shortly after, God tells Moses’ successor Joshua, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Then we return to the disciples on the sea. Mark’s Gospel tells this same story but offers us one small detail John leaves out: “[Jesus] saw the disciples straining at the oars.”

The disciples couldn’t see Jesus. But Jesus could see them, in great detail.
The disciples were straining and struggling, pulling against the wind.
And Jesus saw it all.

There are seasons when faith feels something like that.
Straining, struggling, pulling with all your might against a violent wind.
These seasons leave us exhausted and weary.
Nothing seems to be moving. And God feels far away.

You’re not alone and abandoned.
You’re not forgotten.

But God’s perceived absence is not the same thing as God’s actual absence.
Jesus sees you, in great detail, even when you can’t see him.

The Bread

Then there’s the wilderness. The Israelites have no food in a desert where nothing grows.

No crops to harvest.
No reserves.
No backup plan.

Then, one morning they wake up and discover a gift scattered across the ground. They ask, What is it? and Moses tells them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”

Bread in a place where bread shouldn’t exist.
An impossible provision amid great scarcity.

Maybe your life feels a little like the wilderness, a barren wasteland where nothing grows.

You’re really trying, but your marriage still feels stuck.
You’re successful at work, but it feels strangely empty.
You’re struggling at work, or struggling to find work, and it feels hopeless.
You’re doing the right things, but nothing ever seems to change.

May I remind you, Jesus does some of his best work in the midst of lack.

In John 6, thousands of people are hungry and Philip does the math. There isn’t enough money. Andrew checks the resources. Five barley loaves. Two fish. Again, not nearly enough. Which, of course, is exactly the kind of situation where Jesus thrives.

In his hands, not enough becomes more than enough.

Jesus sees your need, and he can take your scarcity and provide exactly what you need when you need it. Not necessarily everything you want. Not necessarily everything you’ll need five years from now.

It’s daily bread he offers.

That was the rhythm of manna in the wilderness.
And it’s the prayer Jesus eventually teaches us.

Give us today our daily bread.

Daily bread is an invitation to daily trust.

I AM

There’s one more connection. At the burning bush, Moses asks God his name. God says, “I AM who I AM.” In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the words are ego eimi.

Now listen again to Jesus as he approaches the terrified disciples on the water.

It is I.
Eigo eimi.
I AM.

Jesus isn’t just a new Moses.
Jesus is the God of Moses.
Jesus doesn’t part the waters.
He walks on them.
Jesus doesn’t call us up the mountain.
He comes down to us from the mountain.
Jesus doesn’t just provide bread.
He takes scarcity and remakes it into abundance.

The greatest gift in John 6 isn’t the miracle. It’s Jesus himself.
Jesus who is our deliverer.
Jesus who is present.
Jesus who provides.

So where do you find yourself today?
At the Sea, in need of God’s deliverance?
At the Mountain, in need of God’s presence?
In the wilderness, in need of God’s provision?

You may not know how the sea will open.
You may not feel the presence of God.
You may not know where tomorrow’s bread will come from.

But if you know Jesus, his power to deliver, his loving presence, his compassionate provision, then you know all you need to know and have all you need to have.

Siffre did have a phone that connected to scientists on the surface who were monitoring his vital signs. He would call in just a few times a day—when he woke up, when he ate, and when he went to sleep. But they were forbidden from telling him the day or time.

And gradually his sense of time unraveled.

When the experiment ended on September 14th, Siffre left the cave believing it was only mid August. In simple timing test, he tried to mentally count two minutes. It took more than five minutes.

A decade later, he participated in a similar experiment, this time spending six months underground in Texas. Over time his body naturally settled into a rhythm of staying awake for 36 hours and sleeping for 12. The twenty-four hour day doubled in his body.

Reflecting on his experiences, Siffre once said that he experienced, “a very large perturbance in my sense of time… It’s the problem of psychological time. What is time? We don’t know.”

You’ve probably never spent months alone in a cave. But you know this feeling.

When I think about my elementary school days, it feels like I lived an entire lifetime in those five years. My daughter Harper just finished elementary school. Those same five years of chronological time have felt like the blink of an eye in my experience of time.

Time is strange this way.
It stretches and contracts and twists and bends in our bodies.
It usually flies when we want it to slow down.
It slows to a crawl when we’re desperate for things to speed up.

This is especially true during seasons of waiting.
Waiting for clarity or healing or an answer or a resolution.
Waiting for a door to open or a situation to change or a relational breakthrough.
Waiting for life to finally turn out the way we thought it would have much earlier.

The Bible of full of waiting. Much of the biblical story takes place in that long and painful silence between promise and fulfillment.

Abraham’s story is a prime example. God had promised to give him a nation full of children who would become a “great nation.” God had promised him a homeland and a household and a history-defining lineage.

Abraham trusted God.
Then, Abraham waited.
And waited.
And continued to wait.

For a quarter century, he waited. And during that time, this man we call the “father of our faith” was anything but the picture perfect portrait of unwavering belief. He lied to protect himself and laughed out loud at God’s promise. He and his wife took matters into their own hands and attempted to manufacture the promised future for themselves.

The “father of our faith” was a man whose faith often looked much like ours—fragile, impatient, and fearful. But here’s the good news:

Weak faith is still faith. And the truth is, most of us have weak faith. Most of us have a faith that still worries and wonders and doubts.

If your faith feels weak today, may I remind you: The object of your faith remains strong, steady, and sure. Abraham eventually came to realize this.

“Everlasting God” is the Hebrew phrase El Olam.
Olam can be translated, “Always, perpetual, beyond comprehension.”

El Olam doesn’t mean God begins at Point A and continues on past Point Z.
El Olam means God is not bound by any point.
God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

So when we wait, we wait in him.
He was there before our waiting.
He is there in our waiting.
He will be there long after our waiting.

Through all of his waiting, amid his weak and fragile faith, Abraham eventually learned this keystone truth:

By Genesis 21, Abraham finally had the son God had promised. But the promise was far from complete. He was still a foreigner in the land God had promised to give him. He still had to negotiate with a local king for access to a well. Yet, Abraham does something strange but symbolically significant in the moment he declares God to be El Olam.

It’s fascinating that Abraham plants a tamarisk tree. We have to remember that Abraham and his family were nomadic. They lived in tents; they didn’t plant trees.

Tents mean, “we’re ready to move on.”
Trees mean, “we’re ready to grow roots.”

Tamarisk trees take decades to grow into shade trees. They’re also one of the few trees that can thrive in the desert—they grow deep root systems, they’re drought tolerant, and they live for a very long time.

Abraham plants a tree he knows he’ll never fully enjoy; but also, a tree he knows will stand the test of time. Why? Because he’s come to understand faith as trusting in God’s pace, however long it may take.

Maybe you feel behind. El Olam means that God isn’t.
Maybe you fear the future. El Olam means that God doesn’t.
Maybe you’re paralyzed by your failures. El Olam means that God’s not finished.
El Olam means God’s got all the time in and beyond the world.
El Olam means that God is already present in the future you cannot see.
El Olam means that your failure is never final.

For many years I believed this promise of soul rest the way I believe in an empty inbox—I knew it was possible, but unlikely; a kind of monastic pipe dream that a busy husband, father, and pastor like me, living and serving in a place like Silicon Valley, could dream about but probably never experience for myself.

But I’ve come to discover that this invitation isn’t just hopeful sentimentality; it’s a reality we can experience here and now. I’m excited to share The Gift of Simplicity with you, a short companion guide designed to help you begin the journey toward saying yes to Jesus’ invitation to soul rest, as a lead up to the release of The Pace of Peace on September 8th.

This brief guide is designed to help you “stand at the crossroads and look,” as Jeremiah puts it. It’s an invitation to ask honest questions about the pace and priorities of your life, and to explore the ancient practice of letting go of what isn’t yours to carry so you can more fully receive the life Jesus offers.

The guide includes a few simple practices—small invitations to create more margin, cultivate more awareness, and learn, day by day, to care more about less.

The Gift of Simplicity is available as a free download for anyone who pre-orders The Pace of Peace. Here are a few simple asks:

1. If you’ve not pre-ordered The Pace of Peace, please do.

2. Share about the book with anyone who might benefit from it.

3. Download The Gift of Simplicity and consider reading it with a few friends.

4. Once you get The Pace of Peace on Sept.8th, after reading it, leave an honest rating and/or review at Amazon or Goodreads (it goes a long way in helping the book reach the right people).

I hope these pages help you experience
a little less hurry,
a little less striving,
a gentler spirit,
a deeper awareness,
in all of the ordinary moments of your life.

Thanks for joining me, and so many other weary travelers like us, on the road to peace. Here’s a bit of what you’ll discover in The Gift of Simplicity:

As the creator of life and the provider of true meaning, God’s first invitation is not to change things, fix things, or adjust things. God’s first invitation is to stand. Slow and settle down for a moment. Stop the commotion. Give your ambition a break.

Stand at the crossroads and look. There are always choices before us. We don’t have to live this way. There is another way, a fork in the road. But unless we pause to ponder, we’ll miss it.

Reflection precedes resolution.
Awareness precedes change.

Standing at the crossroads and looking means disrupting the default direction and movement of our lives long enough to ask, honestly: Is this the life I actually want to live? Is this the life God has called me to live? What’s the deeper motivation beneath all of my striving, straining, and succeeding?

We don’t trust institutions. We don’t trust the news. We don’t trust the internet.
We don’t trust that the video is real, the quote is accurate, that there isn’t a hidden agenda. We can’t totally be sure whether this is my pastor or AI.

Much of the mistrust is understandable. Expected, even.
Institutional failure has become commonplace.
The news has become more entertainment than information.
The internet is a hall of mirrors.

So we’ve learned to be suspicious, to question everything and everyone.

And when trust begins to disappear, something deeper starts happening inside us. We begin to believe we’re ultimately on our own. And if I’m on my own, then my future depends on me.

So we work harder and play harder.
We plan more carefully.
We hustle more aggressively.
We achieve and accumulate more furiously.
Not always because we’re greedy, but often because we’re afraid.

Are we really left to fend for ourselves?
Does anyone really see us? Will anyone actually help us?

The Lord Will Provide

These questions, at least in part, get to the heart of why the ancient name Yehovah Yi’reh matters so much.

Yehovah Yi’reh. The Lord Will Provide.

We love this, don’t we? We love the thought of God being our divine provider. But this beautiful descriptor of God comes by way of a story that demands an uncomfortable depth of trust and surrender.

God seems cruel and barbaric here, demanding child sacrifice.

It’s important to note that child sacrifice was not an uncommon religious practice in the ancient world. Archaeologists have found evidence of religious child sacrifice in the ancient city of Ur, which was Abraham’s birthplace, as well as in surrounding areas. But when we read the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g. Leviticus 18 and 22; Deuteronomy 12 and 18; the minor prophets), it becomes clear that God emphatically opposes the practice of child sacrifice. This is, in part, why the story tells us that “God tested Abraham.”

This is not a story about child sacrifice. This is a prophetic re-enactment—God is asking one man, Abraham, to put a truth on display through his lived experience.

This is a story about Abraham’s ongoing trust in God’s actual character.

Can Abraham trust God’s character even when he can’t make sense of God’s request? That’s the question. And it’s not the first time Abraham has faced it. About forty years earlier, God had instructed him, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).

Abraham’s journey with God began by leaving behind his homeland.
And now, his journey had brought him to laying down his son.

This has often been the shape of my own faith journey.
Sometimes faith has meant leaving something behind.
Sometimes faith has meant laying something down.

Faith is often about learning to travel lightly enough to follow God when he leads, as he leads, often in ways we didn’t expect.

Yehovah Yi’reh. The Lord Will Provide.

Sounds lovely. But in practice, we mostly want the provision, not so much the Lord.

We’d love to get what God can give.
We’re not so thrilled about surrender.
We’d love for God to sprinkle his divine magic on our well-laid plans.
We’re not so excited about walking the path of relentless trust.

But this is the paradox of Yehovah Yi’reh, The Lord Will Provide.
The path to God’s provision is an embrace of his Lordship.
He knows what I don’t.
He can do what I can’t.
So I trust and surrender.
I trust in his character even when I can’t make sense of anything else.
I surrender to his call even when I can’t see a way through.

To experience God’s provision, we must be willing to relinquish control.
In my own experience, God has most often provided as I’ve left behind my self-reliant, self-serving plans in trust and laid down my ambitions and attachments in surrender.

Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb?” Abraham replies, “God himself will provide.”

“Provide,” the Hebrew word yi’reh, comes from the root word ra’ah, which means “to see, to notice, or to care for.”

Abraham trusts and surrenders because he believes God sees, notices, and cares. When we trust and surrender, we are trusting in and surrendering to a God who sees us, notices our need, and is committed to caring for us.

Whatever anxiety or tension you might be feeling right now, may I remind you that God has proven himself to be our great provider, even at great cost to himself.

Two thousand years after God provides a ram for Abraham, God would go on to provide a sacrificial lamb for all of us.

God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love…” (Gen 22:2 )
A voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love…” (Matt 3:17 )

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son... (Gen 22:6)
Carrying his own cross, [Jesus] went out to the place of the Skull. (John 19:17)

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb…” (Gen 22:8)
John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

Abraham walks up the hill to Mount Moriah, thinking he is going to lay down his son. Mount Moriah eventually becomes the hilltop where the Temple was at the time of Jesus. Tradition tells us Jesus climbs a similar hill, less than a mile away from Mount Moriah. The Son of God laid down so that we might live.

Mount Moriah was the question, “Will God provide?”
The cross at Calvary is the answer, “God has provided.”

God sees. God notices. God cares. And you can trust him.

You are not on your own.
Your future does not ultimately depend on you.
You don’t have to grip it all so tightly.
You don’t have to carry the weight of every possible outcome.

God has already provided the life of his Son.
Why would he stop providing now?

We’d prefer a three-step God; a God who:
1. Hears our prayers
2. Accepts our requests
3. Delivers immediately

On the very rare occasion that things unfold in those simple three steps, we gratefully call God faithful. But when things don’t quite go as planned or prayed, we begin to wonder and worry and doubt. And we wonder, worry, and doubt a lot because things don’t quite go as planned or prayed much of the time.

Perhaps we’ve confused faithfulness with customer service.
But God doesn’t provide a service. God is committed to a covenant.

The Israelites stand at the edge of the Promised Land.
Four decades of wilderness behind them.
A future they’ve imagined for generations, now right in front of them.
The book of Deuteronomy is a series of speeches give by Moses at this intersection of past and future. The speeches offer three key, interconnected invitations:

Remember who God is.
Remember who you are.
Remain faithful to the covenant.

Then Moses declares a profound name of God:
El Ne’eman. Faithful God.

To understand this name, we have to understand faithfulness.
And to understand faithfulness, we have to understand covenant.

The Bible Project’s Tim Mackie notes that, “In a covenant, God makes promises and in exchange, asks his partner to fulfill certain commitments.”

A covenant is an ongoing relationship built on promises and commitments.
A covenant declares, “I’m in,” and asks, “Are you?”
A covenant is not circumstantial customer service.
A covenant is a lifelong commitment of devotion built on trust.

When we say that someone is a faithful spouse or a faithful friend, we don’t typically mean that they’ve had sporadic moments of faithfulness from time to time.

We mean that they kept and keep on showing up.
We mean that they stayed and continue to stay true to their commitments.
We mean that they remained near when leaving would’ve been easier.
We mean that they told us the truth even when it was inconvenient.

We live in a world increasingly shaped by personalized customization.
Algorithms study our preferences and gives us more of what we want.
AI mirrors our personalities back to us, neatly packaged in blanket affirmations.
More of what captures our attention.
More of what confirms our assumptions.
More of what we already desire.

The algorithm says, “You want this? Here’s more.”
But covenant love says, “Here’s what you actually need.”

These verses surrounding the name El Ne’eman are difficult.

The commands concerning Israel’s relationship with the nations occupying the land come across as severe and radically biased. But when we read these texts in light of God’s faithfulness, it becomes clear that God is expressing his deep desire to fiercely protect the covenant relationship between himself and his people.

Like a loving spouse protecting a marriage from anything that threatens it, God is confronting the potential idols and allegiances that might pull his people away from the life that only he can give. God’s faithfulness isn’t passive; it’s active, protective, and committed.

God knows where those gods lead.
Away from freedom.
Away from life.
Away from love.

So God warns Israel not to bind themselves to the very things that will eventually enslave them again.

God’s jealousy is not the insecurity of a fragile deity.
It is the fierce love of a covenant partner.

Sometimes, what we experience as God’s prohibition is actually God’s protection.
Sometimes, God’s faithfulness is the reason we aren’t getting what we want.

The relationship didn’t work.
The opportunity disappeared.
The plan unraveled.
The door stayed shut.
The prayer was met with silence.

This doesn’t mean every disappointment can be easily decoded.

We must guard against posing simple explanations for someone’s pain.
Not every tragedy is a prohibition.
Not every loss is protection. .

Maybe you have asked God for something good.
Healing.
Wisdom.
Reconciliation.
Provision.
Some small sign that you have not been forgotten.
And nothing has happened.
At least, nothing you can see just yet.

This is where our transactional understanding of faith begins to collapse.
We did our part.
Why hasn’t God done his?

But covenant faithfulness does not mean God gives us everything we ask when we ask.
Covenant faithfulness means God has not abandoned us to our confusion and pain.

God draws near when we stray.
God stays when life becomes hard.
God pursues when we wander.
God forgives when we fail.
God remains when everything else falls apart.

Faithfulness is not the promise that everything will go according to plan.
Faithfulness is the promise that we will never face the unraveling alone.

In November 2025, Michael O’Reilley asked Linda Feldman to marry him.
But they’d already been married for almost forty years.

Several years earlier, Michael had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. As his memory deteriorated, he stopped remembering Linda’s name. He often didn’t know she was his wife. But whenever Linda visited his memory-care facility, Michael lit up. He couldn’t always remember the covenant. But somehow, he still recognized the love.

So when Michael proposed again in November 2025, Linda said yes again. And in February 2026, surrounded by family, friends, and caregivers, they married for the second time.

“There are all kinds of crises that happen in life,” Linda later said. “This is one story of how love can endure.”

Alzheimer’s had taken so much from them. But Linda kept showing up. She kept loving. She remained faithful to the covenant.

Michael may not always remember Linda.
But Linda remembers Michael.

This is the astonishing promise of God.
Even when we forget the covenant, God remembers.
Even when we lose our way, God knows where to find us.
Even when our faith weakens, God’s faithfulness doesn’t.

Maybe life has taken something from you.
Maybe things have not turned out the way you planned.
Maybe the doors have closed and the prayers remain unanswered.

Keep showing up.
Keep coming back.
Keep trusting.
And discover that God has never left you nor forsaken you.
God is there, waiting, faithfully committed for the long haul.

El Ne’eman. The Faithful God.

The God who may not always give us what we want.
The God who has given us Himself.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” - John 4:48

We may live in a disenchanted world. But we haven’t stopped looking for magic.

We have diagnoses and data, algorithms and AI, and scientific explanations for almost everything.

But explanations alone have not satisfied us.

As one writer recently suggested in a New York Times op-ed, there is “a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.”

Numbers seem to affirm this. A couple of years ago, Pew Research found that 81% of Americans believe that “there is something spiritual beyond the natural world,” and 67% believe that “miracles are still possible today.”

Maybe we’re not as disenchanted as we pretend to be.
Or maybe we are, but don’t want to be.

It seems many, maybe even most, hunger for something more.

But we shouldn’t conflate a desire for divine experience with a desire for God himself.

Even Christians, myself included, are prone to long for Jesus’ power without longing for Jesus himself.

Transcendence without surrender.
The miraculous without the Messiah.
Momentary spectacles without ongoing transformation.

“Unless you see signs and wonders, you will never believe,” Jesus says.

The context for Jesus’ words here are a bit confounding. A royal official has just approached him, seeking healing for his dying son. An honest and desperate plea. What this father desires is a good thing. It’s not selfish nor lavish.

A grieving father is simply asking for help. So why does Jesus respond this way?

The “you” is plural. Jesus is speaking beyond the father to an entire culture captivated by spectacle. The crowd was leaning in to see a David Blaine card trick on the city streets. They want to be astonished. They want the ooh’s and aah’s. They want a wonder worker who can interrupt their problems without disrupting their lives.

The biographer, John, is careful with his language.
He does not simply call what Jesus does a miracle. He calls it a sign.

A spectacle draws attention to itself.
A sign points beyond itself.
A miracle that ends with the miracle has missed the point.
The healing matters. The suffering matters. This dying child matters deeply to Jesus.
But the sign is pointing somewhere. To someone.

The man who comes to Jesus is a royal official, likely a high ranking individual in the court of Herod, who ruled Galilee under Roman authority.

This man has wealth, power, and influence.
He has access to all of the right resources and right connections.

And yet, he begs.
Powerful people don’t usually beg.
At least not until they’re at the end of themselves.

Sometimes, life takes us to places where no amount of wealth, power, influence, resources, or connections can solve the problems at hand.

You can build the company and lose your marriage.
You can get the promotion and still find yourself unable to sleep at night.
You can fall in love, get married, have kids, only to discover that the inner ache remains.
You can fill your calendar and feel completely empty.
You can know all the right people and still feel entirely alone.

Desperation has a way of exposing the limits of the stuff we once trusted.

The diagnosis rewrites the future we’d imagined.
Infertility casts its unwanted shadow.
The child we love struggles in ways we cannot repair.
The career we built can no longer carry the weight of our identity.
Anxiety arrives unannounced.
Insecurity screams at us that we’re not enough.
Shame enslaves us and beats us down.

In these desperate seasons, we come to the end of ourselves.
But it is in our most desperate seasons that we are most ready to be deeply formed.
Self-sufficiency must collapse in order to make room for God to do what only he can do, not just for us, but also in us.

The father pleads with Jesus, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

Jesus replies, “Go. Your son will live.”

Then comes one of the most quietly remarkable sentences in the story: “The man took Jesus at his word and departed.”

No visible evidence.
No confirmation from home.
Just the word of Jesus.

This royal official had traveled from his home in Capernaum, which was roughly twenty miles from Cana, across rugged terrain. Biblical historians estimate that the journey at the time would’ve taken about 8 hours, minimum; usually much longer.

The father must now begin the long journey home without knowing what he will find when he arrives.

And the miracle unfolds while he is still on the way.

This is where most of us live.
On the way.

Somewhere between the promise and its fulfillment.
Between the prayer and the answer.
Between the diagnosis and whatever comes next.
Between the longing and the realization.

It’s in this in between that faith begins to really grow.
Faith is cultivated most deeply in the gap of unknowing and trust.

This doesn’t mean every sickness will break if we believe hard enough.

This story isn’t a formula for forcing God’s hand.
Christian faith is not control or coercion by means of intense spirituality.
Supernatural blessings can’t be purchased with dollars or determination.
Miracles aren’t for sale.

We’ve not been given this father’s exact promise.
But we have been given Christ himself.

The promise isn’t instantaneous provision.
The promise is constant presence.
The promise is that his grace is sufficient.
The promise is that he draws near to the brokenhearted.
The promise is that we aren’t alone in our pain.
The promise is that nothing can separate us from his love.
The promise is that death does not have the final word.

Eventually, the servants meet the father on the road.
His son is alive.
The father receives what he had begged for. But he also receives something more.

He believes. And his whole household believes with him.

The miracle was never supposed to be a temporary solution to the problem at hand.
The miracle was a sign pointing to Jesus.

Maybe you are still on the way.
The prayer remains unanswered.
The child is still struggling.
The future is still uncertain.
The ache remains.

And keep walking.
The miracle may come in this life.
Or it may not.
But the Messiah has come.
The Messiah is coming again.
All will be well.

He had to go through Samaria. - John 4:4

Jesus didn’t wander through Samaria.
He didn’t happen to go that way.
It certainly wasn’t the most convenient route.
At the time, Jews routinely went out of their way to avoid Samaria.
Samaritans were the enemies, ethnically suspect and religiously unclean.

But Jesus? The story tells us he had to go through Samaria.

John the biographer isn’t explaining geography; he’s presenting a theology.

Jesus had to go through Samaria because the kingdom of God moves toward those most others avoid.

The margins were not a detour.
The margins were a part of the mission.
Jesus marches right into the margins.

He arrives at a well. This is important. In the Hebrew Scriptures, wells are not just places where thirsty people get water. Wells are places where new futures begin through unexpected union.

Isaac and Rebekah.
Jacob and Rachel.
Moses and Zipporah.

At the well where Jesus arrives, a Samaritan woman comes to draw water at noon, alone, in the heat of the day. Maybe by choice. Or maybe because shame had forced upon her life an inconveniently rearranged schedule.

Jesus asks her, “Will you give me a drink?”
But beneath the question is an invitation:

I’m drawing near to you.
Will you draw near to me?

She responds by identifying the perceived boundary: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.”

We do this too from time to time.
I am divorced.
I am doubting.
I am exhausted.
I am cynical.
I am too far gone.

We name the perceived boundary as if it’s the final word. But it isn’t.
The boundary lines of God’s kingdom are far more expansive than we think.

Then Jesus starts talking about water.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” he says, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

Drink this water and you will surely thirst again.

Drink success and you will thirst again.
Have your fill of achievement and you will thirst again.
Drown yourself in distraction and you will thirst again.

Anything or anyone that isn’t Jesus will eventually reveal its limits.
Every lesser “lord” will inevitably leave us parched.

And we live in a very thirsty world, desperately drinking it all in.
Morning routines. Evening routines.
Sleep scores. Cold plunges.
Nervous system hacks.
Apps to help us breathe.
Watches to tell if we actually slept.
Influencers to tell us whether we’re really living our lives.

None of it’s inherently bad. Much of it can be helpful, to a degree.

But beneath all the optimizing, most of us find ourselves asking,
Why am I still so thirsty?

Jesus doesn’t offer the woman a self-improvement plan.
Jesus offers her himself.
Jesus offers us the same.
While self-improvement plans skim across the surface of our lives, Jesus does his work in our depths.

“Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus asks the woman.

Jesus suddenly moves from the surface to the soul of things.
The woman tells Jesus she has no husband. Jesus tells her he knows. And he knows about her past five husbands, as well as the man she’s with now, who is not her husband. Scandal upon scandal. Shame upon shame.

There’s some scholarly debate about who, or what, these “five husbands” mean. Was she divorced five times? Widowed five times? Is John doing something symbolic with the Samaritan acceptance of only the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures?

Whatever’s going on, what’s clear is that this woman has lived a life shot through with disappointment, pain, and grief. And Jesus knows.

Jesus knows. Think about that for a moment.

The truth is, I’d much prefer Jesus heal me without needing to know all the gritty details of what’s really unwell within me.

Just give me the medicine.
Don’t ask about the wound.
Don’t identify the ache.
Don’t cut into the deepest places of pain I’ve worked so hard to protect.

But the depth of our transformation is always proportional to the depth of our vulnerability.

What remains hidden is what most often keeps us thirsty.

Jesus is not being cruel in his naming. He’s being prophetic, for the sake of deep healing, to quench the real thirst within.

He takes the conversation from “water” to “wound,” because living water is not a concept. It’s not vague spiritual refreshment sprinkled sporadically over the actual pain of our actual lives.

Jesus offers specific hope for specific pain.
The woman begins to see this.
First, Jesus is a Jewish man who should not be talking to her.
Then she calls him “sir.”
Then, a “prophet.”
Then she asks a question about worship; she’s sensing something divine.

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain,” she says, “but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

The woman asks a question about geography.
Where do I go to find God?
That mountain or this one?

This church or that one?
This practice or that one?
This tradition or that one?

Jesus responds.
Not this mountain.
Not that mountain.

“The true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.”

In other words, God is right here.

The woman is asking about geography.
Jesus helps her to reimagine her theology.

This is not the diminishment of place but the expansion of presence.
The Spirit fills the people.
The people become the temple.

Which means the presence of God is not somewhere else.
The living water that quenches every thirst isn’t down deep in an unreachable well.

God is right here. Living water is accessible.
Closer than your breath.
Nearer than your next thought.

Culture tells us that with enough intensity, we can transform our lives.
But Jesus tells us that through deep intimacy, he can transform our souls.

This is one of my favorite paintings, by the American painter Andrew Wyeth. It’s called Christina’s World.

At first glance, it looks like a woman at peace, sitting in a field, looking toward a farmhouse in the distance. But the woman is Christina Olson, Wyeth’s neighbor, who lived with a degenerative condition that left her unable to walk for all of her adult life. She refused a wheelchair and crawled everywhere for decades.

Look closer and you notice the strain in her hands.
She is struggling to get home, far off in the distance up a strenuous hill.

But she is painted into the immediate foreground. As the viewer, once you know her need, you want to help her up. You want to tap her on the shoulder and say, “You don’t have to crawl alone.”

The house is far away in the painting. But Christina is near, right there in front of you.
Which means the viewer is near too.

Maybe that’s where you find yourself today.
Crawling toward peace, joy, contentment, grace.
Crawling toward a version of yourself that isn’t so anxious, numb, distracted, reactive, angry, or afraid.

But what if the presence we need is not in the distant background?
What if he is in the near foreground?

The Samaritan woman says, “I know that Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Jesus says, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Here. Now. Speaking to you.

So what are you thirsty for?
Tell him.
The water is closer than you think.

Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” - John 2:3

Sometimes the wine runs out.
Sometimes energy runs out.
Sometimes money runs out.
Sometimes optimism runs out.
Sometimes patience runs out.

For pastors, sometimes the ideas run out.
The volunteers run out.
The resources run out.
The vision runs out.
The momentum runs out.

A similar thing happens to many of us, personally, in quieter ways.

We run out of patience toward those we care for most.
We run out of hope for a future we were once so sure of.
We run out of confidence in the self we’ve worked so hard to build.
We run out of courage.
We run out of comfort.

And when the wine runs out, shame often takes its place.
That’s the ache beneath Jesus’ first miracle in John’s Gospel.

Jesus is attending a wedding. At the time, in that part of the first century world, weddings weren’t four-hour celebrations with a DJ, a hashtag, and a sparkler send-off. Weddings were extended community events, usually lasting days, often lasting up to a week. Weddings weren’t private events; they were public declarations. A family’s hospitality and reputation were on display. Their honor was on the line.

So when Mary says to Jesus, “They have no more wine,” she is not making an observation about beverage inventory. She’s naming a coming humiliation.

This family is about to be exposed.
They don’t have enough.
They can’t keep up.
They are about to be known by their lack.

Which is to say, shame is about to fill the void created by their shortcoming.
Which is to say, this family finds itself in a situation familiar to many of us.

We live in a reputation economy.
A screenshot can become a verdict.
A mistake can become an identity.
A moment of lack can become the story people tell about you for years.

So we manage.
We curate.
We make sure the feed looks full even when our actual lives feel empty.

This is where Jesus begins his public ministry.
Not in a temple.
Not on a stage.

At a small-town wedding where the wine has run out and the shame is about to make its grand entrance.

John is not just reporting history here; he’s presenting a theology.

A wedding is the union of two becoming one.
It’s the beginning of a new family. A new name. A new identity. A new life together.

Throughout Scripture, marriage is one of the most pervasive and powerful images for God’s relationship with his people. God is not a distant deity or cosmic idea. God is a faithful covenant partner who moves toward his beloved, seeking connection, desiring union.

So when John begins the story of Jesus’ ministry at a wedding, he is telling us that…Jesus has come to reunite what has been severed,
Jesus has come to restore what has been lost,
Jesus has come to form a new family,
Jesus has come to give us a new name,
Jesus has come to bring us into a new life together.

And he begins by protecting the dignity of exposed people.
This is not a party trick. It’s a sign.

Nearby were six stone water jars used for ceremonial washing. These jars were part of a religious world shaped by the belief that one could not be acceptable unless they were cleansed from contamination.

So Jesus says, “Fill the jars with water.”
And the water becomes wine.
Jesus does not ignore the human longing to made pure.
He fulfills it.

What the water of religious cleansing once pointed toward, the wine of Jesus’ blood would accomplish once and for all.

The miracle at Cana is not about abundance. It’s about transformation.

Not more water. New wine.
Not a better version of the same old life. A new creation life breaking in.

This is the difference between self-improvement and resurrection.

Self-improvement attempts to polish old jars.
Resurrection offers new wine.
Self-improvement asks, “How do I become a more impressive version of myself?”
Resurrection answers, “Here’s how to become a new person.”

This is good news for all those who’ve grown weary from trying to cleanse ourselves, prove and improve ourselves, justify ourselves, and protect ourselves from exposure.

Jesus does not stand at a distance, arms crossed, waiting for us to get our act together.
He comes to the wedding.
He steps into the shortage.
He repairs the shame.
He transforms what no one else can.

But there is a key line in the story that gets us there.

Mary says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

That’s the invitation.
Not to understand everything he tells you.
Not to agree with everything he tells you.
Not to wait until every fear is resolved and every possible outcome has been secured.

Do whatever he tells you.

We so often want the miracle without the surrender.
We want the wine without filling the jars.
We want transformation without trust.

But the servants do not discuss and debate the matter.
They do not ask for a strategic plan.
They do not demand certainty.
They simply do what Jesus told them to do.
They fill the jars.

The miracle begins with ordinary obedience.
And it is often our inability to embrace ordinary obedience that keeps us from experiencing the miracle.

We’re not short on information.
We’re short on surrender.
We know more than we obey.
We analyze more than we trust.

And the ache remains.

So maybe the question is not, “Do I believe Jesus can turn water into wine?”
Maybe the question is, “Am I willing to do whatever he tells me?”

Is there a relationship you’re trying to control, fix, or force?
Do whatever he tells you.

Is there a future you’re trying to secure by yourself, for yourself?
Do whatever he tells you.

Is there a wound you’re protecting because bitterness feels safer than grief?
Do whatever he tells you.

Is there a decision you keep delaying because you want certainty before obedience?
Do whatever he tells you.

Is there an invitation from God you keep resisting because you know it will cost you something?
Do whatever he tells you.

The master of the banquet tastes the wine and says, “You saved the best for now.”

That is the strange logic of God’s kingdom.

We often assume the best is behind us.
But Jesus has a way of saving the best for places we assumed were only endings.
The empty jar.
The exhausted leader.
The ashamed family.
The deadened hope.

This does not mean everything turns easy.
It means nothing is beyond transformation.

Imagine being there.
It would have been one thing to hear about the miracle later.
It would have been another thing to taste the wine that day.

This is the invitation.
Not merely to know the story but to taste the wine and experience the grace of Jesus in the actual places where you have run out.

The place of shame.
The place of scarcity.
The place of exhaustion.
The place where your strategies are no longer working.
The place where you cannot produce what is needed.

Jesus is not embarrassed by your lack.
He is not surprised by your limits.
He is not repulsed by the empty places in you.
He fills what we bring him.
And what he gives is better than what we ran out of.

One evening he took a long walk with his friends Hugo Dyson and J.R.R Tolkien, all members of a writing group at Oxford called The Inklings. Dyson and Tolkien were committed followers of Jesus at this point while Lewis was not. The conversation made it’s way toward an anchoring question: “In an age of science and reason, why is it that human beings are still so insatiably drawn to mythological stories of good conquering evil? Why do we love fairy tales we can’t possibly believe?”

The conversation went long into the night. In his later years, C.S. Lewis would recount this conversation as an inflection point in his journey toward place his complete trust in Jesus. In a letter he wrote to a friend many years later, reflecting on his conversion experience, Lewis wrote, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference, that it really happened.”

Our church is embarking on a year-long journey through the Gospel of John, the stunning biography of Jesus written by “the disciple whom he loved.” The biography reads like a myth, like a story too good to be true. And it is. But with this tremendous difference, that it really happened.

And this true myth begins with an unbelievable claim: That the God of the cosmos desires to be near to us.

In the Beginning

There are many ways to begin a story.

Stories sometimes begin with action—something happening, something urgent.
Stories often begin with a problem—something that needs to be solved.

But John begins with something more mysterious and far more intimate.

This opening line is not random, accidental, or coincidental. It’s an intentional echo of the opening line of the Bible, the opening stanza of the story of humanity.

The Genesis story unfolds uniquely. Creation doesn’t come about through through force or mechanism. God does not think creation into being, nor does he snap his fingers or wave a magic wand. God creates through speech.

Ten times in Genesis 1 alone, the writer tells us, “And God said…” and it was so.

Verbal speech is a distinctly embodied experience—it involves vocal cords, a mouth, your tongue. These are all embodied realities we attribute to human beings; but the writer of Genesis understood God as a distinctly non-human, divine being. Yet, again and again, God creates through words. Why?

Words embody meaning. Words give voice to the will. And when spoken honestly, words reveal what’s on the inside.

Words have the power to initiate the journey toward relationship, friendship, and intimacy.

Before I said, “I do” to Jenny in 2009, I said “Hi, I’m Jay,” in 2002 when we first met. The entire journey was mediated through words, which led us to deeper connection at unspoken depths.

Words are how we move toward one another.

In the beginning, God breathed life into dust.
From the beginning, God spoke to draw near to us.

Speaking to Stay Connected

No one ever taught you to speak filler words and sounds. Your first grade English teacher never wrote, “um, yeah, mmhmm” on the white board and suggested them as great ways to keep conversation going amid uncomfortable silence.

Your body discovered these filler words and sounds on its own.

Linguists have observed that in human conversation, the average gap between speakers is around 200 milliseconds. This is consistent across cultures and even in sign-language communication. 200 milliseconds enough time to feel the discomfort of potential disconnection but not nearly long enough to form coherent thoughts.

So filler words and sounds are the body’s attempt at holding relational space and maintaining relational connection amid the discomfort of conversational lull, which risks disconnection. They’re our attempt to stay with one another while cognition catches up with speech. In other words, we speak to stay connected.

N.J. Enfield, a linguistics professor in Sydney who’s spent years researching in this field, writes that, “When we’re having a conversation, because of the entirely cooperative nature of language, we form a single unit.”

Verbal speech is a relational placeholder.
We speak to say, I’m still here. I’m with you. Let’s not lose this connection.

In other words, speech isn’t just about information.
Speech, at its core, is the pursuit of intimacy.

In light of this, the opening line of John’s Gospel once more…

And he goes on to explain that, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). That phrase “made his dwelling” comes from a single Greek word that can be understood as, “tabernacled.”

If you’re familiar with the story of Israel, you know how loaded that word is.

The tabernacle was the place where heaven and earth met.
The tabernacle was where God’s presence drew near.
Where the invisible became tangible.

So when John says Jesus “tabernacled” among us, he’s making a breathtaking claim: God has drawn near. God is here.

Not symbolically.
Not metaphorically.
Personally. Intimately.

Jesus is where heaven and earth meet.
Jesus is the presence of God, embodied and accessible.

The invisible God becomes visible.
The unknowable God becomes knowable.
The distant God becomes near.

Listening for the Word

We live in a world full of noise. I’ve written about this extensively in the past.

Endless notifications.
The overwhelm of constant information.
An onslaught of voices competing for our attention.

And yet beneath all of is the steady, sustaining voice of the Word.

The Word that spoke light into darkness.
The Word that became flesh and moved toward us.
The Word that still speaks grace and truth.

The Word invites us now to listen.

To make space.
To let God speak.
To meet us where we are.

So may you hear the Word today,
speaking courage amid your suffering,
speaking clarity and peace amid your confusion and uncertainty,
speaking the steadying presence of Love amid your fear and anxiety,
speaking renewal and rest amid your weariness and exhaustion.
May you hear the Word,
who spoke light into darkness,
and speaks life into death.

In the event of further attacks, a number of these hostages corresponding to the seriousness of the crime committed will be shot.

This sort of fear-propaganda was ubiquitous during World War II. The goal was to squelch even the slightest thought of resistance amongst occupied people. But the Nazis did much more than hang posters; they hanged people, publicly and regularly. Sometimes the public executions were carried out by firing squad. Regardless of the means of execution, the message was the same: resist and be crushed.

But the Nazis didn’t invent fear-propaganda. Empires across time have leveraged fear and the threat of violence to maintain power and suppress rebellion. From the ancient Assyrians, Persians, and Egyptians, to the Mongols, the Ottomans, the Spanish, and the British, and countless others, “resist and be crushed” has long been the mantra of the powerful, desperate to hold onto their power.

At the time of Jesus, the Empire of the day was Rome, which ruled the known world with military might and their own specific brand of fear-propaganda. Their execution medium of choice was crucifixion.

Death on a cross was an equally brilliant and brutal piece of fear-propaganda, designed for maximum humiliation. Victims were stripped and publicly displayed along busy roads, outside city walls, and on hillsides. The point was to visually expose those being executed as they suffered a slow, painful, suffocating death.

N.T. Wright describes it this way: “Crucifixion was one of the central ways in which authorities in the ancient world set out quite deliberately to show subject peoples who was in charge and to break the spirit of any resistance. [...] Those who crucified people did so because it was the sharpest and nastiest way of asserting their own absolute power and guaranteeing their victim’s absolute degradation.”

Take as one famous example the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 71 BC. After the rebellion was defeated, Rome crucified 6,000 rebel prisoners along the Appian Way, a 120-mile stretch of road connecting the Empire. Thousands of people walked the road every day. And as they did, every 100 feet or so, they’d bear witness to a crucified rebel dying slowly; a sobering declaration, “Don’t you dare.”

Crucifixion was political terror; a proclamation of victory over any opposition.

A Different Kind of Victory and the Demise of Every Empire

After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the New Testament writers begin telling the story of the cross as the story of victory. But they do so with a great reversal.

The Scriptures declare that Christ is not the victim of the cross.

Christ is victorious through the cross.

The empire’s chosen instrument of fear-propaganda becomes the very place where Jesus disarms the “powers and authorities.” What Rome intended as a spectacle of terror becomes a spectacle of its demise defeat. And this is true not only of Rome but of every empire—national and global empires and the empires we build in our own hearts.

Every throne built on fear.
Every regime enforced by violence.
Every tyrant who rules with an iron fist.

Every system that exploits the vulnerable.
Every structure designed for coercion and control.
Every ideology that denigrates individuals and communities.

Every desire motivated by pride, envy, greed, anger, bitterness.

At the cross, every and any empire that stands opposed to the kingdom of God eventually and inevitably meets disarmament and defeat.

This victory motif is found not just in the crucifixion narratives or the Gospel stories but across the entire Biblical landscape.

In Genesis 3, it’s promised that the coming Messiah would “crush the head” of the serpent, representative of the “powers and authorities” that stand against God’s kingdom.

In Isaiah 25, we read of One who will come to “swallow up death forever.”

In 1 John 3, we’re told emphatically that the reason Jesus appeared was to “destroy the devil’s work.”

In Hebrews 2, we discover that Jesus became human so that “by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death.”

In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul quotes the ancient Hosea text, taunting the work of the enemy, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” then concludes, “thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He gives us the victory.

What a thought. He gives us the victory.

A Word for Those Who Feel Defeated

Do you feel defeated in any way? If the weekly prayer requests people in our church share with us or the meeting requests in my email inbox are any indication, many of us live with the existential angst of a life that seems to be trending downward, full of anxieties, uncertainties, and regrets.

Maybe it’s relational unrest. A strained relationship in the family. Trust broken amongst friends. Distance or pain in a marriage. Conflict with a colleague.

Maybe it’s physical struggle. Ongoing illness. Chronic pain. An unexpected diagnosis. The heartbreak of caring for an aging loved one.

Maybe it’s a professional or financial challenge. Job insecurity. A layoff or the threat of layoff. Technology’s affect on an increasingly unfamiliar industry.

Maybe it’s internal restlessness. An addiction or sin pattern you can’t seem to shake. Grief. Loneliness. Spiritual emptiness.

The cross declares that the most important victory in human history has already unfolded. This does not mean that each and every specific circumstantial longing or desire will be fulfilled the way you may have planned; but it does mean that the unseen, invisible powers behind so much of what causes you the deepest pain now have no actual power over you; that victory has already been won and freedom is possible. You can experience love, joy, and peace in the very midst of all that feels uncertain or unknown.

But I know how easy it is to lose sight of this. In recent weeks I’ve felt the sting of defeat, specifically as a dad. As I’ve navigated a number of parenting challenges, trying to do all I can to ensure that our two young kids have everything they need from me as their father to flourish and thrive but faltering and failing along the way, I’ve often felt suffocated by strongholds over my own thoughts. The internal narrative has been loud: You didn’t have your dad growing up, so what would you know about being a dad? You’re failing them. Which means, you’re a failure.

But amid the lies, I’ve found profound hope and help in this reminder from the Apostle Paul:

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. - 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

These words have become a significant comfort and source of courage for me in recent days. They are an invitation to remember that the battle beneath so many of our external struggles is waged in the landscape of our thoughts and the stories we believe about ourselves.

So when the feeling of defeat creeps in, I’ve tried returning to a few simple practices:

1. I remember that divine power is available—the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

2. I name the lies—every thought that accuses, diminishes, and condemns, which are never the voice of God, which sounds like affirmation, delight, and conviction.

3. I surrender every thought in obedience to Christ, placing them under the authority of the One who has already won victory over sin and death.

I am hopeful that some of these practices might be helpful to you.

Jesus is King.
The enemy is disarmed.
And the powers that once held us captive no longer do.

By his death on the cross, Christ destroyed death.
By his resurrection from the grave, he opened the door to new life.

So whatever “death” you may be facing today—whether in your relationships, your work, your body, or your mind—may the victory of Christ meet you there.

May he defeat the powers that accuse and discourage.
May he loosen the strongholds that keep you bound.
And may he send you out, unburdened and unafraid.

One painting—Les Poseuses, Ensemble by Georges Seurat—was sold for $149 million.

Paul Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire sold for $137 million.
Gustav Klimt’s Birch Forest sold for $104 million.
A van Gogh landscape sold for $117 million.

Which begs the question, “What compels people to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a canvas covered in paint?”

Were those paintings worth it? How, exactly, do we determine the value of a thing?

In the modern world, what something is worth, it’s objective value, is largely determined and defined by whatever someone is willing to pay. The market decides.

Adam Smith, an eighteenth-century philosopher often called the father of modern economics, argued instead that the real value of a thing isn’t its price tag but the labor required to produce it. “[Labor] is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price.” The human effort. The time. The sweat. The cost.

Taken a step further, we might say that the truest measure of worth and value isn’t just labor. It’s love.

A family cookbook handwritten over decades.
A nursery prepared after years of infertility.
A business rebuilt after bankruptcy.
A friendship sustained through betrayal.

The deeper the love, the greater the cost someone is willing to bear; and the greater the cost, the greater the worth and value.

Bought at a Price

The New Testament makes clear the worth and value bestowed upon people by God, revealed most emphatically on the cross. The apostle Paul describes it this way: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Paul is reaching for economic language to describe something deeply personal. And what exactly was this price paid for us? “Christ Jesus… gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

In the original Greek, the word “ransom” is the word lutron, which always mean payment, typically paid for a few reasons:

• Payment to set a slave or captive free

• Payment to pardon someone from execution

• Payment to absolve a debtor of an impossible obligation

Ransom is a reminder that freedom is costly. In Psalm 49, the psalmist writes, “Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me—those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches? No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough” (Psalm 49:5-8).

Within the context of the psalm, the writer is making the point that great wealth cannot save us from death. The psalmist is saying, “No human being can pay that price and save themself.” Which leads to the question, “Who can?”

Jesus responds to this question: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Jesus pays the price no person, regardless of their wealth, can pay. Money can settle debts but it cannot pay off death. Jesus can. And he has.

The theologian Fleming Rutledge reminds us that at the cross, we’re confronted and comforted by this incredible truth, that, “[God] has not stood back and pulled levers. He has stepped into the situation himself, personally. That is in large part what the trope ransom means in the biblical literature. The principal idea is that of cost to God.”

This is one of the great declarations of the cross.

God was not forced.
God did not negotiate with evil.
God stepped in and directly absorbed the cost of our bondage, to pay the price and set us free.

Freedom from shame.
Freedom from fear.
Freedom from sin.
Freedom from death.

The cross tells us two things at once, that sin is deadly and that, for whatever strange reason, we are unspeakably worth it to God—valued enough to cost the life of his Son.

The Hand that Stays Raised

Imagine your life as a work of art, up for auction.

Paddles raised. Bids climbing.

Everything in your life is bidding for you.

Your anxieties.
Your failures.
Your past mistakes.
Your insecurities.
Your achievements.
Your bank account.
Your social status.

The room fills with numbers. Value assigned and reassigned.

But one hand remains raised. A steady, unwavering, wounded and scarred hand.

Not because of your résumé.
Not because of your moral performance.
Not because of your upward mobility.

But because of love.

The cross declares that,

You are not disposable.
You are not an afterthought.
You are not too far gone.

You were worth the highest cost imaginable.

So if the ransom has been paid, why do we still live enslaved?

Enslaved to approval.
Enslaved to achievement.
Enslaved to resentment.
Enslaved to shame.
Enslaved to fear.

Your freedom has been bought. So walk out of the cell. You’re free to go. You’re free to follow. This is the invitation. To live not as commodities in a marketplace of comparison but as beloved sons and daughters. To believe, slowly and stubbornly, that the price paid for you defines your worth more than any market ever could.

You are a work of art beyond compare, not because you are flawless but because you are loved. And love, in the end, is the truest measure of value.

You’ve probably felt it.
All of the noise. All of the worry.
The low-grade anxiety humming beneath all of life.
The quiet ache of a life that’s become unmanageable.

We didn’t set out to live this way. We mostly defaulted our way here.
Because the world we inhabit insidiously forms us into people of speed, efficiency, hurry, and worry.

And along the way, we’ve lost the gift of being present and attentive—with God, with people, with ourselves.

Jesus offers another way—an unhurried life formed by attention, presence, and love. A life worth living. Life to the full.

And what if this way of Jesus isn’t just a good idea or an aspirational hope on the far side of the horizon, a dream tucked away for that brief, final stretch of life we’re not sure will ever come?

What if this way of Jesus is livable today?

For the last few years, I’ve been quietly exploring this question, not first with words but with my life. And not because of casual curiosity but because of desperate need; because I was living an untenable, unsustainable life, accomplishing and achieving much and losing bits and pieces of my soul in the process.

I’ve spent some time putting my lived experience into words on a page. The result is my next book, The Pace of Peace: Distraction, Attention, and the Gifts of an Examined Life

This is not a book of quick fixes. As my friend John Mark Comer puts it, “No one practice (or book) will solve our generational battle against distraction… But this book offers me hope that we can join Jay, and Ignatius, and so many others from the Way of Jesus, in slowing down from the helter-skelter speed of the modern world, and walking at the pace of peace.”

This book is my humble attempt at offering an ancient prayer, the Ignatian Examen, as a guide for life lived at pace. A slower and deeper way. A life shaped by attention, presence, and love.

The Pace of Peace releases on September 8, and I’ll share more in the months ahead—excerpts, practices, and small invitations you can begin to live into even now.

For today, I simply want to offer a few questions to ponder:

What is the pace of your life? What is this pace doing to you? How is it forming you? And is this the kind of person you long to be and become?

More to come.

With gratitude,

Jay

P.S. If you know someone who has been feeling the weight of distraction, frenzy, and speed, feel free to pass this along. I’d love for others to join us as we learn to walk at the pace of peace together.

We study the cross, analyze it, and debate its meaning. All of this has its place, of course. But the cross is not primarily an object to consider but a power to experience. Its deeper invitation goes far beyond mere understanding. The cross invites to mediate on it, ponder its story, and ultimately, to be changed by it.

The cross reaches us as love poured out upon all of our guilt and shame, our fear and striving, our weariness and hiding. The cross has the power to do this of course because it is not simply one story among many. It is the central story in all human history. As Tom Holland writes,

“To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been.”

Let us consider this strangeness and power.

The Cross as Passover

Jesus was crucified during Passover. This was not accidental nor coincidental; it was intentional. On the night before his death, we read, “On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?” (Mark 14:12).

Less than 24 hours later, Jesus would be dead on a Roman cross. The Apostle Paul would later describe this moment this way: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Passover was, and still is, the central salvation story of Israel, commemorating the night God provided divine protection from judgment, initiating the work of divine deliverance out of slavery. A lamb was sacrificed and its blood spread over the doorposts. And judgment passed over the homes marked by blood. Centuries later, Jesus’ crucifixion brings the Passover story to life.

“Do not break any of the bones [of the Passover lamb].” (Exodus 12:46)
“Not one of his bones will be broken.” (John 19:36)

Hyssop used to apply the lamb’s blood. (Exodus 12:22)
Hyssop used to lift sour wine to Jesus on the cross. (John 19:29)

The firstborn struck down in Egypt. (Exodus 12:12)
Jesus, the firstborn over all creation. (Colossians 1:15)

“When I see the blood… I will pass over you.” (Exodus 12:13)
“We have now been justified by his blood.” (Romans 5:9)

An unmistakable pattern. Just as God rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt into freedom, so Jesus comes to rescue us from slavery to sin and death into the freedom of life in God’ kingdom. This is why, on that final night, Jesus said, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15).

Jesus did not “eagerly desire” the betrayal, the mockery, the nails, or the suffocation. He eagerly desired what his suffering would accomplish. Jesus believed his death would do for the world what the first Passover did for Israel—free us out of slavery and lead us into freedom.

As Fleming Rutledge writes, “Jesus’ death has been construed from the very earliest moments of the Christian church as the new Passover… this time, instead of intervening from on high as in the exodus, the intervention has taken place from within God’s own life, in the form of the Son’s self-offering.”

God does not save from a distance. He draws near; close enough to bleed.

Seen, Heard, and Known

At the first Passover, what compelled God to act?

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.” - Exodus 3:7

God sees, hears, and is concerned. But he doesn’t see that his people are deserving; he sees their misery. He doesn’t hear of their deep faith; he hears their cries for rescue from enslavement. His heart is moved not by their great devotion but by their great suffering. In fact, what we see in the forty years of the Exodus journey, after their rescue out of Egypt, is that God’s people are anything but faithful and devoted, certainly not deserving.

And so it is with us. Jesus doesn’t become our Passover lamb because of our great faith or devotion or because we deserve it. Jesus is our Passover lamb because he sees, hears, and is moved by our misery, our enslavement, and our suffering. This is great news.

I recently heard my friend John Ortberg remind a group of pastors, “We can only be fully loved if we are fully known.” He then showed a version of this quadrant, which I find immensely helpful.

To be known fully but unaccepted is to experience the deep pain of rejection.

To be unknown and therefore unaccepted is to be ignored, to live confined to the shadowy corners of unwanted anonymity and invisibility.

To be unknown but accepted is the formula for being impressive. I live in Silicon Valley, surrounded by immensely impressive people; which tells me I live surrounded by those who live completely hidden from others, unknown and therefore, incapable of being loved deeply. Why?

Because, as Ortberg reminds us, to be fully known and accepted anyways—this is what it takes to be truly loved.

Back to Passover. God sees. God hears. God is moved.

God sees misery. God hears cries. God is moved by suffering. God knows the depths of his people’s depravity and pain and brokenness. And he goes after them anyways. So it is with Jesus and so it is with us.

[Jesus] knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone. - John 2:24-25

And yet…

When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly… God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:6,8

Nothing is hidden from him. Nothing edited, softened, or concealed. The “unknown” quadrant doesn’t exist with Jesus.

This is the heart of the cross.

Jesus knows you completely. And he accepts you anyways. The cross is his means of loving into a new way of life. But he accepts yo

Not the edited version of you.
Not the curated version of you.
The real you.

The cross is the place where God’s complete knowledge of us and God’s complete love for us meet.

Because Jesus is our Passover lamb, judgment passes over us. We are no longer defined by what enslaves us. Sin does not get the last word. Shame does not get the final sentence.

We are, in Christ:

Fully known.
Fully accepted.
Fully loved.

Not because we achieved it.
But because he gave his life—his body broken and his blood shed—to make it so.

The cross is not simply a thing to believe in. It is a reality to surrender to.

Surrender your guilt and shame.
Surrender your fear and striving.
Surrender your weariness and hiding.
Surrender the parts of your life you hope no one ever sees.

And to discover, there at the center of history, that you are already seen… already heard… already known… and already loved.

This is the strange power of the cross.

And it is still as alive today as it has ever been.

Even as we arrive at Advent, the season of expectancy and anticipation on the way to Christmas morning, we seek our seasonal adjustments. A bit less frenzy, a bit more rest. A touch less anxiety, a touch more peace. Some Decembers feel more successful than others. But January always comes and along with it, the same unrelenting pressure to acclimate back to the frenetic, anxious pace of life lived the rest of the eleven months of the year.

But Advent isn’t an annual respite to slow down for a few weeks in anticipation of a single Christmas Day. Put another way, Advent isn’t about minor adjustments. Advent is about a major arrival.

Pave New Paths

The early Christians didn’t invent Advent. In the imperial cult of first century Rome, adventus was not a religious term but a political one, referring to the celebrated arrival of the emperor. Upon announcement that Caesar would be making a visit, entire cities would reorganize themselves in anticipation—new paths paved, old roads repaired, spaces beautified, public funds redirected to lay suitable groundwork for receiving the divine king.

Heralds went ahead of Caesar, proclaiming his authority, power, and imminent presence. His arrival was considered a moment of renewal for the city—her identity and security tenuously affirmed, so long as her loyalty had been unquestionably pledged.

In the pages of the New Testament, the writers use the Greek word parousia, meaning “arrival” or “coming,” two dozen times, a majority of time in reference to the eventual return of Christ. By the second century, Latin speaking Christians, first in North Africa and eventually beyond, translated the Greek parousia into the Latin adventus. By the sixth century, Advent had become a liturgical season on the Church calendar, both looking ahead to the eventual return and looking back at the first arrival of Christ.

The true King of the cosmos has arrived and is promised to come again. And this true King is here even now, his Spirit permeating the atmosphere of our fleeting world and animating our fragile bodies. As such, Advent invites us to pave new paths so that the King may enter into our hearts and minds. The season invites us to repair what is broken, to beautify the interiors of our lives and the exteriors of our world, to redirect our energies and efforts toward laying suitable groundwork for receiving the one true divine King.

A World Remade and History Rewritten

But at that first Christmas, Jesus did not arrive like Caesar. There were no trumpets, no procession, no cavalry escort, no proclamation of victory. His adventus happened quietly, in a small town most people didn’t know. His arrival was announced not to dignitaries and VIP’s but to laborers on the social margins and pagan mystics watching for celestial signs.

But we must not mistake the unspectacular nature of Christ’s birth for an inconsequential occurrence fixed in far off antiquity. The first Advent culminated in a humble birth to a peasant family but it was also the remaking of the entire world; not a footnote in history but a rewriting of it.

That first Christmas did not storm earthly palaces; it undermined them, and shifted the center of power from places of material decadence to the dirt of everyday life, brimming with divine potential. When the kingdom of the heavens touched down on earth, it didn’t adjust the world; it remade it. Which means that Advent intends to remake us, all those who pledge allegiance to Christ the King.

If Advent is this sort of major arrival, then it cannot possibly be reduced to minor adjustments. When the King arrives, things change. Loyalties are rearranged. Priorities shift. Allegiance is demanded. The center of gravity moves from me to him.

Consultant or Christ?

Year after year, Advent confronts us with an all-important question: Is this Jesus simply a consultant or is he truly the Christ, the Anointed One who rules and reigns over all the earth, yes, but also over the every day? Our theological minds cry out, “Christ!” while most of the time, our embodied lives whisper, “consultant.”

We mostly want the Advent season to slow things down a bit but we’d hate for it to slow us down. We mostly want Jesus to enact and enhance our plans but we’d hate for Him to overhaul them in any significant way. Deep down, we want a “christ” who cooperates, not one who disrupts; a consultant who offers potential adjustments, take them or leave them at our choosing, not a King who reorders our desires, rearranges our affairs, and reorients the trajectory of our very lives. But kings don’t operate in the margins. They don’t tweak edges and tidy up corners. Kings upend everything. And so, Advent upends everything.

As we enter this Advent season, where might Christ desire to upend your life? What new paths need to be paved? What’s been ruptured that needs repair? What brokenness needs to be beautified? What needs to be reordered, rearranged, or reoriented in your life?

May this Advent season unsettle you in the best way. May you trust and surrender. May you relinquish the far too small desire for minor adjustments and open wide to the life-altering arrival of the King who has come, is coming again, and is here even now, ready to change everything.

In the past year alone, I’ve twice experienced the familiar joy of becoming an uncle, to the sweetest little niece and nephew. Holding them from time to time, I’m struck again by the potency of human connection they make without intelligible words.

While we grown-ups intellectualize about the news, weather, sports, and politics, these brand new humans connect deeply, first with their parents and then with the rest of us, using nothing more than babble.

What sounds like nonsense holds great meaning. Their small sounds carry longing, desire, comfort, angst, and joy, all wrapped up in a non-syllabic mess.

Every few years, I circle back to Eugene Peterson’s pastoral series, and each time I do, a section in The Contemplative Pastor recenters me. I found myself there again recently. Peterson writes about what he calls Language 1, 2, and 3, which he describes this way:

Put another way, “Language 1 is… the basic language for expressing and developing the human condition,” “Language 2 is the major language used in schools,” and “Language 3 is the predominant language of advertising and politics.”

Though written specifically for pastors, these distinctions have something important to all those who mediate relationships through words, which is to say, all of us.

Up until about 600 years ago, almost all words were spoken. In the pre-literate world before the printing press, very little was written down. Knowledge was passed on through oral language, which meant in part that knowledge was passed on relationally. To know a thing was to know it from and through another person, typically one with whom there was ongoing relationship. But print changed that.

Walter Ong writes, “Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer.” There is a different sort of connection that takes place when words are spoken to us versus when words are read by us.

This is not to say that written words can never have a similar effect as spoken ones. Think of a handwritten letter received in the mail; there is a sense of relational depth in this experience, though sadly it feels like the gift of a bygone era.

But in a similar way, spoken words can also take on the experiential nature of written ones, especially in our age of textual overabundance. The visual word litters the landscape of modern life. Words are everywhere, from flyers to feeds and from streets to screens.

Just as the shift from a pre-literate to a literate world unfolded with the advent of the printing press, a similarly if not even more seismic shift is unfolding in the digital age.

From the beginning of human history until about 1500, language was primarily a relational experience—think, stories and songs by the fire.

From 1500 until the turn of the most recent century, language expanded to become an informational experience—think, books and newspapers.

Now, for the past quarter century, language has expanded (or, some would argue, devolved) to become an instant (and, many would say, shallow) experience—think, social media and messaging.

The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, in his book The Uncontrollability of the World, argues that as the modern world becomes increasingly customizable and personalized—think, your Netflix queue or having groceries delivered to your door with the push of a few buttons or a quiet Waymo ride without the risk of awkward conversation with a real person—our experience of an increasingly controllable world is forming us to expect similar controllability of others.

Rosa writes of what he calls Four Dimensions of Controllability:

We desire to to make the world knowable (“I’ve figured this out.”)

We desire to to make the world accessible (“I can have this.”)

We desire to to make the world manageable (“I can control this.”)

We desire to to make the world useful (“I can use this.”)

Maybe this is all well and good when it comes to binging a tv show, ordering food, or catching a ride to the airport. But when applied to other humans, control is the path toward coercion. Which brings us back to Peterson’s three “languages.”

In the digital age especially, I fear we’ve grown adept at language 3, “the predominant language of advertising and politics,” the sort of language that “makes things happen.” Almost everything you read on your smartphone is intended to persuade you toward a particular action, whether you know or want it or not.

As we’ve already seen, the various technologies of any era tend to have an embodied effect on the humans who live in that era, and the ways those humans understand and engage their fellow humans. So, we’ve come to think of and leverage language primarily as a means of persuasion, or put more sharply, coercion.

But language 3, the language of advertising and politics, is not language fitting of the table, in those moments and places where we gather with other flawed, fragile human beings who want to belong, just like us.

We’d do better to, at minimum, lean into language 2, “the major language used in schools,” the language of “information” and “orientation.” This is language born of the print age, a world of insights and the interesting.

Language 2 can be a beautifully connective experience between people when entered in and shared with mutual curiosity, respect, and empathy. “Tell me more about that” is the posture of language 2. It is language that is drawn to the content of the conversation. But there is of course an even deeper language, truly fitting of the table.

Language 1 “is the language of intimacy and relationship. It is the first language we learn. Initially, it is not articulate speech. The language that passes between parent and infant… in the exchange of gurgles and out-of-tune hums, trust develops… the basic language for expressing and developing the human condition.”

Language 1 is not about coercion nor content but about connection. It says, “Tell me more about you.” It is not speaking for persuasion’s sake nor learning’s sake. It is certainly not speaking for speaking’s sake. Language 1 doesn’t waste a word. Every syllable and sound matters.

My niece and nephew will not babble forever. Someday they too, like me, will speak to share and seek content. Someday they too, like me, will be often tempted to speak in order to persuade, and even worse, to coerce. But for now, they speak only language 1. Every coo, every cry, every giggle and smiley sigh means something meaningful.

Longing. Desire. Comfort. Angst. Joy. All wrapped up in a non-syllabic mess.

But it’s possible to speak language 1 even once our syllables make sense. There is a beauty in speaking language 1 with clarity and maturity. It’s rare. But it’s possible. And when it happens, we connect again.

So whatever table you sit at in the coming days and weeks, and whoever sits at that table with you, may you speak language 1.

Some say that Keller’s “winsome, third-way” approach only works for a world that no longer exists. The thinking goes that we now live in a “negative world,” that up to the early 90’s, culture at large viewed Christianity as generally positive; then from the mid 90’s until the early 2010’s, that view turned neutral; and since then, culture has turned and we now inhabit a “negative world” in which Christianity is repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good.

I’d suggest that just how negative a world we live in varies a great deal by region, city, church, etc. And I say this as a pastor living and serving in Silicon Valley, which is, statistically at least, one of the most unchurched, secular regions in the country. And though there are signs that the tide might be turning, even here, it’s far too early to tell in what direction.

Either way, let’s grant the shift and assume we live in a “negative world” (to varying degrees). In the past few years, in reactive response to this external cultural shift, significant momentum has been growing toward an internal pastoral shift—a shift away from nuance and toward confrontation. It’s been fascinating, and at times disheartening, to watch this swift turn play out in sanctuaries and on stages across the country.

“Why aren’t you angry?” That was a line in an email I received not long ago. Attached were links to clips and sermons of other pastors around the country who’d recently addressed a cultural moment I’d also addressed in our church. This person wasn’t upset because I believed the wrong thing. He was upset because I expressed it the wrong way. These other pastors were “angry,” so why wasn’t I? That was his reason for concern.

In my book Listen Listen Speak, I explored the way today’s media ecosystem has been carefully designed to amplify agitation. In the past decade, overall media consumption has risen more than 20 percent and daily smartphone use has ballooned from 45 minutes to over 4 hours. That’s a lot of agitation. And the machine knows that anger and outrage are what keep us most engaged. Our fracturing is the fuel that keeps the machine running.

Hostility is the primary currency being bought and sold in a digital market where we are the products. But online discourse isn’t always accurately reflective of real life. Beyond the noisy few await the quiet masses eagerly desiring nuance. The data actually tells us that “a majority of Americans… are fed up by America’s polarization… they want to move past our differences.”

As tempting as it might be for pastors and church leaders “bow up” against what might feel (especially online) like the unified, collective aggression of culture at large, when we do so, we unintentionally participate in the cultural tide of anger, outrage, and hostility that the peculiar, paradoxical way of Jesus intends to resist and upend.

The argument for a more confrontational approach in a “negative world” usually begins with the idea that “the Gospel is offensive” and it is. But the Gospel is offensive in every way. In a world where anger feels like courage and outrage feels like strength, nuance is itself offensive. Gentleness is subversive. Empathy is resistance. Kindness is rebellion. These are not weak alternatives to truth. They are the way of Truth himself.

The truth of the Gospel confronts and disrupts the truth claims of culture. Culture says, “Be true to yourself. Your truth is your truth.” The Gospel declares, “There is one Truth, embodied in Christ and expressed through Scripture.”

And in much the same way, the way of the Gospel also confronts and disrupts the way of culture, which amplifies antagonism and demonization. The Gospel’s naturally offensive response is not to imitate the hostility. The way of the Gospel offends cultural antagonism through kindness and goodness. The way of the Gospel confronts demonization through the painstaking work of humanization.

Eugene Peterson once wrote, “Jesus is the Way as well as the Truth. The way the gospel is conveyed is as much a part of the kingdom as the truth presented. Why are pastors experts on the truth and dropouts on the way?” Pursuing at least a passing grade in pastoral nuance remains essential. We must not be content to be experts in truth while flunking in the way.

In my experience in Silicon Valley, the way we offer truth is often the difference between someone opening up or closing off to the possibility that this truth might lead to life. Marshall McLuhan’s line, “The medium is the message,” applies here, and pastors would do well to take heed.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And it is Jesus we follow. So may we carry truth into the world, may we carry it in the way of Jesus, and may many, compelled by the truth and the way of Jesus, move toward life.

Using mesh panels uniquely designed to capture and coalesce condensation, these “fog collectors” create water droplets which grow as the fog continues rolling in, eventually becoming large enough to drip into a collection system, turning foggy transience into actual water that can be used for drinking, agriculture, and ecological work.

For many years, prayer felt like walking through fog. I knew God was there but he rarely felt concrete; he mostly felt ambiguous and elusive, as if prayer was a cosmic game of tag or hide and go seek. I knew prayer was important and I believed it was powerful; and I experienced its benefits from time to time; most people do. According to Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Project, people who pray are 47% more likely to experience a sense of purpose or mission in life and 38% more likely to contribute positively to their community.

But my frustration over the years wasn’t so much that prayer wasn’t helpful; it was that the help felt minimal and my prayer life felt mostly forced. I’d have moments or seasons of vibrancy but they were short-lived and I found myself, more often than not, thirsting for more but unable to quench my thirst; lots of fog but not much water.

Many of us can probably relate. Whatever you do or don’t believe about prayer, there’s a very good chance you pray. According to most of the recent data, about three quarters of U.S. adults say they pray in some form or fashion. Anecdotally, across many conversations with people over two decades as a pastor, most people I’ve met who pray say they wish their prayer lives were more vibrant and felt more alive. But prayer for most of us feels like drudgery, just another task on our ever-growing to-do list. Then, we’re confronted with this, from the Apostle Paul:

Pray continually. - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

In the NRSV, it’s translated, “Pray without ceasing.” The NLT translates it, “Never stop praying.” Eugene Peterson paraphrases it, “Pray all the time.” However you translate or paraphrase it, it sounds like wishful thinking at best, absurd idealism at worst.

Being Held and Beholding

Imagine staring deeply into the eyes of a complete stranger. Just the thought itself makes me uncomfortable. We’re not meant to see and be seen by strangers with such intensity and intimacy. The forced connection is incongruous with relational depth. This simple thought exercise helps shed light on why prayer might feel forced sometimes.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. - Psalm 139:7-8

The Hebrew word for “presence” here is paneh, which comes from the word panim, meaning “face.” Paneh, “presence,” means to be before one’s face, or clearly within one’s line of sight. God’s presence, his face set toward us, implies his focused attention; and what Psalm 139 makes clear is that God’s pervasive, loving attention is inescapable. Praying continually doesn’t mean stopping what we’re doing and going to a specific place “where God is” to talk with him. We pray continually by living with continuous awareness of God’s inescapable, pervasive, loving presence, and by focusing our attention on the God who focuses his attention on us.

This might seem challenging. But recently my friend Archie reminded me, “If you know how to worry, you know how to be held and behold.” My assumption is that most all of us have had the experience of some uncertainty, unknown, or unwanted predicament or situation casting a dark shadow beneath the cloud of worry over all of life. In these moments we find ourselves physically present in one place but mentally and emotionally absent, our awareness and attention absorbed by the source of our worry. So, if you know how to worry, you know how to be in one place yet have your awareness and attention absorbed by another. If you know how to worry, you know how to be held and behold.

The Awkwardness of Being Seen

But this is also why prayer feels awkward. Being deeply seen and known means taking off masks and coming out of hiding. It requires honesty and vulnerability. It means taking off the veil of performance and image.

We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. — 2 Corinthians 3:18

The word translated “contemplate” means “to behold,” evoking the intimate, loving, knowing gaze of a bride and groom. Prayer can be a little scary in this way. We are mismatched, God and humans. He is all glory and goodness, we are broken and sinful. But we need not fear. When we walk the path of confession and repentance, God doesn’t demand that we rise to the heights of his perfection; he instead descends into the depths of our brokenness. When I read books with my kids, I do not insist that they comprehend at my level; I lower my pace to theirs so that we can actually read together. God meets us in precisely the same way. Eloquence of words or depth of theology are not prerequisites for a vibrant life of prayer. Showing up fully, honestly, and regularly are the only requirements.

A Friendship Cultivated by Presence

I often think of prayer like a long drive with a loved one, where stretches of silence are welcomed because loving presence fills the space. Or like working on something side-by-side with a friend, where the hum of shared activity becomes its own kind of communion.

Dallas Willard described prayer as, “an honest exchange between people who are doing things together. God and I are at work together, and I need to invoke his power in that activity. Joint activity is a key to understanding how conversation flows.”

A friend once told me about working on cars with his dad as a teenager. What he remembers most fondly isn’t the technicality of fixing an engine but the sound of the tools, the shared focus, the quiet joy of companionship. Another remembers cooking with her mom as a child; she doesn’t remember which dishes turned out better than others. What she does remember is the smell of garlic, the rhythm of pots and pans, the joy and laughter in between.

That’s the essence of continual prayer: not constant speech, but constant togetherness.

Willard again: “Our failure to hear God has its deepest roots in a failure to understand, accept, and grow into a conversational relationship with God—the sort of relationship suited to friends.”

In a now famous interview, the anchor Dan Rather asked Mother Teresa, “When you pray, what do you say to God?”

She replied, “I don’t say much. I listen.”

Rather pressed, “Well, what does God say to you?”

She smiled and said, “He doesn’t say much. He listens. And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”

Mother Teresa might have overstated it—there is a place for words in prayer—but her point is profound:

This is how we “pray continually.” We keep showing up, with our whole, honest selves.

Ronald Rolheiser puts it this way: “There’s no bad way to pray and no single starting point for prayer. The spiritual masters offer one nonnegotiable rule: You have to show up for prayer and show up regularly. Everything else is negotiable.”

And C.S. Lewis reminds us, “The prayer preceding all prayers is: ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’”

When It’s Hard to Pray

The truth is, most of us come up with all sorts of reasons not to pray. But even Jesus himself—who lived in perfect oneness with the Father—found it necessary to pray constantly.

Sometimes we feel too busy to pray:

“Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” — Luke 5:15–16

Sometimes we feel too tired to pray:

“After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.” — Matthew 14:23

Sometimes we feel too anxious to pray:

“Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed…” — Matthew 26:38–39

And yet, in every one of those moments—busy, tired, anxious—Jesus prayed.

That’s the invitation:

Pray continually, even when you’re busy.
Pray without ceasing, even when you’re tired.
Pray all the time, even when you’re anxious.

Prayer, like fog collecting into water, begins with awareness. It is the condensation of divine presence—God’s gaze meeting ours, our hearts turning toward his. And when we learn to live this way—being held and beholding—we find, at last, that the fog itself becomes living water.

The first presidential inauguration I can remember was George H. W. Bush’s in 1989. I was in the fourth grade and we watched the grainy footage on the classroom television. Politics wasn’t really on my radar as a 9 year old, but when Bush took the stage and began to speak, I distinctly remember being overwhelmed by this thought: “I wish he was my dad.”

I grew up without a father. The path before me from boyhood to manhood was unpaved and directionless. So when I saw Bush give his acceptance speech, I felt a surprising sense of longing. Because I had no established image for what a man could or should be, I saw Bush, distinguished and victorious, and believed it to be as good an image to bear as any. The writer Chris Hedges notes that this sort of thing comes about because those we perceive as heroic figures “become our vicarious selves. They do what we cannot. . . . They garner fame and vanquish their anonymity.” This is an apt description of how I felt that day in 1989.

Now, more than three decades later, a reversal has taken place. I no longer desire the paternal care of presidents; I demand they embody and express my ideologies and preferences. While I’m uninterested in bearing their image, I do want them to bear mine in some ways. I’m not alone in this distorted desire. Despite our stated commitment to the democratic process, when political winners do not embody and express our ideals, we tend to denounce and disown them. Only one week into the new year, as chaos unfolded in Washington D.C., we saw just how far down this destructive path some are willing to go.

We’re desperate for a familiar and reassuring resemblance between ourselves and those charged with leading us. When such a resemblance does not exist, we’re up in arms; some go as far as to take up arms. This poses an interesting and important challenge for Christians as we try to engage politics faithfully and responsibly.

Whose Image?

Image-bearing is a central idea in the Bible. It begins on page one, when “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The Hebrew word for “image” is tselem, which indicates far more than physical resemblance. Being made in the tselem of God means humans are to embody and express the essence of God. In the ancient world, all gods had tselems, usually in the form of temples, shrines, and statues. But Yahweh, the one true God, imbues his tselem solely in humans. Thus his clear instructions against making images or idols of any kind (Ex. 20:4; Deut. 4:16; etc.).

But what does this have to do with Christians and politics?

The religious leaders of Jesus’s day posed a politically charged question intended to corner him in an impossible situation: “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” (Luke 20:22). At the time, the Roman Empire ruled and their taxation policies were extreme. Giving tribute to Caesar was costly and unjust.

If Jesus said, “Yes, give tribute to Caesar,” it would’ve been seen as capitulation to the unjust empire and could have resulted in rejection by his own people. If Jesus said, “No, withhold tribute from Caesar,” it would’ve been seen as defiant rebellion against Roman law and could have resulted in severe punishment.

This is an image-bearing question from the religious leaders. Giving tribute to Caesar would mean embracing the image of Rome and affirming its right to rule, however unjust. Withholding tribute would mean embracing the image of the most zealous Jewish nationalists, prepared for battle in order to overthrow the Roman enemy. This is a tension between two opposing political views. Whose image will you bear? Rome or Israel? The empire or the people?

While our circumstances obviously differ from those of Jesus’s day, we can relate to the tension between opposing political views. Whose image will you bear? Republican or Democrat? Liberal or conservative? Questions about which political ideologies, parties, and candidates are, ultimately, questions about image-bearing.

So how are Christians to respond? Jesus points the way: “‘Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?’ They said, ‘Caesar’s’” (Luke 20:24).

A denarius was a Roman silver coin, often used for paying taxes. On it was an engraved image of Tiberius Caesar, along with the inscription, “Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” Adhering to God’s command against deified images, Jews at the time did not carry around the denarius; they used a copper coin as a substitute for daily commerce. But Jesus specifically asks for a denarius in order to make his point clear: “Whose eikon [the Greek word for ‘image’] is on the coin?” They answer, “Caesar’s.” Jesus responds:

“Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent. (Luke 20:25–26)

The image on the coin is Caesar, so give the coin to him. But remember Genesis 1:27? “God created man in his own image.” Jesus’s Jewish audience knew that Caesar, despite his claims of divinity, was just a man. While Caesar may lay claim to coins, only God can lay claim to the humans who bear his image. Jesus is confronting our tendency to want to bear the image of a temporal earthly kingdom. The true image we bear is that of the everlasting King.

Two Photographs

There are two family photographs I uniquely cherish. They bear a striking resemblance.

The photo on the left shows me and my dad. I must’ve been 3 or so. We’re at the zoo. Shortly after this photograph was taken, he was out of my life, permanently. It’s sadly fitting that you cannot see his face. He was a mystery to me. But from what I’m told, I look just like him.

The photo on the right shows me and my daughter a few years ago. She was almost 2. We’re walking in Portland, on our way to a favorite coffee shop. I remember the moment clearly—her, astounded by an unfamiliar city; me, astounded by her, this little girl who looks just like me.

My relationships with my father and my daughter couldn’t be any more different. She and I enjoy a rich and meaningful connection, filled with laughter and love. He was a father only in the most technical sense of the word; for all intents and purposes, he was a stranger. And yet, these three generations of my family share a literal resemblance. I look like my father and my daughter looks like me. This is the irresistible and undeniable bond of kinship—we bear the image of our fathers.

So it is with the family of God. Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, we are first, foremost, and always sons and daughters of the same Father. Made in his image, we are called now to bear it—to embody and express the reality of God our Father in all spheres of life, including politics. Sadly, many Christians today bear the image of their preferred political leader or tribe more proudly and clearly than the image of their Father. Their identity is more profoundly shaped by a worldly god than the transcendent God. As a result, observers often can’t look at an assortment of Christians and say, “I see their family resemblance!” Because while many Christians might bear the name of Christ, it isn’t clear that they bear his image as their truest source of identity and allegiance.

In a fractured and lost world, what an opportunity Christians have to reveal the unifying power and freedom of bearing the image we were created to bear. Though Caesars come and go, Christ reigns forever. Though human leaders—and fathers—fail us, God the Father never will.

“Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” is effusively and unapologetically optimistic, an ode to our modern dream-chasing impulses. I’m appreciative of the message and understand the longing. When a child is born or a student graduates, their caring and loving support system wants to help them dream big, run far, and shatter the limits and ceilings that might’ve bound previous generations.

But in our era of social media fueled wanderlust, when “right here” never seems as good as “over or out there,” an insidious inversion if possible, and even likely, as we find ourselves subtly coaxed into a constant state of chasing. “The places you’ll go” always seems so much better the “the place where you are” and this is a dangerous way to live life. We might say it’s actually a way to not live life at all, for life is always and only lived in the “right here and right-now.”

Dreaming big, running far, and shattering limits and ceilings might all be good and well intentioned endeavors, the outlines of a life shaped by meaning, purpose, and significance. But never at the cost of coloring our present reality with scorn and disdain.

Dr. Seuss tells us, “You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.” But this is a half truth. Yes, we have the agency to move in a variety of directions throughout life. This is a gift. But the idea that any direction is available to us is a myth. To be human is to live within limits. The time, place, and circumstances into which we are born offer the possibilities and impose the boundaries which shape our lives. The key to experiencing freedom and joy in any and all situations is in learning to maximize possibilities while also honoring boundaries. Limits might be pushed but they cannot be broken; when we try, it is we that break. Freedom and joy are found when we stand at the intersection of possibilities and boundaries with gratitude, remembering that, “the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6).

Dr. Seuss tells us, “You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care. About some you will say, ‘I don’t choose to go there.’” Fair enough. There are places that are possible but unwise. Other places are even enticing but destructive. A reckless chasing after the “places we’ll go” often leads down these paths. Throughout the Biblical story, God sends people to places they would not have chosen to go for themselves. Moses was sent back to Moses, Jonah to Nineveh, Elijah to confront Ahab and Jezebel, Esther to King Xerxes, Peter to Cornelius’ house, Ananias to Saul in Damascus, the disciples to the Gentiles, Jesus to the cross. Each and every one of these individuals relented, “I don’t choose to go there.” And yet, God sent them and they went, leading to glorious surprise. Sometimes “right here” is the place we would, in and of ourselves, choose not to go. And yet, we remember God’s instruction to, “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:7).

Dr. Seuess tells us, “You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.” Honestly, this is the life I mostly long for on most days. Upward mobility and whatever frenzied activity it takes, whatever the cost—spiritual, mental, emotional, relational—is our cultural sign of success. If we cannot answer the question, “How are things?” with a curt, “So busy,” what are we even doing with our lives? This is the pressurized air we breathe in a world so decidedly marked by external markers of success. But this is also antithetical to the way of Jesus, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place” (Philippians 2:6-9). This is what is meant by the upside-down kingdom of God. The way up to see great sights and join the high fliers up at the high heights is to go down, to descend to the depths of ourselves, our egos, our self-centered ambitions, to take on service and servanthood, for God’s glory and for the good of all.

Finally, Dr. Seuss tells us, “All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone will be something you'll be quite a lot.” He has a point here. We live in a time when the U.S. Surgeon General has deemed loneliness a public health crisis. But in both “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” and our current cultural moment, this pervasive isolation is mostly self-inflicted, self-imposed, and self-sustained—“self” being the operative word. Because in truth, we need not be alone. To go the way of self is to walk a path paved for one. There is no room there for another. But there is another path, paved broad and wide. It may not lead in a direction we initially and naturally deem most desirable but it leads in the direction that the human soul most innately and naturally leans—it leads us toward belonging. Once we turn up this path, we discover other pilgrims on the journey, the people of God we would never have chosen for ourselves but a people we were chosen for. And together God’s promises to us… “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), “Even though we walk through the darkest valley, we will fear no evil, for God is with us” (Psalm 23:4), and that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

So, as we head into another year full of promise and possibility, teeming with a plethora of potential elsewhere’s, may we learn to settle down, settle in, and embrace the right here. Oh, the places we might stay…

As we arrive at the end of 2024, I find myself in a much better place. The task list is still long, the calendar is still full, and I still carry the burden of expectations. But I’ve learned to breathe. Literally.

Up until that panic attack late last year, I’d known about and sporadically practiced breath prayers. But on that day, praying as breathing and breathing as praying stabilized me in a way that I’m not sure much else could have. It was such a powerfully visceral experience of saving grace that I haven’t stopped. For over a year now, I’ve practiced breath prayers throughout the day and it’s formative power is just as profound today as it was in my car on that first day.

Breath prayers are an ancient yet accessible practice. Maybe the most accessible prayer practice available to us. Anyone who breathes, meaning anyone who is alive, has full and complete access to one tool necessary.

Breath prayers are simple, repetitive prayers we say aloud or ponder in our hearts and minds in parallel with our physical breathing. It’s a way of anchoring our deep inhale and exhale on the truth that God is as near to us as the air passing through our bodies, energizing, enlivening, and sustaining us.

Breath prayers are not mere words we speak; they are prayers we embody, prayers that integrate our spiritual, emotional, mental, and spiritual selves. In a culture run on productivity, we pray as a way to catch our breath, pause, and relax into the presence of God which is always available and all around.

Here are 25 simple breath prayers for the New Year. I hope a few are helpful to you.

A Breath Prayer for Burnout
Inhale: “I am weary.”
Exhale: “Renew my strength.”

A Breath Prayer for Stress
Inhale: “Your peace within.”
Exhale: “Your peace around.”

A Breath Prayer for Anxiety
Inhale: “You hold the future.”
Exhale: “Teach me to trust.”

A Breath Prayer for Isolation
Inhale: “You see me here.”
Exhale: “You never leave me here.”

A Breath Prayer for Loneliness
Inhale: “You are near.”
Exhale: “I am never alone.”

A Breath Prayer for Fear
Inhale: “Even in this valley.”
Exhale: “You are with me.”

A Breath Prayer for Uncertainty
Inhale: “I don’t know what lies ahead.”
Exhale: “But You go before me.”

A Breath Prayer for Grief
Inhale: “My heart aches.”
Exhale: “Hold me in Your grace.”

A Breath Prayer for Comparison
Inhale: “I long for more.”
Exhale: “Teach me contentment.”

A Breath Prayer for F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out)
Inhale: “You are my portion.”
Exhale: “I lack nothing.”

A Breath Prayer for Exhaustion
Inhale: “Restore my spirit.”
Exhale: “Renew my soul.”

A Breath Prayer for Workaholism
Inhale: “Help me to stop.”
Exhale: “Teach me to trust.”

A Breath Prayer for Hyper-Productivity
Inhale: “What profit is ‘the world’?”
Exhale: “Teach me to regain my soul.”

A Breath Prayer for Cynicism
Inhale: “Renew my hope.”
Exhale: “Expand my imagination.”

A Breath Prayer for Melancholy
Inhale: “Light of the world.”
Exhale: “Shine into the darkness.”

A Breath Prayer for Insecurity
Inhale: “I am safe.”
Exhale: “I am secure.”

A Breath Prayer for Identity Crisis
Inhale: “Who am I?”
Exhale: “I am Yours.”

A Breath Prayer for Boredom
Inhale: “Life is a gift.”
Exhale: “Open my eyes to see.”

A Breath Prayer for Expectations
Inhale: “Earthly success fades.”
Exhale: “Your love is forever.”

A Breath Prayer for Fear of Failure
Inhale: “You hold tomorrow.”
Exhale: “I am unafraid.”

A Breath Prayer for Overcommitment
Inhale: “Guide my priorities.”
Exhale: “Help me choose wisely.”

A Breath Prayer for Consumerism
Inhale: “I surrender my desires.”
Exhale: “I trust Your provision.”

A Breath Prayer for Shame
Inhale: “I am forgiven.”
Exhale: “I am free.”

A Breath Prayer for Hopelessness
Inhale: “All seems lost.”
Exhale: “Be my hope.”

A Breath Prayer for Love
Inhale: “I am loved.”
Exhale: “Teach me to love.”