You will be as unsurprised as I was to learn that, when we returned to the same lake last week, those trees were no longer standing. Nobody pushed them. No malicious tool was used to destroy them. They simply, slowly fell because they were not rooted in anything solid.

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This is nothing new. The Scriptures use rootedness as a consistent metaphor for spiritual life:

• Psalm 1 speaks of the tree planted by streams of water. Because it is planted—no exposed or untethered roots—it is sturdy, enduring, and fruitful. This pictures the one whose delight is in the law of the LORD and who meditates on God’s instruction (torah) day and night.

• In 2 Kings 19:30, the prophet Isaiah speaks a word of promise to those who are wholly dependent on God through prayer in the midst of serious threat: “the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.”

• Proverbs 12:3 states that “The root of the righteous will never be moved.”

• In his song about the vineyard, Isaiah prophesies that “In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).

• In contrast, Hosea speaks a word of judgment to the evil and their wicked deeds: “Ephraim is stricken; their root is dried up; they shall bear no fruit” (Hosea 9:16).

• In the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks of the seeds that spring up immediately but “since they had no root, they withered away.” This, he later explains, is a picture of “the one who hears the [gospel] word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” (Matthew 13:6, 20-21).

This is only a sampling of the nearly 70 references to roots or “rooting out” in the Scriptures. But as I, treading water in the lake, first laid eyes on the fallen trees, the phrase that immediately came to mind was Paul’s: “rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17). Perhaps it was a longing. That phrase has meant more to me over the last decade than any other in the Scriptures, and my gut reaction to seeing eroded strength was a yearning to be grounded in soil that will last.

As we see in the Scriptures above, our spiritual roots are planted in God’s word and God’s character. Yet we have a tendency to locate this planting work entirely in the brain, as if thinking right thoughts about God is what ultimately grounds us, as if the sturdiness comes from being right.

The whole of the Scriptures tells a more robust story. Our roots go deeper through prayer—crying out—as we express our absolute dependence on God. We give voice to our need to be seen, known, cherished, provided for, and protected. What we are finally planted in is the love of God, the God of love.

Too often I have found myself sending out roots to be grounded in the opinion of others, my performance at work, my success in relation to my peers, or the recognition I have received. These always prove to be empty. They are as grounding as air. Look around you and you will see what others are grounded in by what, when it erodes, topples them. Political action, entrepreneurial ventures, career advancement, and professional accomplishment are fine branches, but they are no soil for planting a life.

The reason life in Christ involves meditation on God’s word, prayer, and fellowship with other believers—whether through conversations or reading books—is because these are means of being more deeply rooted in the love of God. This is the ultimate rootedness, because this spiritual soil existed before physical soil, or the world for that matter, was made. There is no erosion here. For eternity the Triune God has existed in love: the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father, all in the Spirit. That same Spirit, Paul writes, strengthens us to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth, to experientially taste this love which lies beyond our comprehension. And as we do this, we are filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).

None of us wants to be the tree that, rooted in air, falls over. As we gather for word, prayer, fellowship, and service let us together, “with all the saints” (Ephesians 3:19), live into our identity as those rooted and grounded in love. May our sturdy planting and fruit of love magnify God’s reputation as we provide shelter and nourishment to those around us.

“Never let your gifting outpace your character.”

A visitor to our church said this to me a few years into my first pastorate. He was attending a service for the first time since his home church had imploded due to the spiritual abuse of the pastor. I shared this story in Sunday’s sermon on Peter’s charge to the elders (1 Peter 5:1-5) in which he calls them not to be domineering but to lead by example. There are recent, tragic stories—locally and nationally—of pastors sinking into all sorts of disqualifying sins. Paul’s words to Timothy seem as relevant as ever: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16).

There are two things pastors can do to not be the next story.

1. Be present

Just this morning, before hearing of another fallen pastor, I listened to a Tim Keller sermon and heard him preach things that he wouldn’t put into print for 20 years. Tim told any young pastor who would listen, including me, to focus on parenting your kids and pastoring your church before you worry about publishing your next book. Every guest sermon preached, book published, article written (including this one!) has the temptation to become more important than the actual people a pastor is called to shepherd. It is harder to love actual people than to interact with likes and comments online. But it is spiritually safer. I once heard Alistair Begg asked how he stayed humble when his sermons are heard across the world. He said something to the effect of, “Because I have a wife, family, and church who love me but are not impressed by me. They speak honestly to me.” Staying grounded in actual relationships with family and church is crucial. (See Katelyn Beaty’s excellent book Celebrities for Jesus for more on this.)

2. Be known

Often our go-to response to these stories is to talk about accountability. Yes and amen. I have a Covenant Eyes accountability partner and I am grateful for that. But more often than not, accountability groups are only about checking in to make sure you didn’t sin. What about all the insecurities and frustrations and doubts and past wounding and anger over a church situation that led you to pursue that relationship, click on that website, take that drink, etc.? This is why I have been part of and have facilitated weekly pastor groups for the last 5 years. We ask simple questions like “Where do we find you today? What are you feeling? What do you want? What do you need? What part of your story is coming up right now?” There was a time I would have ridiculed this kind of work. I thought that solid theology would keep me steady. But accurate theology in the mind doesn’t do anything for the wounded little boy in the soul. Most pastors fear losing their job if they are honest about their hurts, temptations, and weariness. If pastors do not have a place to be fully known outside the church, they will keep doing the things we see in the news.

If you are a pastor, I pray that you will find the same spiritual supports in your life that you preach to your church members. If you are a church member, pray for your pastor and be proactive in encouraging your church leaders to create an environment where your pastor can thrive.

Nearly every year that our family goes to the beach, I make a 3-6 minute video that encapsulates what was going on during our time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the Atlantic Ocean. There are 23 of us now, so I can’t capture everything, but filming, scoring, and editing short films is one of my great delights, so I usually put one together toward the end of our time.

Here’s the dynamic. If I have to create a movie on vacation, all of the sudden it is in the category of “Work.” Writing is the same for me. Recently a friend of mine who writes regularly for The Atlantic and The New York Times asked me about my writing habits. I told him that, aside from the weekly article and sermon I write for the church, I have a very strict policy that I only write when I want to. As much as I am in awe of my friends who write regularly for national audiences, there is no hint of jealousy. “Everything is a job,” I often say. Perhaps if such observations were half as profound as I’d like them to be, I too would be writing for The Atlantic or The New York Times. The point remains. Whether you are the guest host on Saturday Night Live, the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, the junior senator from Wisconsin, or some other one-in-a-million job, it’s still a job. You have to do it.

I, on the other hand, did not have to create a video this week. I said as much to anyone who would listen. “I’m not sure if I’m going to make a video this year,” I mused out loud. My sister and my wife looked as convinced as if I had told them that I was thinking about rooting for the Yankees. But I needed to say it. I needed to release any sense of expectation and obligation, the “have to.” I needed my mind to be a blank canvas, because as soon as such endeavors become formulaic the creativity is dead. I needed to stay on the lookout for the story worth telling rather than coming to the week with a script in hand.

This is, according to Flannery O’Connor, what must happen if one is to create well. In a lecture on writing fiction she said, “Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring.”1 Or, as Rich Mullins succinctly sang, “Everywhere I go, I’m looking.”2

What I ended up staring at this week was the creation itself. Rachael excitedly told me about an egret she observed fishing off the dock next door. My brother-in-law sent me the video he took of the sunrise his three year old awakened him to see. My brother shared some stunning photos of ripples in sand formed by waves. I thought of a poem that speaks of God’s grandeur and asked some family members to read it into my phone. I layered it and edited Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words into what we were seeing. I didn’t have to do it, but I wanted to. It was play, not work.

In her book The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers says that creative play like this “represents the nearest approach we experience to ‘creation out of nothing.’” There was a time when this poem, this watercolor painting, this blouse, this entrée did not exist, and now it does. We did not create the raw materials, but we made something that did not exist. Like this one minute, 36 second film.3

By the time you are reading this, Monday has arrived and I have opened the gates to welcome back into my headspace the 37 situations that I held at bay for the last 10 days. Thankfully I love my work, including the article I will write for Wednesday’s newsletter, the lesson on a parable of Jesus that I will assemble for Wednesday night, and the sermon from 1 Peter 4 that I will prepare for Sunday. If I manage my time well, I can approach these with an unhurried spirit that releases curiosity and imagination in that work. It may be a job, but I can still play.

My guess is that you can as well. Even if your work stifles creativity, there are probably 15-minute parcels of your day when you can take a walk or slowly sip a cup of tea or sit on a park bench and simply stare at God’s grandeur or ponder a beautiful turn in your story. Maybe you will only have time to write two lines of a poem about what you saw. But you will be pushing back against the thorns and thistles of this age and partaking in the age to come, when Christ will make his blessings flow far as the curse is found and the “have to” will evaporate into “want to,” forever.

Join me in a time-traveling journey to visit similar anniversaries.

Imagine visiting the year 223 to ask Origen of Alexandria or Tertullian of Carthage what they think about the 250th year of the Pax Romana. Nestled as they were in a season of peace, how might their perspectives be different than a quarter of a century later when Origen would find himself being tortured on the rack and the Pope and multiple bishops executed for not renouncing their faith?

Imagine visiting the year 1050 to ask Pope Leo IX and Michael I of Constantinople their perspectives on the 250th anniversary of Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne as “Emperor of the Romans,” what many believe was the birth of the Holy Roman Empire. As both men fought for freedom from their respective Emperors whose protection of the church meant control over the church, what might they say to us about the deep entwining of church and state on that anniversary?

Imagine visiting the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1771, shortly before America was born, and being in the congregation when Baptist minister John Waller was assaulted during the middle of his sermon by an Anglican minister—who stopped his preaching by shoving the butt end of a whip into his mouth—dragged out by a mob, and whipped 20 times by the Sheriff. Imagine visiting Virginia Baptists in 1787 who were horrified that the proposed Constitution made no ban on religious persecution. Imagine being under the famed oak tree a year later when Baptist minister John Leland, who had the votes to win a seat at the Virginia convention to ratify the Constitution, told James Madison that he would withdraw from the race if Madison agreed to introduce a Bill of Rights that protected religious freedom.

After this whirlwind journey, let’s return to the present and ask what America even is in relationship to the church.

There is an image that comes to mind every time I ponder this question. Its perspective on our country is neither flattering nor demeaning. It is purely functional, embarrassingly so. But stick with me.

America at its best, as it regards the church, is a wooden platform on which an outdoor theater company can perform. It is a sturdy platform—4x4s sunk three feet into the ground, tongue-and-groove 2x6 planks, the works. It is well-designed, well-crafted, and well-preserved. But nobody comes to the outdoor amphitheater to see the platform. They come to see the play. That is not to diminish its significance. If the platform weren’t there, the actors would be twisting their ankles on dirt clods and keeping one eye out for snakes. The platform matters, but mostly for what can happen on it.

Patriotism runs amok when we celebrate the platform for its own sake rather than what it enables, when liberty becomes an end rather than a means. Patriotism becomes blinded idolatry when we choose not to acknowledge how brief freedom has been a reality for many in our land. We will not be celebrating 250 years of liberty this summer. When asked to deliver a speech on our nation’s 76th birthday, Frederick Douglass’ scathing “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” gave voice to the enslaved persons barred from standing on the platform while others sang its praises. Black Americans, whose full liberties were not enshrined in law until 62 years ago, might argue that the freedom cake should have a lot fewer than 250 candles.

So what should the church celebrate this July 4th when our nation turns 250 years old?

We should be grateful for the good that America affords us, imperfect as it is. As I pastor believers from countries where persecution is intense, I am frequently reminded of the gift it is—not to be taken for granted—that our church members can gather on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening or in Home Groups without any threat of government surveillance or police intrusion. Blood has been spilled for this freedom and it would be the height of ignorance and arrogance to disparage the very platform we stand on and demean the sacrifice required to build it.

Parallel to this gratitude must run the church’s fierce commitment to focus on the play more than the platform. We exist to magnify God’s reputation. Our mission is not 250 years old but 2,000 years old, for it was the mission of Jesus: to proclaim and portray the kingdom of God. When platform repair supplants the display of God’s gracious rule we are to live out on that platform, the church inevitably compromises her witness. As appalled as we may be by President Trump posting an image of himself as Jesus or holding up a Bible outside a church after federal agents dispersed protesters with tear gas, these are gimmicks compared to Charlemagne forcing his Saxon enemies to choose between being baptized or executed. Political and militaristic power, on behalf of the church, inevitably service the king rather than the King.

So Happy Birthday, America. God shed His grace on thee. And, to quote a verse of the song we don’t sing, “God mend thine every flaw.” May the freedom you afford during whatever centuries you have remaining platform the ultimate story of freedom: freedom from sin and judgment through the Savior who laid down his liberties and bore our shame on the cross; freedom from the fear of death through Jesus’ resurrection on the third day; the entire cosmos’ freedom from bondage to decay that the King will enact when he returns to make all things new.

America, we pray for this day to quickly come when your services are no longer needed.

I’m talking about “The Black Banquet,” as historian Cassius Dio called it, where the Roman Emperor Domitian invited the most prominent members of the Senate to a room that had been painted entirely black from ceiling to floor. The lights were dim. Each guest was seated next to a slab of stone shaped like a gravestone, inscribed with their own name. The plates were black, the food was dyed black, and the cuisine was not the fine dining the senators were accustomed to but the simple foods that Romans offered as sacrifices to the dead. The emperor even sent each senator home with strangers rather than their trusted attendants, terrifying the leaders into thinking that they wouldn’t make it home alive.

The goal of this banquet, of course, was to exert dominance over these senators, to let them know that if they didn’t toe the line they would need that personalized gravestone sooner than later. Some historians question whether Dio’s account was embellished, and it may have been. But we know that Domitian had up to 20 senators put to death and that he exercised a tyrannical reign that involved a ring of informants, torture that the emperor personally oversaw, and execution for the flimsiest reasons.

In light of this description of how most of the Roman Emperors of the 1st Century ruled, consider John’s account of another banquet that took place about 60 years earlier than The Black Banquet.

These are the actions that give shape to the “Maundy,” the command, of Maundy Thursday. The command is in verse 34: “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

Join me in sitting in the contrast between Jesus of Nazareth and the Emperor Domitian:

• Jesus, when asked whether he was the Lord or equal with God, wanted his Spirit-filled actions to speak for themselves in asserting his divinity.

• Domitian insisted on being called “Dominus et Deus,” “Lord and God.”

• Jesus served his top leaders, washing their feet.

• Domitian psychologically tortured his top leaders, threatening their lives.

• Jesus commanded love.

• Domitian demanded subservience.

Here is my question: which one of these would you expect to outlast the other—the one who leveraged power to serve or the one who leveraged power to terrify?

It’s impossible for us to ask that question with any sense of suspense or mystery, because we all know our history.

• The Roman Empire had another 100 strong years before it began its decline and fall, while Christianity is still thriving today.

• The rule of Domitian came to an end when his own wife and servants plotted to kill him and stop his reign of terror, while Jesus went to his death willingly and knowingly.

• Because of his misuse of power, Domitian’s statues were pulled down, his name was erased from inscriptions, and he was denied a state funeral. Jesus, because he truly was Lord and God, rose from the dead on the third day and is followed by billions today.

Yet despite this stark contrast, we still feel the allure of power today: political power, financial power, technological power, military power, the power of charisma, beauty, athleticism, and intelligence.

This picture of Jesus kneeling before his disciples and scrubbing their dirty feet—the lowest of a servant’s chores—begs us to ask the question:

What will we do with the power we have?

In our world where might makes right, where the powerful take things simply because they can, where empires jockey for domination, how will we truly follow Jesus in leveraging power in the service of love? How will we faithfully live under the kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this world?

As Christianity spread and disciples multiplied, the way of Jesus, the way of the basin and the towel, showed both its resilience over and against the way of Empire and the enduring power of self-giving love.

In the second century, Aristides wrote a defense of Christians, noting that they cared for widows, protected orphans, ministered to the imprisoned, did good to their enemies, and, if one among them needed food, would fast for two or three days to supply what that person needed.

In the third century, during the Plague of Cyprian, when most pagans left infected regions, abandoning their own relatives, Christians remained to bury the dead and provide food, water, and basic care to both believers and non-believers. They were known as “the gamblers” because they risked their own lives since they had the hope of resurrection.

In the fourth century, Julian, a pagan Roman emperor, complained to one of his pagan priests that Christianity was spreading because the followers of Jesus “support not only their own poor but ours as well; everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.”

This is the way of Jesus, the way of the basin and the towel. It was summarized by Jesus’ half-brother in James 1:27, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

There is a strong pull in our country to adopt a martyrdom complex when we aren’t being martyred, to believe an embattlement narrative that can be solved with politics, and to conflate the actions of our nation with the growth of God’s kingdom. When we do this, it primes us to look to the power of politicians or financiers or celebrities to give legitimacy or protection to how we live out our faith.

This is not the way of Jesus. The kingdoms and powers of this world will crumble just as Emperor Domitian did, just as the Roman Empire did. The way up in Jesus’ kingdom is the way down. Jesus calls us to love one another just as he has loved us. His way only began with washing the disciples’ feet. As we hear from the passion narratives in the gospels, he loved his disciples by relinquishing his will to his Father, even if it meant betrayal, arrest, a mock trial, and crucifixion. He loved us to the end.

Following Jesus doesn’t mean that you or I must be crucified. It means that we follow our crucified Savior in relinquishing our will to the Father to ask, “What should we do with the power we have? How would you have us take up the basin and the towel? How can we love one another in tangible ways just as Jesus has loved us?”

I lived in Minneapolis, where tensions are now highest, from 2002 to 2005 and was friends with many Somali immigrants. The news coming out of The Cities, both from journalists and friends, has been excruciating to follow. There is a helplessness many of us feel on the other side of our smartphones, distant from the crossroads of East 34th Street and Portland Avenue yet near to the bewilderment and grief that Renee Nicole Good was shot there by an ICE agent and immediately labeled a domestic terrorist by the Trump administration.

What is our way in to even think about such matters as followers of Jesus? What can we do to avoid the dread of powerlessness? How should we think about our immigrant neighbors amidst the swirl of anti-immigrant rhetoric? I believe the answers may come through an ethnic outsider at the center of one of Jesus’ most important teachings.

The parable of the Good Samaritan begins with a man on the side of the road who had been ambushed by robbers, stripped, beaten, and left for dead. Jesus introduces three passersby. As for the priest, “when he saw him he passed by on the other side” (Luke 10:31). The Levite—one who assisted priests and policed the temple—did the same. The eponymous Samaritan, however, “went to him” (Luke 10:34) and began addressing his needs, from the immediate to the long term.

Three characters, two angles. The priest and Levite chose the angle of disregard. Opinions abound about why they might have done this—perhaps touching the body would make them ceremonially unclean, perhaps it was a trap, etc. Whatever the reason, they went in the opposite direction of the man in need. The Samaritan, on the other hand, chose the angle of mercy. He moved toward the man in need.

As I read this parable, I know two things to be true. First, Jesus calls his followers to love like the Good Samaritan did. And second, this does not come naturally to me.

For the first 21 years of my life I lived in not one but two places nicknamed “The Bubble.” In Peachtree City, GA we lived on a lake, drove our golf cart to soccer practice, and went to school and church with people who looked like us. After high school I moved three hours away to Samford University with its gorgeous campus, gated and insulated in the suburbs of Birmingham.

I feel profound gratitude for the comfort and predictability in which I was raised and educated. Yet comfort and predictability can be dangerous. They lie on the opposite side of the road from the man left for dead. Their gravitational pull tilts us away from those in need, resulting in the angle of disregard.

This came to a decision point for me one winter morning as I drove through inner-city Minneapolis. I had been drawn to this tundra from my warm Southern climes by the preaching of John Piper. Among his emphases that stood out from the rest of evangelicalism was his warning against the dangers of safe, suburban life. He practiced what he preached, moving into the inner city where his church was located long before gentrification was a reality or the cool kids gushed over “the city.”

Still, even as I attended his seminary I felt the gravitational pull of comfort and predictability. I was there among future pastors, professors, and seminary presidents learning Greek and Hebrew, tracing the argument of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and digging deep into the relationship between law and gospel. It was glorious. It was why I was in seminary. And it was dangerous. Just as fossil fuels can be processed into hard plastic or gasoline, my studies became a bubble where I could be shielded by the plastic rather than fuel to propel me along the angle of mercy. It turns out that I loved the bubble more than I cared to admit.

The verse that clarified the decision point between the angle of disregard and the angle of mercy was Psalm 41:1—“Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the LORD delivers him.” What struck me about this verse was the intentionality it calls for. The privilege afforded by wealth and status is the freedom not to think of the poor at all. Yet the blessing of God is for the ones who proactively take thought for those in need, those they need not think about. As we pan out to the broader redemptive narrative of Scripture, we realize that this is the very initiative God had toward us, the angle of mercy in the Father’s heart that sent his Son to bring us home through his life, death, and resurrection.

My grappling with these two angles coincided, providentially, with an internship opportunity at an inner-city food ministry. As I started working at Community Emergency Service a few days a week, the proximity to poverty changed me. I heard the reflections of an Ojibwe tribal leader on alcoholism and unprocessed grief among indigenous peoples whose lands had been taken. My wife and I led a weekly Bible study for the women who came in the evening when our food shelf building became a shelter, learning in real time the confluence of homelessness with mental illness, addictions, and rotten luck. And my awareness of the dynamics of addictions increased as I led a weekly Bible study for those in a residential recovery program a few blocks away.

Perhaps most immersive was my awakening to the immigrant experience through the Somali community that we served. Our ministry director, Jeff Noyed, built a relationship with Mohammed, leader of the Benadiri community—a merchant group that had been run out of Mogadishu by the power struggle among warlords. Mohammed taught me basic conversational phrases in Somali, organized which of his community members would get help that week, and directed us to a local source of halal goat meat that we could serve during our Friday distribution of fresh vegetables and frozen meats. Of the dozens of memories during my time with these neighbors, the most poignant is when I mentioned to one lady that I had recently watched Black Hawk Down and learned about General Aidid, the warlord at the center of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993. She soured. “I hate General Aidid. He killed my husband. That is why we are here.”

I have no pretense that my personal journey that led me from bubble life to friendship with Somali refugees contains some silver bullet that will solve America’s immigration problems. We all deal with the same pragmatic realities: we can’t let everyone in the country and, as internal fighting among Republicans reveals, our economy can’t be strong without an immigrant labor force. Also, at our best we have cared enough about “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” for it to be inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Somewhere between “no one” and “everyone” is the elusive sweet spot of how many immigrants we should allow in the country, a decision that belongs to Congress informed by us, their constituents.

But what is not elusive is the posture that followers of Jesus should have toward our neighbors. The way of Jesus runs along the angle of mercy, and we must beware the forces that would tilt us to the angle of disregard.

An obvious example would be President Trump’s recent reference to Somalis as “garbage,” only one of a disturbing list of xenophobic invective from our president. If you are a follower of Jesus and engage in this kind of dehumanizing language, you need to repent. As James wrote to those who use the same mouth to bless God and curse those made in his image, “Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right!” (James 3:10 NLT)

The more dangerous rhetoric comes not from the president but from his lieutenant whose vision of America the ICE actions are fulfilling, Stephen Miller. While there have been a number of alarming sound bites from Miller recently, what still haunts me is his speech in September 2025 at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service. Soundbites can be misquoted and taken out of context. Prepared speeches are more reflective of our deepest convictions.

Listen to the “us vs. them” language pervasive in Miller’s speech:

“To those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us: what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

The identity of “us” and “them” is unclear. Miller, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Belarus, identifies with Western Civilization writ large. To “them” he says, “You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic.” He situates “us” in this genealogy: “Our lineage and legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities; they produced the architecture; they built the industry.”

What is clear to Miller is that “we” must prevail.

“To our enemies: you have nothing to give, to offer, or share but bitterness. We have beauty, light, goodness. We have determination, vision, and strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation, and we will defend this world, we will defend goodness, we will defend light, we will defend virtue. You cannot frighten us, you cannot threaten us, because we are on the side of goodness, we are on the side of God.”1

In short, you are on that side of the road and we are on this side of the road. And we are on the side of God.

Follower of Jesus, this is poison. It is dangerous. It is a gravitational force pulling you along the angle of disregard. God is not on the “us” side of Stephen Miller’s “us vs. them” construct. That is the construct the teacher of the law assumed when he asked the question that catalyzed Jesus’ parable: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

The genius of Jesus’ teaching is that he made the most “them” person of the day, a Samaritan, the model to emulate. Instead of validating the assumption of “us vs. them” Jesus asks the teacher of the law and the priest and the Levite and Stephen Miller, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The answer is inescapable: “The one who showed him mercy” (Luke 10:36-37).

For all that I don’t know about optimal immigration policy, here is what I do know: there is no “them” outside the mercy of God. Choose proximity. Be a neighbor. Move along the angle of mercy. And resist the forces of our day that would pull you to the other side of the road.

• Institutions will find creative ways to either circle the wagons around or oust toxic leaders in order to preserve their influence and financial stability.

• Pop psychology trends will give us new ways to think about our lives that initially make sense then prove to have negative unintended consequences.

• New technologies will fulfill their promises to make our lives easier and draw us closer together while somehow also creating new ways to divide and isolate us.

• The ineffectual results of the projection and use of military might will cause some to protest for peace and others to support an even greater display of dominance.

• Hollywood will tell a few new stories that speak with brutal honesty about our individual and societal ills but the movies and TV that captivate our imagination and make the most money will be escapist fantasy.

• Political movements will continue to distort reality to justify their problematic leaders until they realize they can do more with a different leader at which time they will drop the dead weight and hail their new hero (who, of course, will also be a reinvention of his or her own true self to match the moment).

• Social movements aimed at improving the lives of one group of people will make great sense to some Americans while drawing the outrage of others.

What was my methodology to arrive at such uncanny prescience? I watched a documentary on the year 1975 and described what was going on 50 years ago.

Of course, I could have just as easily “predicted” the events of 2026 by referencing an ancient Hebrew poem:

       The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
		and hastens to the place where it rises.
 	The wind blows to the south
		and goes around to the north;
	around and around goes the wind,
		and on its circuits the wind returns.
 	
        What has been is what will be,
		and what has been done is what will be done,
		and there is nothing new under the sun. 
                       -Ecclesiastes 1:5-6, 9

None of this is to minimize the watchfulness we should have over current trends such as the rise of AI, the mainstreaming of Christian Nationalists, the tripling of the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and, of course, the popularity of KPop demon hunters. It is an admirable goal to be like the leaders of Issachar “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

What I predict will be most salient for 2026 is the record of what was happening all the way back at the beginning. Michael Straus translates it this way:

“The Word existed before all Time, timelessly present with God and himself true God…No one has ever seen God. But the Only Begotten Son, who dwells in the heart of the Father, he has made him known.” (John 1:1, 18, The New Testament: A 21st Century Translation)

What was in the beginning—even “before” the beginning if our language bears such description—is an eternal relationship of love. The Word was toward God. There was vibrancy and rest, dynamism and constancy, a communion that was not a cul-de-sac but the fountainhead of all creation. This is our origin story of why we, as those created in the image of God, desire connection and belonging. It is equally the endgame of our ultimate longings.

What will happen in 2026? I have no idea, and neither do those who say they do. But as we await the consummation of all things, we will become most like our true selves when we are caught up in the eternal, dynamic love of God for God and are carried along by its outward flow to a world waiting to be made new.

My cousin had tied the knot the day before at The University of the South, where he and his new bride met in Sewanee, Tennessee. I had driven there from Birmingham where I was still in college and was set to drive back on Sunday. Someone told me that I had to go see the Memorial Cross before I left. Dedicated in 1923 and perched on the overlook of the plateau, this 60-foot cross memorialized those from the school and county who died in World War I.

The particular moment that the autumnal wormhole conveys me to every time is the drive. I find myself driving my grandfather’s Cadillac, equipped with a sturdy suspension that absorbs pothole contact as if it were a gentle hug. As this elegant ride glides through the rises and falls of the road to the edge of campus, the tape of Handel’s Messiah in the deck plays “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd” and the trees, in peak fall colors, fill my view. The whole immersion is greater than the sum of its parts, the trifecta of the vestibular and aural and visual transcending description. Perhaps all I can say is that I am swept up into fall like a leaf carried further up and further in, remaining in midair against gravity’s wishes.

Fall has a suspense about it. We willfully suspend our perennially-confirmed knowledge that these colors are but a beautiful death. Soon the leaves will be grounded altogether, requiring sore backs or hired help to gather them into bags. But we don’t want to think about that now. We simply want to enjoy the autumn colors, just as I want to enjoy the company of my grandfather whose Cadillac I am driving, though I know that Alzheimer’s is diminishing his intellectual chlorophyll and will one day reduce him to bare twig and branch. The tragedy of fall’s beauty is inescapable, eliciting a “Not yet; let me enjoy this for a moment.”

The alto’s words of the shepherd gathering the lambs with His arm, carrying them in His bosom give way to the soprano’s invitation, elevated by a major fourth, as if from Old to New,

     “Come unto Him, all ye that labor, 
       come unto Him that are heavy laden, 
       and He will give you rest.”

I am driving to the cross, itself a moment suspended in time, not by human iconography but by our Lord himself. There is an autumnal tint to the Lord’s Supper where Christ, on the verge of Gethsemane tears and the terror of Golgotha, pleads with his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). He pauses the moment so that we never forget the death required for us to join his resurrection.

The leaves in those Appalachian Mountains eventually became compost for future growth, just as the leaves on my drive will. I preached my Pop’s funeral seven years later, but I will witness him in blinding glory when Jesus raises him anew. And as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Tomorrow I will drive through the portal again. I will see the colors, hear the baroque melodies, and feel the rise and fall of the road. And I will be present in this moment of fall’s beauty, as timeless as the Savior’s scars.

What surprised us both about the Monday Night Football experience in Kansas City was not the game as much as the culture around the game. At 47, this was as new to me as it was to Sam at 10. I’ve been to my fair share of Major League Baseball games and high school football games, but I have never been to a game where 73,569 people travel from all over the country not merely for 60 minutes of professional football but for an entire experience. And nowhere was this more evident than in the tailgating.

Tailgating is amazing. What makes it amazing is not only the fact that people wait in line for seven hours to get the best parking spots; or that people bring tents, sound systems, camping furniture, tables, and grills; or even that the population of the parking lot pre-game is larger than half of the counties in the state. What makes tailgating amazing is that you can walk up to complete strangers and, based on the team colors they’re wearing, start talking like you are three year olds making new best friends on the playground. Within 30 seconds of getting out of the car, we were enveloped into a friend group who were reuniting for the game. Five minutes later my brother spied some more Commanders fans 30 yards away and said, “I’m going to go talk to those guys.” While this was most concentrated around the grills in the parking lot, this shortcut to conversation with strangers spilled over into restaurants, airport terminals, and baggage claims.

I didn’t take Sam on a trip to learn life lessons, but I did take away a few that inform the kind of culture I want him to experience, not only on any given Sunday but also in our family and church.

1. Community is not dead

On the trip I saw a refrigerator magnet that read, “I’m having people over to stare at their phones later if you want to come by.” It’s a humorous but sad reflection on the negative effects of our screens. But what I saw in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot was anything but a gathering of screen zombies. People were alive with conversation, throwing the football, playing cornhole, preparing food, and prognosticating about their team’s chances. There may have been occasional looks at a phone to remember who the Lions’ new kicker is, but people were present with one another. For all the wonders our screens can afford, we long for face-to-face connection. A shared love of sports is an excuse to know that we are not alone.

2. Shared allegiances create shortcuts for connection

As we made our rounds to different tailgating groups, it would have felt out of place to ask our new friends what kind of music they listen to or who they voted for or their perspective on immigration in America. We were there because of a shared love of football, so we primarily talked about football.

Why doesn’t this translate to the church? What brings our church members together from different nations and cultures is Jesus. So why do we tend to talk so little to one another about the reason we all showed up?

I don’t mean this to be censorious, and I certainly don’t mean that you can’t chat about football or politics at church. I simply bring a “Why not?” to how we think about our interactions on Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, and at Home Groups. If I can fly to Kansas City and back and, throughout the entire trip, talk to complete strangers about a football game because of the team name on their clothing, why can’t we be more proactive about talking to one another at church about the Savior who brings us together? These are doubtless much more personal conversations, but they are worth it! Next time you are mingling after the service, ask someone what they learned from God’s word that week or how they became a Christian or who some of their spiritual heroes are. Let’s take advantage of our shared allegiance to Jesus and enjoy the deeper connection we have in him.

3. Imagination flows from immersion

Samuel and I did not find ourselves amongst a sea of football fans by accident. My brother, best friend, and I planned this five months ago. And it made sense to plan this trip because for 17 weeks every fall and winter, we are immersed in the NFL season. Since we watch the games on our sofas we can imagine attending the game in person. Had my friend asked me to fly to Kansas City to watch a NASCAR race or a golf tournament or attend a heavy metal concert I would have told him he was crazy. But the immersion gave us the imagination to make this trip a reality.

What might we immerse ourselves in more to enhance our kingdom imagination? We could learn stories of heroes of the faith who have sacrificed greatly to show Christ’s love to those who need to experience it. We can pray daily for one of the 5,000 frontier people groups in the world who have virtually no followers of Jesus and no one currently taking the gospel there. We can ask friends at other churches what they are doing to show and share the saving power of Jesus. When we read the Bible we can remember that these are real and fallible people that God’s Spirit empowered to magnify God’s reputation in extraordinary ways. Imagine the kingdom ventures such immersion could produce when radical deeds of love and gospel witness are normalized!

We have more to offer and more to experience in Christ’s gospel than the National Football League could dream of. May God empower and mobilize us to share it well.

Like the coal from the heavenly altar that had cleansed Isaiah’s own impurity (“your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” [Isaiah 6:7]), the suffering servant, through his “offering for guilt…[shall] make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:10-11).

Last week viewers of Fox News heard a different gospel. In an interview, President Trump said, “I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.” A few days later he told radio host Todd Starnes, “There has to be some kind of a report card up there someplace, you know, like ‘let’s go to heaven, let’s get into heaven.’ It’s sort of a beautiful thing.” The context of the first comment was the war in Ukraine. President Trump said, “I just want to end it. If I can save 7,000 people a week from getting killed, that’s pretty good…If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

My first reaction to these words was deep sorrow. It hit me that even as I am meditating on the profound truth that we are made right with God through the sacrifice of another, the most powerful man in the world is meditating on whether his peacemaking efforts will be good enough to accomplish the same thing. While Isaiah announces atonement, the President fixates on his report card.

My next reaction to this was anger. President Trump has given more access to evangelical leaders—those whose lives and teaching center on the evangel, the gospel—than any other president in American history. His support among evangelicals has cleared 80% in all three elections. Photographs abound of religious leader praying over President Trump. Yet his comments raise the question: has anyone actually shared the good news with him? Has anyone who has his ear told him that the suffering servant, Jesus Christ, “bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24)? That Jesus “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18)? That we are raised up to heaven’s glories by grace through faith in Jesus, “not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:6-9)?

Perhaps they have. Perhaps they have shared this good news with the President dozens of times. Perhaps the language of grace is foreign to him because it is a foreign language to all of us. Even those of us who have professed Jesus as Lord wake up most mornings wondering where we are on the proverbial totem pole, nervous about what kind of grades we will get today on the heavenly report card. Most mornings I need reminding that that there is no ladder to heaven by which I work myself up to God. Rather, there is a cross by which God came down to us so he could reconcile the enmity my transgressions created. I need reminding that there is no report card of my good works. The only GPA that matters is that of Jesus, who perfectly trusted and obeyed his Father. As I pray the Lord’s Prayer each morning, I need to be reminded that I can only call God “Our Father” when I am joined to Jesus the perfect Son—whose sacrifice I receive, in whose faithfulness I rest.

Pray for President Trump. If the longevity of his parents is any indication, he may have about a decade left on this earth. Pray that, before he meets the Judge of all, he will abandon his efforts to do enough good to please Heaven and set his hope entirely on Christ. Pray that the evangelical support he will care about most is that of the evangel, the message of first importance: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised…and that he appeared” (1 Corinthians 15:3-5).

Pray for your neighbors, friends, and family who do not trust in Christ. Even though their opinions about how one gets to heaven are not broadcast on national news, they likely share the assumptions of the President. Pray for the Spirit to convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8) such that they cry out, like the Philippian jailer, “What must I do to be saved?” Pray that you would have an opportunity to answer them like Paul did to the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:30-31).

Finally, pray for yourself. As you slow down to pay attention to your functional beliefs—whether trust in your own good works to be right with God, comparing yourself with others to gauge how loved you are, or some other false gospel—pray that the Spirit would relax you until all your expectation of divine approval and acceptance rests in Christ alone. May your witness to Jesus as Savior, whether to presidents or preschoolers, flow from a heart saturated with this grace.

I never bring an agenda into vacation. My only goals are the ones I seek to practice every week when I take a Sabbath day: to cease from work and to enjoy God and his good gifts.

This year my time at the beach took a turn toward the ancient. I realize this is a relative word—perhaps my children would use it to describe me. But I simply mean anything that transports us out of the current era into something older and enduring.

For example, my uncle brought a box of my grandparents’ personal effects to the beach, including a collection of letters that my grandfather wrote to my grandmother when he was in France for World War II. Pop was 54 years old when I was born, so I primarily knew him in his senior years. But through these letters I was transported to the days when he was a tall, skinny kid awkwardly courting a gal he had only met seven months earlier and hoped to marry if he made it back alive. (Spoiler alert: he did.)

Standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina sent me back to something even older, to the late 1600s when my ancestors arrived from France in search of religious liberty. Following the upheaval of the Reformation, these Protestants in France had enjoyed the freedom to worship according to their convictions under the Edict of Nantes for nearly 100 years. But in 1685 the edict was replaced by another that made Protestantism illegal. Catholic dragoons brought their swords and catechisms into Protestant homes to forcibly live with them, engage every religious conversation, and convert them to the now-official religion of France. So my forebears escaped to South Carolina—landing about 70 miles from where I was standing last week—to make a new life. If our research is correct, Rachael’s Huguenot ancestors and mine were living in the Charleston area at the same time, likely aware of each other while unaware that their descendants would marry 325 years later.

Another experience of the ancient took me back more than a millennium before the Protestant Reformation. I felt the urge to hear some very old sermons and found John Chrysostom’s homilies on Matthew. Preached in the 390s, these messages engage the text with extraordinary thoughtfulness and care. I was enriched by hearing the “golden-mouthed” (the meaning of his nickname, Chrysostom) give exhortations like this:

“Do you see not even the eyes of the body, that when they abide in smoke they are always weeping; but when they are in clear air, and in a meadow, and in fountains and gardens, they become more quicksighted and more healthy? Like this is the soul's eye also, for should it feed in the meadow of spiritual oracles, it will be clear and piercing, and quick of sight; but should it depart into the smoke of the things of this life, it will weep without end, and wail both now and hereafter. For indeed the things of this life are like smoke.”

Chrysostom’s sermon closed with this call to engage God’s word:

“Let us not therefore despise the hearing of the divine Scriptures. For this is of Satan's devising; not suffering us to see the treasure, lest we should gain the riches.”1

Along with these experiences of the ancient were a few experiences of the powerful. One night we witnessed a spectacular storm across the creek. As you can see in the picture, this lit up the night sky with beauty and authority. Storms and other natural events are some of the reminders that, despite humanity’s notable advances, we are still creatures who have to shape our lives around forces greater than ourselves.

Sam is at the age when he is learning how to body surf, so we spent a lot of time watching for waves that we could ride into shore together. Maximizing the experience requires aligning your body and momentum with the direction and inertia of the wave. If you jump against the wave you quickly learn how powerful it is. If you do nothing you will get pushed down by it without going very far. But if you move with the wave you can go a long way. Time after time I experienced the exhilaration of the wave’s force. Carried along at a speed much faster than I could ever swim, I rode in its strength from waist-deep waters to the shallows.

Such is life in the Spirit. When we yield ourselves to the powerful love of God and align ourselves with the direction of his gospel truth, we can experience things beyond our natural capacity. Like Jesus’ disciples who marveled at the authority given them (“Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” [Luke 10:17]) or Peter who, filled with the Spirit, preached with unction to thousands at Pentecost, the ancient—actually, eternal—and powerful Spirit of God can empower joyful endurance through trials, love for enemy, and gifts for serving one another beyond what we expected was possible.

This was my vacation: playing in the Creator’s sandbox with no agenda to learn anything, yet hearing the invitation to align with the mighty flow of his love—a flow that sent his Son to us and sends us into the world to bear witness to Christ’s resurrection.

While washing dishes on a December evening in 2017, I listened to a podcast in which one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims told her story of how the Hollywood producer, using his established reputation and influence, ended up naked with her in a hotel room. Those details recalled a memory of my own from 15 years earlier, when I traveled with Paul Pressler.

Judge Pressler was a legend in the “conservative resurgence” of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which I was raised, ordained, and serving. I was starstruck not only to meet the judge but also, within an hour, to be invited to assist him on a speaking tour. On the first morning of that tour, following Pressler’s explanation of how he took a “locker room” approach to showers, we both stood naked in a hotel room.

The parallels between the Weinstein survivor’s story and mine sent me reeling. I reached out to a friend who also knew Pressler and was a safe person to tell.

After listening, he sent me a link: Earlier that very day, The Texas Tribune had reported on a lawsuit brought against Paul Pressler by Duane Rollins. It shared many of the marks of my story—a hotel room, undesired nudity, verbal grooming—plus horrendous details farther down the dark path, with Rollins alleging that Pressler raped him repeatedly.

For years, I had searched the internet for “Paul Pressler … abuse … young men” every few months. And then, on the day when the wretchedness of how Pressler had abused his power hit me with visceral force, there was Rollins saying, “You’re not the only one.”

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Two weeks after I wrote this, I heard Russell Moore speak at a politically conservative gathering of evangelicals in Phoenix. When he was asked what we do with Donald Trump—a person who doesn’t live out our values but appears to be the GOP candidate—Russell said, “Maybe we sit this one out.” The room was silent except for a few groans. The answer did not work for that group, and it felt like a sign of things to come for never-Trump evangelicals.

I share the article here in the hopes that evangelicals can continue to give voice to a kingdom-over-country, Jesus-centered faith that both transcends the outrage of each day and speaks prophetically into it as we see the story of Trump and power continue.

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, and unless the polls are wildly inaccurate, Donald Trump will galvanize his lead as the Republican presidential front-runner. Should Trump secure the nomination, he will be the first major-party presidential candidate with no political or military experience since Wendell Willkie ran against FDR in 1940. This has journalists asking the simple question: why Trump?

If the spate of articles1 addressing this question is correct, the answer involves a rising sense of hopelessness and disempowerment among white, middle-aged, middle-income Americans with no college degree (the same demographic that has recently seen a spike in suicides and heroin addictions). They are nauseated by political correctness, distrustful toward institutions, and fed up with two-faced politicians. They feel like they have lost their country to outsiders and want a man in the high office who exudes the very power they no longer have, a freewheeling, straight-talker untethered to special interest money and political favors. Their man is Donald Trump.

My interest here is not with Trump himself. Whether he fizzles out before the convention or serves two terms as president, the despair facing this segment of his support base is a new fixture in our national landscape. That is the story of the election for a church called to make disciples of all nations, ours included. So how do we understand the issue of disempowerment through the gospel lens of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation? How might that perspective comfort and confront those in despair?

Let’s look at an overview of a biblical theology of power:

• Creation – God created humans in his image to exercise dominion over his good creation.

• Fall – Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God disrupted the whole created order, including the proper use of power in relationships and over nature.

• Redemption – Jesus, God in flesh, employed his divine power to defeat the power of sin, Satan, and death through his crucifixion and resurrection on our behalf.

• New Creation – When Jesus returns to consummate his new creation, he will restore equity, prosperity, harmony, and the right use of power.

This should be news of comfort for disempowered Middle Americans. According to the biblical story, the desire for proper dominion is God-given and the loss or misuse of power is part of the curse. In other words, the Bible validates grief over disempowerment. During his earthly ministry, Jesus decried abusers of power and associated with the marginalized, promising that the meek would inherit the earth. For those who trust in Jesus, the story ends with God on the throne and his people reigning forever. Power will be restored.

Yet this gospel narrative also confronts as much as it comforts. If the reports from the campaign trail are accurate, the brand of empowerment craved by Trump supporters carries an exclusionary flavor with no space for migrants, Muslims, or minorities. Even though America’s existence and prosperity hinged on the disempowerment of Native Americans and Africans, addressing these injustices is not considered as a just cause alongside the cry for white, Middle America’s restoration.

The gospel confronts, challenges, even rebukes at these points. Jesus is building a kingdom “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The only way to true, eternal empowerment is through sharing that kingdom with redeemed sinners of every ethnicity. And because the consummation of this kingdom lies at Jesus’ triumphant return, his followers are called now to employ their power to serve the most vulnerable of society—the immigrant, the fatherless, and the widow.

This election cycle has highlighted a new mission field: neighbors experiencing a hopelessness that no politician can satisfy. Whatever this means in the short-term for our nation, let us keep eternity in view and faithfully proclaim the gospel of the kingdom in all its offensive, redemptive power.

One of the great features of Jesus’ victory over death is the courage that hope inspires. “Because he lives, I can face tomorrow” we sang on Sunday. “Because he lives, all fear is gone.” As we sang this, I was thinking about one church member who has been placed in hospice care, another who recently had a stroke, and still another suffering from excruciating back pain. Multiple people came forward for prayer during the service because they needed the courage that hope affords to make it through unique challenges. Even apart from our individual circumstances, our nation is going through the type of social and political upheaval reminiscent of the late 1960s and early 1970s when a pregnant Gloria Gaither pondered bringing up this child in such a world, felt her panic assuaged by meditating on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and penned the words to the beloved song.

Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us that Jesus died so that he could “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Whether the death we fear is actual physical death or the death of an institution, a way of life, a relationship, or a democracy, there is nothing we can lose that Jesus cannot raise. This enables us to affirm together, “All fear is gone.”

Yet what often gets lost in the pastel swirl of eggs and chocolate bunnies is what actually dispels our fears. It is not—as some might assume from looking at all the glitzy Easter social media church promos—a facile, generic affirmation that everything will be fun and happy in the end. No, what dispels our fear of death is a more profound fear, namely, the fear of a man who rose from the dead.

Think of the last open-casket funeral you attended. What would happen if the deceased, surrounded by misty-eyed loved ones, suddenly sat up in the coffin? Shrieks, screams, and mayhem—that is what would happen! This is not normal. People don’t come alive again. This is why Mark’s gospel ends with the women who went to anoint Jesus’ corpse fleeing from the tomb after hearing the angel’s message that Jesus had risen, “for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

This echoes earlier reactions to Jesus’ displays of power. When Simon saw the nets breaking at the haul of fish after a night of catching nothing, the authority of the Son of Man over nature caused him to fall down at Jesus’ knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). When Jesus calmed the raging storm with a simple word, the prospect of being in the same boat as a man with such power filled the disciples “with great fear” (Mark 4:41). On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John “were terrified” (Mark 9:6).

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a Get Out of Death Free card that enables us to go along our merry way and do our own thing. It is a jarring, unsettling, terrifying intrusion of the supernatural into our natural world. It breaks the laws of normalcy we thought we could assume. And it displaces our fear of death not by minimizing the power of death but by dwarfing it with uncreated, transcendent, un-killable and all-powerful Life. “All fear is gone” in the sense that the dread of death has been swallowed up in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when we bow the knee to this King, dread is replaced by a new kind of fear—“let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29).

Nothing was the same for the disciples after they saw their risen Lord and received the Holy Spirit. And nothing should be the same for us either. We can live fearlessly in this age because we belong to another, a city whose dimensions and atmosphere are proportionate to the Holy of Holies, where there is no temple “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:22-23) Even as we pay our bills, cheer for our team, and participate in American civic life, let us live in reverent awe of our risen King. May we never get over Easter but lean into it ever more, until its weight and splendor engulf our every step home.

Have you ever given that answer to someone when they asked how things have been going?

The literal ups and downs of the amusement park ride—not to mention the oscillating joy and terror of riding it—give a fair representation of what life can be like. A promotion at work, time spent with old friends, an extended vacation, or an invigorating hike through the woods can bring delight into our lives. Likewise, an expensive car repair, a sharp disagreement with a friend, the loss of a job, or bad news about a loved one’s health can plunge us into the depths. The French have a phrase for it: “C’est la vie.” That’s life.

The Scriptures do not sugarcoat the way life in our fallen world can be. Take as an example the life of Joseph. God gives him dreams of greatness and his father gives him a special coat, lifting him up above his brothers. Then his brothers cast him down into a well and plot to kill him. But he is lifted back up out of the well and sold into slavery in Egypt, eventually raised to the position of chief over Potiphar’s house. But then he is falsely accused and thrown down into prison where he is forgotten by everyone but God. After years in the dungeon, he is lifted up to tell Pharaoh’s dream and raised to the second most powerful position in all of Egypt. C’est la vie.

It should not surprise us that humans throughout the Scriptures—Noah, Moses, Ruth, David, Esther, Daniel—experienced the ups and downs of life. What is shocking, however, is that God the Creator, the one whose existence is not bound to ups and downs, who transcends the roller coaster, chose to get on board. In the incarnation, when the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), God the Son chose to enter our experiences of highs and lows, of beauty and betrayal. Jesus was with us in our world of broken families, shame, divisive politics, and violence.

Nowhere is this more densely and poignantly displayed than in Holy Week. It is very possible that the week before Palm Sunday, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. What a high—raising this dead friend back to life then reenacting Solomon’s ride into Jerusalem to claim the crown as king! But at our Maundy Thursday service we trace the steep descent that went into Good Friday—betrayal by one disciple, abandonment by the others, denied by Peter, a sham trial that led to excruciating scourging and, finally, crucifixion. Jesus plunged from the heights of glory to the deepest depths of shame and, ultimately, death. And then, on the third day, the greatest lifting up in the history of the world: the resurrection.

The power of the Word made flesh is that, whatever heights you have enjoyed on life’s roller coaster, Jesus has been higher still. Whatever depths you have descended into, Jesus knows even deeper, God-forsaken depths. This truth is not meant to minimize your joys or sorrows. Rather, it means you don’t have to fear that the good times will inevitably lead to disappointment or that the bad times will never end. “That’s life” can become a very real yet relativized statement, because Jesus came to give us resurrection life that transcends ups and downs. He rode the roller coaster so that, when the ride is over, he could usher us into a new existence. We get tastes of it now when, by the Spirit, we know the “peace that surpasses all understanding” in the midst of upheaval, like Jesus resting in the midst of the storm.

Let us walk through this Holy Week—with all its crests and valleys—resting in Jesus, grateful for his presence with us on the roller coaster, and buoyed by hope for the day when he will bring us into the unveiled presence of the triune God where we will forever say, “That’s life.”

The Firehose was the explicit strategy of Steve Bannon in the first Trump administration. “All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer.”

It has been a Russian disinformation tactic. According to the RAND Corporation’s assessment of the Russian Firehose of Falsehood, “Two of its distinctive features [are] high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”

The Firehose has been used by abusers to keep their victims confused and docile.

And for those who live with a particularly active inner critic, it is something you live with every day.

The book of Isaiah records a chilling deployment of the Firehose during the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. And the response of King Hezekiah and his leaders gives us a model for how we can engage it today.

When the story picks up, the Assyrians had already defeated numerous petty kingdoms and, according to King Sennacherib’s own account of his campaign against Judah, “I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts, and to the countless small villages in their vicinity.” Only Jerusalem was left. The aggressors were hoping to simply ask for the palace keys so they could complete their conquest without expending any more lives or resources. Toward that end, the king’s spokesman unleashed the Firehose in a speech to Jerusalem officials and those who sat on the city walls, using no fewer than seven rapid-fire tactics (Isaiah 36:4-20):

• Shame – for trusting in Egypt whose military at the time was as unreliable as a splintered staff

• Disinformation – representing King Hezekiah’s righteous religious reforms as disobedient

• Taunts – offering to provide Judah with horses to make the battle more even, all the while exposing their vast military inferiority

• Spiritual abuse – playing the God card with claims that Judah’s God had commanded the Assyrians to attack

• Panic – threatening that the impending siege would result in residents drinking their own urine and eating their own feces

• False Promises – glossy portrayals of idyllic, fruitful life in Assyrian exile

• Belittling – lumping in YHWH with the impotent gods of the other peoples and refusing to call Hezekiah “King”

The force of these, to use Bannon’s phrase, is the “muzzle velocity”—the relentless rapidity at which the varied assaults came. By the time you begin to formulate a response to the first tactic, the second is already on its way. By the time you have been ambushed by all seven, you don’t even know which way is up. There’s nothing to say because you don’t know where to begin.

What does it look like to live a life of faith when every time you turn on the news or open social media you encounter the Firehose’s relentless blast?

King Hezekiah and his leaders model four responses that show the way with startling relevance.

Silence

“But they were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, ‘Do not answer him’” (Isaiah 36:21).

Step one is to stop doomscrolling and take a deep breath. Or 20.

We all feel the tension of the internet meme: “My desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.” And into that tension the ancient account of King Hezekiah’s call for silence reminds us that even under imminent existential threat we must step out of the blast of the Firehose.

Unplug, step outside, and obey the invitation of Jesus to those soaked in worry and fear:

“Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God… Walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it?” (Matthew 6:26, 28, The Message)

Lament

“As soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD” (Isaiah 37:1).

Silence gives us space to feel—then express—grief and anger. The ancient practice of tearing clothes gives physical expression to the tearing of the heart that a crisis has caused. This is a first cousin to what modern psychology calls “completing the stress cycle.” When we slow down long enough to feel what is being lost, we may need to express it through weeping or stillness or exercise or identifying emotions with a feelings wheel or, my personal favorite, hacking yard overgrowth with a machete.

The invitation here is to express holistically our lament over what is being taken away.

Naming

“This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace” (Isaiah 37:3).

King Hezekiah’s words may call to mind the words of American leaders that put meaning to a moment of crisis, whether it was FDR calling the attack on Pearl Harbor “a date which will live in infamy” or Martin Luther King, Jr. writing from a Birmingham jail that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Naming—the first power given to God’s image bearers—is a key way to regain ourselves, our voice, and our power after we’ve been blasted by the Firehose. We do not accept the terms and conditions that have avalanched our eyes and ears. The pause we give to silence and lament buys us time to declare what we know to be true, to refuse the sway of those who would rewrite the narrative.

Prayer

“Lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left” (Isaiah 37:4).

The Firehose confuses even our right impulses to pray. We know we should pray. But pray for what? Silence, lament, and naming bring us to the place where we can embrace both the complexity of the information onslaught and the simplicity of dependence on God.

The central role of prayer is a reminder that, as much as we may think that we have named reality for the sake of our social media post or retort to our ideologically opposed family member, the essential first destination of our words is to the One who alone can actually do something about it. There is a role for sharing our responses and ruminations with one another in that ever-elusive spot between overreacting and affirming that others are not alone in their bewilderment. But what ultimately grounds and centers us is when we ground and center our expectation of action and justice on the Almighty.

In Hezekiah’s case, God did answer:

“And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.” (Isaiah 37:36)

I don’t pretend to have a robust vision of how the church can bear witness to the love and authority of Jesus in these days when the Firehose is on full blast. But I know that if our faithful response begins with silence, lament, naming, and prayer, we will be more closely aligned with our Lord’s petition that centers all reality not on human hubris but on the reputation and rule of our Father in Heaven.

I’m two weeks in to a month of sabbatical, which means that I finally started feeling the itch to get my hands dirty and work in the yard. To my delight, there was small garden area by the driveway overgrown with Bermuda grass ready to oblige me.

We do not have Bermuda grass in our front yard. We used to, but when a collapsed sewer drain required the plumbing team to dig up most of our meadowy “yard” three years ago, we chose a different kind of grass for the reset. So as I dug with shovel and by hand, I was digging deep into a very old and resilient substructure of roots and runners.

For me, at least, the time-intensive, physical act of weeding (grassing?) often catalyzes a parallel spiritual experience of digging, asking the Spirit to reveal what lies in the depths that I have yet to expend time and attention to notice. And today, with recent attacks on people I love swirling around in my head, I noticed both anger and sorrow.

When I pulled on these runners, I thought they would go upward to the tall, obvious grass above the surface. A new book is out that alleges to expose major evangelical leaders as shills for a leftist agenda. The book is nearly unavoidable—from the NY Times bestseller list to e-mails in my inbox to the first book promoted in my Audible app. And the few reviews I have read clued me in that its guns were trained on my subdivision of evangelicalism, where Tim Keller’s winsomeness is valued rather than reviled, where Russell Moore’s forays into addressing racial prejudice and sexual abuse are seen as Biblical faithfulness rather than leftward drift, where Beth Moore’s solidarity with silenced women is lauded as heroism rather than condemned as heresy.

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But the runners my hands follow don’t rise up to the grass proliferating above the surface. That would be much easier, to lay all the blame on the voices du jour and their posts and podcasts and publications. Rather, as I pull on the infrastructure of this grass it goes down deeper, deeper into the soil where the true lament lies. And what I lament there is cruelty.

I was raised in the South where we left our Reagan/Bush ’84 bumper sticker on the pickup truck well after the election. While my friends in 6th grade were listening to Guns N’ Roses or Def Leppard, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh or Wes Minter, Atlanta’s voice of conservative talk radio. In these circles we upvoted facts and downvoted feelings. We ridiculed brainless liberals who fought for the environment rather than defending unborn human beings. We assumed that poor people were simply lazy. And we shot down, with deep-seated ferocity, anything that even hinted of being gay. I was about as deep fried in Southern, white, conservative evangelicalism as anyone could be.

As I scan those years and the people who shaped me, I cannot think of one person who I would describe as cruel. They are wonderful people. Yet—and this is the insidious part—there was a cumulative cruelty about our homogeneous, suburban context that only became clear after I left and replayed the tape on a different day in a different place.

The misogyny has been exposed through being married to a sweet, strong woman who pinpoints words and presuppositions that devalue women. The racism has been exposed through friendships with African-Americans and noticing how differently I perceive the treatment of young black men now that I’m raising black sons. The homophobia has been exposed through honest conversations with close friends who have had the courage to tell their stories of same sex attraction in the context of faithfulness to Jesus. The assumptions about poverty have been exposed by living in Appalachia among poor whites and in urban centers among poor blacks and Native Americans. The nativism has been exposed by living in a border state and meeting amazing human beings that some reduce to “illegal.” The suspicion about power differentials has been exposed by hearing one abuse survivor story after another in which a parent or pastor’s power was leveraged to silence victims.

I feel anger and sorrow because this cumulative cruelty took root in the soil where we heard that patience and gentleness were the fruit of the Spirit, where we boldly proclaimed the sanctity of life, where we valued truth. Yet somehow this soil also nurtured unkindness rather than choking it out.

The people being charged with selling out to a leftist agenda—many of whom I know, admire, and am privileged to count as friends—are generally characterized by humility, compassion, nuance, and kindness. Also, most of them are still quite theologically conservative. As am I. I have not left the fold for a leftist agenda. I still hold views that actual leftists would call bigoted and narrow-minded. I have simply been awakened to the syncretism, the un-Christlike mean-spiritedness inherent in the political right that has infiltrated evangelicalism.

When I hear the attacks on those seeking the way of Jesus over the priorities of a certain sociopolitical group, I grieve a broader evangelicalism that would turn such a book into a bestseller. I grieve the context of harm in which these attacks are situated and how far it feels from the ethical life and teachings of Jesus. Ultimately, I grieve the fact that, had I not moved outside of my white, Southern, evangelical bubble, I might consider cruelty a necessary means of winning a cause that I thought had something to do with Jesus.

Toward the end of my hours of removing the Bermuda grass, I dug up something I wasn’t expecting: a strip of drywall screws. I don’t know how they got there, but it was an unsettling discovery as I thought of what they could do to an unsuspecting person’s bare feet. There is a role for drywall screws when they bind Sheetrock to wood as part of a safe house. But they have no place in a garden.

I am under no delusion that I can rid the church of all the sharp objects and wild growth that obscure the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that grows abundantly in so many gatherings of Jesus’ disciples. But as I lament the cumulative cruelty that has marked the culture in which I was raised, I can also resolve to lead my own family and church to worry less about right, left, or any other category that belongs to this age. I can speak my piece against the syncretism I have emerged from and that constantly threatens—from the left and right—to water down our allegiance to King Jesus and his eternal rule. And I can be part of something generative rather than destructive, to nurture fruit from the age to come that beckons our neighbors to join this life in Jesus as we wait for him to make all things new.

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On this day 47 years ago, I was born. I did not have any say in the matter. There was a time I did not exist, a time I did, then a time when I entered the breathing world. Everything provided for me in the months that followed–feeding, changing, medical care, shelter–was provided by others. I was entirely at their mercy, and mercifully they met my needs.

I know all of this, of course, because I am still here, not because I remember any of it. The story I am told is that, while Dad was getting his career with Delta off the ground, Mama and I lived with Mimi and Papa during my first 5 weeks. Yet I have no recollection of this period, though my care was the central concern of the household.

The existence of such a category of life–cared for yet unaware–is fertile ground for existential musings. How is it that I was being loved without feeling loved? How was I the beneficiary of others’ sleepless nights, financial sacrifices, and communal effort without being conscious of it? How did my very survival depend on a level of care I could not even comprehend until I began caring for my own helpless, needy children?

These are humbling questions to ponder. The longer I pause over this time in my life, the less credit I can take for anything I have accomplished in the years since. I certainly applied myself in school, etc., but those early years were the sine qua non, the period without which the rest of my life would not have occurred.

Such is the wonderment of our spiritual life in Christ. Because each believer’s entrance into the family of God came about with the decision to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead” (Romans 10:9), we can develop the mistaken idea that our spiritual existence owes largely to our effort. This is the spiritual equivalent of a 5 year-old hearing “Happy Birthday” sung as a tribute to his self-determination.

The fuller story begins not with us unaware but uncreated. Paul locates the origins of our life in Christ “before the foundations of the world” when God “chose us in him” and “predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:4, 5). The Father brought this about in real time when he “caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1:3), born of the Spirit (John 3:8), such that even our confession of faith in Jesus is revealed to be a gift (Ephesians 2:8, Philippians 1:29).

Meditating on this “cared for yet unaware” period of our spiritual life should enhance our awe and intensify our gratitude that we are alive at all. When we are privileged to observe the conversion of another unbeliever and change some spiritual diapers, the experience accentuates the miracle of our own life. We realize how little it had to do with us and launch into an eternity of pondering and praising “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

If you are a believer in Jesus, then you were born. There was a time you had no spiritual life, and now you do. Take a deep breath, bask in the mystery, and give thanks to your Father who brought this about.

Embedded in the curse was the introduction of strife and an imbalance of power. God told the serpent of the enmity it would have with the woman and told Eve, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:15–16). However you interpret these predictions, the ensuing chapters of Genesis—­Cain killing Abel, Abraham calling Sarah his sister, Rebekah and Jacob deceiving Isaac and Esau, Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery—­bear out the manipulation and misuse of power that have characterized human families and society until the present day.

Our cries of “Maranatha!” anticipate an end of power plays, one-­upmanship, and exploitation. After those who belong to Jesus are resurrected “at his coming . . . then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:23–24). At long last the world will be rid of war. God will be King and all will be at rest.

Sabbath is your weekly opportunity to listen to this news rather than the twenty-­four-­hour news cycle that reports stories of betrayal, uprisings, murder, and abuse through our ubiquitous screens. Detach, unplug, and tune in to the eternal news story that will play when Jesus returns: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

This may feel challenging for those who passionately pursue justice in this life. Why not spend every waking moment working for the oppressed? William Wilberforce, the British politician who fought for dozens of just causes, most notably the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, recognized that an incessant labor for good things could both dull his effectiveness and bloat his ego. He saw fellow members of Parliament lose their lives to burnout and their souls to arrogance. His remedy was Sabbath observance. In his journal he wrote, “Blessed be God for the day of rest and religious occupations wherein earthly things assume their true size and ambition is stunted.”1

Still, this is a lot to ask for those who carry the scars of abuse or cannot turn off the prejudice of others. I’m not suggesting that we bury our heads in the sand to pretend that bad things aren’t happening. I am suggesting that our weekly Sabbath serve as a time to zoom out from the immediate injustices of our lives and the world around us to focus on the end of the story when Jesus puts things right. Murderers, the sexually immoral, cowards, and liars will not be part of this new Jerusalem. Rather, God will dwell with his redeemed people once his work of making all things new—­including our sin-­bent hearts—­is finished (Rev. 21:1–8).

A weekly Sabbath invites us to tune in entirely to this final rule of God. One way we can enter this reality is through meditating on the first half of the prayer Jesus taught us. We are to pray, “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9–13 CSB).

This is, at its essence, a prayer for Christ’s return. As such, it can be used as a meditation on what he will bring about at that return. Take time on your Sabbath to ponder a world where God’s name—­his character, reputation, and renown—­is honored as holy. Contemplate the rule of God being complete in the individuals, families, and communities around you. Allow your sanctified imagination to ponder life when God’s desires are carried out by everyone on earth with the same immediacy and delight with which they are carried out by those in heaven.

Again, this is not living in denial. It is embracing our conviction that our context of mistreatment, injustice, disregard, and lies will one day come to an end. “Everything in the world—­ the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions . . . is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever” (1 John 2:16–17 CSB). When we envision the fulfillment of the Lord’s Prayer, we lean into our future and find strength to live under God’s rule the other six days of the week.

Doubtless there are thousands who go by that name, but I want to tell you about two of them, both heroes of mine.

One was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1911. I came across his book, The Work of the Pastor, in late 2000 when I realized God had made me to be a pastor. My uncle set up an appointment with his minister, who talked to me about pastoral ministry and handed me the book at the end. In its pages I read of the simplicity of pastoral work: “The pastor feeds the flock upon God’s word.”

These words emerged from Rev. Still’s 52 years of ministry at the same church, Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen. He had no interest in the bells and whistles of the day and mourned how the church tended to devolve into a Spiritless country club. He pushed back on the pressure to entertain rather than feed. He wrote,

“Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness. Do we really believe that the Word of God, by His Spirit, changes, as well as maddens men? If we do, to be evangelists and pastors, feeders of sheep, we must be men of the Word of God.”

Rev. Still simplified church life to family gatherings for word, prayer, and fellowship. He emphasized the role of Christian character among God’s people as that which commends the gospel to the lost. He worked hard, rested well, loved his people with tenderness, and invested in the next generation of gospel ministers.

Long after I cut my teeth on The Work of the Pastor, I learned of another man named William Still who was a shepherd of a different sort and also wrote about it in a book.

This William Still was born in 1821. His parents had been enslaved on a farm in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His father bought his freedom and, eight years later, his mother escaped with her four children but was recaptured and locked away. Shortly after her release she escaped again, making the heartrending decision to only take two of her children. She reunited with her husband in New Jersey. William was their youngest of 18 children.

When this William Still was 23 years old, he moved to Philadelphia and a few years later became a clerk for the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. During an era when education was withheld and sometimes prohibited for Blacks, Mr. Still taught himself to read and write using every grammar and reading book he could find. He soon became involved with the Underground Railroad as a “conductor,” which became risky work even in Philadelphia with the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The act made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves, even in free states.

Philadelphia became a significant destination in the Underground Railroad, especially for those making their way to freedom from Maryland and Delaware by foot and Virginia and North Carolina by ship. William Still was there in Philadelphia to welcome them, find them a safe house (usually with Quakers) where they could lay low, and then send them to a place of greater safety. It is estimated that he helped nearly 1,000 escaped slaves on their way to freedom.

As he did this, Mr. Still asked the liberated person to share his or her story. He collected these stories and published them in 1872 as The Underground Railroad. It is the single most significant written record about the workings of the Underground Railroad. You can view the nearly 800 page book for free on The Library of Congress’ website.

One of the most extraordinary accounts is that of a man named Peter who came to the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in search of his parents. Peter told of his older brother who was whipped to death in Alabama for visiting his wife without permission. While this story would crush any person with a conscience, it did even more for William Still. He knew that story, because word had travelled north that that is how one of his brothers—left behind by his mother in Maryland—had died. Mid-story he burst out, "What if I told you I was your brother!” William was able to reunite Peter with their mother 42 years after her painful decision to leave him behind.

Like Rev. William Still who would live a century later across the pond in Scotland, Mr. William Still was a devout Presbyterian, serving as an elder in the church and organizing Sunday School and outreach so that Black youths could hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and grow in their faith. His book is saturated with biblical references and admonitions to Christlikeness. Like the man who would later share his name, he knew that deeds of love displayed the truth of the gospel that Christ died for our sins.

We can find heroes in all ethnicities and cultures. During this Black History Month, may we find new heroes that can inspire us to lives of courage, faithfulness, justice, and peace in such a way that magnifies the reputation of our Creator.