How long, O Lord?
Will I have to fight him forever?

Every night I’m back in the arena,
staring down the giant.

I hate him,
for he is hateable.

Loud, obnoxious,
as full of avarice as he is power.

Either he dies, or I do.
Either he dies, or my people die.

He delights in destruction and pain.
He wants his own way, and others suffer in his wake.

My anger is a fire, burning within.
Break his teeth, crush him, fell him with your righteous right hand!

For you, O Lord, detest what is evil.
You, O Lord, cripple the proud and bring them low.

You despise all who seek to lift themselves high,
you humiliate those who long for their own glory.

You allow folks to go their own way,
for in their going they find themselves utterly alone.

But I, your servant, am not alone,
for you are with me; your rod and staff comfort and uphold me.

May your strength be mine once more
as I seek to do your bidding and bring this giant low.

I know what I must do. I’ve done it countless times.

Wait just a moment for him to turn and face.

Wait just a moment for his arrogance to become his vulnerability.
Wait just a moment longer.

I sling my stone, and he falls.
I rush for the kill and take his head.

I have slain the great giant.
The evil one is now dead.

He dies like he always does, in horror, in shock.
His own self-love was not self-awareness.
He knew nothing of his vulnerabilities.
My spirit surges with the pride of victory.

As I remove the helmet to look upon my kill, I freeze.
This is not the face of the giant I detest.

It’s my own face that I see.
O Lord, it cannot be.

His arrogance and boisterous pride.
His pagan ways of feasting without fasting.
His appetite for blood.
His lust for flesh.
His self-dependency.
His self-sufficiency.
His self-love.

All his, is mine.

All the color leaves my face.
All the bravery vacates my heart.
All the joy of victory becomes darkness,
a shame that is suffocating.

I awake from the dream in a panic,
sweating, crying, my body shaking.

My sin is ever before me.
Against you and you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

I have cried to you so many times, break the teeth of the wicked,
and I awake to find my teeth chipped from the idols I gnaw on in secret.

I have found joy in victory over a giant on a field, adorned with armor, sling, and sword.
But I struggle to find victory here and now. No giants, no swords, just sleepless nights full of guilt, sorrow, and shame.

Where there is no victory, there is so little joy.

What kind of man steals a bride and plants a curse in her for his own pleasure?
Is my heart and boast altogether different from the giant I felled so many years ago?

I am a man of unclean lips.

I am a man of unrighteous ways.

I am a tyrant king abusing my power.

I am a giant, crushing those who are smaller than I.

I find myself longing for an embodied evil to face, a war to fight.

I swing swords better than I clean dishes.

My heart is better at war than it is in peace.

For there is no peace in me when this sin lingers.

O, my Lord, forgive me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, or I will sleep in death.

_______________________________________________

O, my sons. I pray that God gives you strength to go to battle if needed. To face giants with courage and skill. To keep your people safe from the terrors and pestilence of this world.

But there is a deeper courage you will need, my boys. The courage to come home.
Courage to face all that is evil and broken in your own heart.

For these are evils that cannot be touched by a sling or a sword.
They seek to kill you and your family.

It takes a mighty warrior to face armies and giants.
It takes far more to face lust, greed, anger, over-indulgence, fear, and shame, each day, and to find victory through the gift of the Spirit.

These enemies cannot be cut down with the skills you have learned as boys in the war camp.
For these foes, you will need humility and grace.

Humility, my boys, is strength beneath all strength. You might avoid it because it seems to be weakness, but I can assure you there is no weakness in humility. There is nothing stronger or more beautiful in all the world than a man full of humility. There are 10,000 men who can muster the strength to take a life for the sake of others. But only a man of humility is willing to lay his down for the sake of others.

My boys, that is what it means to come home. To take up this deeper strength and lay your life down for each other, for a bride, for your children, for those you lead.

I wish I knew more about this strength. Perhaps if I did, I could teach you what it means to take hold of it, to make it your very livelihood. I have known it, but only in glimpses.

Let me implore you to think on this strength often. To ask God to make it your all. To let humility shape you and transform your hatred for evil into the delight of all that is good.

Love, Dad.

[This article was originally written for a published with The Collaborative. Check out their website and other work at WeColabor.com — I am reposting the article here with permission from my good friend, the founder and Principle of the Collaborative, Dr. Case Thorp ]

LITURGY: The Rhythm That Makes Room for Joy

A final, most important piece of this puzzle.

Liturgy is the ordering dimension of celebration, not merely “church service liturgy” (though that is certainly connected), but the simple idea of structured, intentional, ordered action that invites participation.

Recall the story I opened with. That rehearsal dinner had both love and lavishness in abundance, but it lacked a liturgy, a rhythm, or order that could invite each of us into a shared expression of the love in our hearts. This is the element we most often overlook. Not because we are careless, but because we tend to believe these things should “just happen naturally.” Or worse, that if something is organized, it will lose its authenticity.

Allow me to gently argue you out of those beliefs.

Liturgy is never meant to strip an experience of authenticity; it exists to give authenticity room to breathe. It helps us know when, how, and to what degree the heart is invited to be expressed. Think of the ways you inhabit a worship space. In any public gathering, clarity is kindness.

A few weeks ago, I was performing a baptism for a young family. During the congregational charge, I said:

“Will you stand with this family in love and support as they seek to raise this child in the ways of Jesus? If so, say, ‘We will.’”

Stand or say? Which was it?

Half the congregation rose to their feet, and the other half stayed seated and simply declared, “We will!” There was no lack of love for the family; I had simply muddled the liturgy, making their participation more confusing than clear.

All large gatherings need a liturgy. The people in attendance need to know what is happening and how they are being invited to inhabit the space. One translation or meaning of the word liturgy is “the work of the people.” Celebration is no different.

At a birthday, the liturgy answers:

• When do we sing?

• When do we blow out the candles?

• When do we open presents?

• When can we speak words of encouragement to the person being celebrated?

• When do we eat the cake?

At a wedding reception, the liturgy answers:

• When do the bride and groom dance?

• When do the groomsmen reveal their slightly-too-long choreographed routine?

• If we clink glasses, do they kiss?

• WHEN DO WE EAT CAKE?

Liturgy gently inhibits certain elements of an experience so that it can invite other elements to be seen and savored more fully. It establishes the rules of the game so everyone can play freely, knowing what is in and out of bounds.

Liturgy creates space for high-energy celebration, dancing, singing, and revelry, while also quieting the room so the heartfelt words of a father can be heard by all as he blesses his daughter and new son-in-law on their first night as a married couple.

Liturgy is the skeleton of the event, giving the celebration its proper shape. But the body is filled out with the goodness and beauty of love and lavishness. At its best, liturgy doesn’t restrict love or lavishness it amplifies both. The more thoughtful, but not controlling, we are about how people may express their love to the beloved, the greater the chance that love will be expressed to the fullest.

Liturgy Alone

Liturgy without love or lavishness, however, collapses into forced participation, heartless presence, and empty praise. This is the sort of experience where you are asked to participate even when your heart is not aligned with the content of the liturgy.

You may have participated in a forced experience of liturgy from time to time and felt your heart drop a bit, hoping the moment would pass quickly. Or maybe it is during an end-of-year company celebration where everyone is asked to acknowledge a co-worker who has done “exceedingly well,” when you know they tend to act selfishly and manipulate the optics of a project to receive the lion’s share of credit from something you all participate in. Perhaps you’ve seen it happen at a restaurant when the waiters come to do the song and dance of the happy birthday song and meet the task with the excitement of going to the dentist.

Liturgy without love forces a perfunctory participation but feels very little like the fullness of celebration.

THE OVERLAPPING VENN: Where Celebration Reaches Its Joy

Now we come to the beauty of the overlap. The very heart of the anatomy. Celebration, held in three parts and converging into one whole, becomes something luminous, something deeply joyful. Each element feeds the others. Each one refines what the others bring. And when they meet, something holy happens.

Love + lavishnessness

Lavishness without love becomes indulgence in sensuality.
Love without lavishness may not make it from your heart to theirs.

But when love and lavishness meet, they create an embodied generosity, the lived experience of hospitality. These two together set tables with flowers and name cards, lay out fancy napkins, and place all the forks and spoons with almost ceremonial precision. They are the ones who dim the lights just so, who light candles and craft playlists, who say through every detail, “We knew you were coming, and we are so glad you’re here.”

In this pairing, the joy of love flows naturally into the sacrifice of time, money, and attention. The feast becomes a tangible proclamation: these people matter. Their story matters. This night stands apart because it celebrates the beloved. Lavishness becomes the language love speaks through beauty, and love becomes the soul that keeps lavishness from curving in on itself. Together they form a generosity you can taste, touch, smell, and see.

Love + Liturgy

Love without liturgy may get overlooked in the midst of a party.

Liturgy without love becomes heartless, perfunctory participation.

Love prefers intimacy. It thrives in whispers, quiet confessions, handwritten notes, and late-night conversations. But liturgy draws love into the open so the whole community can participate. When love and liturgy meet, the celebration gains a rhythm that makes room for everyone, the loud and the quiet, the outgoing and the reserved, the life-of-the-party uncle and the introverted friend who still has something beautiful to say.

These two together create the rise and fall of the evening: the toasts and the silence, the dancing and the listening, the blessing and the laughter. They gently guide the room into a holistic expression of joy. Simply being together is not enough to fully express the love of our hearts. But when liturgy joins hands with love, suddenly we are free to sing, dance, feast, pray, toast, laugh, cry, and bless. Liturgy becomes love’s megaphone — not amplifying the noise, but the meaning.

Lavishnessness + Liturgy

Lavishness without liturgy throws parties but forgets to make toasts.
Liturgy without lavishness can give us words to say, but not glasses to clink.

When lavishness and liturgy work in tandem, time becomes sacred. There is a structure for the toasts and full glasses of champagne ready to clink. There is space for dancing and a band talented enough to electrify the room. There is thought behind the seating and plates full of steak and greens set before each guest.

There is a rhythm: the opening, the feast, the blessing, the dancing, the send-off. Sparklers held high as the bride and groom run through them, radiant in the glow of their community’s joy.

Liturgy gives moments their shape; lavishness gives them their shine. Together they lift the gathering above the ordinary, turning time itself into a gift, something to savor, something to remember, something almost sacramental.

The Culmination: A Foretaste of Glory

When Love, Lavishness, and Liturgy finally converge, celebration becomes something far greater than the sum of its parts. It becomes a foretaste, a small glimpse of the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Rev 19).

In their overlap, love gains a body, lavishness gains a soul, and liturgy gains a heartbeat. The celebration, whether small or grand, becomes a living parable of what human community was always meant to be. We taste and see that life is more than the grind, more than the sorrow, more than the long monotony of days that blur into each other.

The best celebrations allow us to set aside the heaviness of daily rhythms and remember that there is still beauty, goodness, and love in this world. On these nights, we hold up a candle of hope in the darkness and boldly proclaim to ourselves and to others that love, joy, and delight need not be scarce.

These celebrations serve as rehearsals for the joys promised by Jesus at the end of all things.

Because at the center of our faith is a wedding.
At the conclusion of Scripture is a feast.
And at the heart of the Christian hope is a celebration.

The prophets spoke of it. Jesus hinted at it in His parables and inaugurated it at His table. The Church embodies it in communion and in the everyday rhythms of love and hospitality. And Revelation brings the story to its climax with the announcement that history is moving toward the moment when God Himself hosts the greatest celebration the world has ever known, his very own wedding to his most beautiful bride.

There, Love, lavishness, and Liturgy will find their highest and proper places in the communion of Christ.

What we practice now in our feasts, our weddings, our birthdays, our baptisms, our toasts and tears and laughter, these are not mere niceties. They are rehearsals. They are the small stage on which we learn to receive love, give love, honor one another, and delight in the gifts God has woven into the world.

So perhaps we should do it more and do it better!

Let’s not restrict ourselves to the “big three” (births, weddings, funerals) as the only spaces for celebration. Let’s find reasons to celebrate and express the love we have for the people we treasure. Let’s not wait for their funerals to speak the gratitude and affection that would lift their hearts and renew their vision of themselves. Let’s do it now, and do it often.

Sometimes this may be as simple as offering timely, encouraging words. But what if we embraced a more regular cadence of celebration and blessing? What if our communities became marked by the rhythm of noticing, honoring, and delighting in one another?

What might that look like?

For years now, I’ve said I was going to begin doing this for friends on their birthdays, to take the lead in making space where all three elements of celebration are present. Love and lavishness aren’t hard to pull off; it’s the organizing of a liturgy, the preparing of people to participate, that proves harder.

But imagine an evening that begins like any other birthday dinner. You arrive at the same familiar scene: the usual friends, delicious food, cocktails, and small talk. Then your best friend stands and says something like:

“We all know why we’re here, to celebrate another trip around the sun for our dear ole Bob. Normally, we’d rush to candles and cake and offer a few flimsy jokes about how unbelievably old he is. But tonight we’re doing something different.

Bob, you know you mean so much to each of us. We didn’t want another year to pass without telling you the ways we see the love and light of Christ in you. At the risk of making you uncomfortable with our affection, a few of us would like to share some brief words about who you are to us, the beauty we see in you, and the hope we have for you in the year ahead.”

The night unfolds with laughter and tears. You leave feeling as though you’ve received the gift you truly wanted but would never have known how to ask for. It moves you. To have been thought of, spoken to, and honored with words of affirmation and delight.

It might even change you. It might lift you from some hidden insecurity. It might turn you toward Jesus in gratitude for all He is doing in your life. It might lead you to repentance, or renew your courage to live into the beauty your friends have seen in you.

Celebration reminds us that love and encouragement need not be scarce.

Let’s be people who keep feasting on the best stuff, in a world that is unknowingly fasting from the fullness of Biblical celebrations!

[This article was originally written for a published with The Collaborative. Check out their website and other work at WeColabor.com — I am reposting the article here with permission from my good friend, the founder and Principle of the Collaborative, Dr. Case Thorp ]

Lavishness: The Embodied Goodness of the Feast

Lavishness is often the embodied dimension of celebration. The physical, tangible, taste-and-see sort of goodness that helps our bodies know: This is no ordinary moment.

We sometimes get embarrassed by the word lavishness. We associate it with indulgence, materialism, or overspending. But when governed by love, lavishness is the height of embodied delight.

Think of this from 1 John 3:1 - See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

When framed in the context of God’s love for us, the fear of its distortion fades into the background, and we can feel the generosity of spirit that flows through this word!

The Lavishness of the Feast

Lavishness at a celebration is not excess for its own sake. It is the art of setting the stage for a higher time to descend among us.

You’ve likely been to events where opulence was the goal. Where hosts sought to astonish guests with displays of wealth, hoping to leave the impression that they themselves were impressive. It’s the sort of lavishness you might have seen in your grandparents’ sitting room. The one with plastic on the sofa cushions “to protect them from people.” To which Jesus might have said, “Are sofas made for people, or people for sofas?”

That kind of lavishness shows off. It says, “Look at me! I’m why we’re all here!”

But that’s not the lavishness I mean.

The kind of lavishness I’m speaking of spares no expense for the sake of the celebration, not the sake of the self. This lavishness flows from a heart of hospitality, with the hope that every guest feels the evening was planned with them in mind. It makes you feel like you belong to the night. The money, time, and attention are lavished for the joy of the beloved, not toward spectacle.

This kind of lavishness shows up as good food and drink, and plenty of it. Beauty befitting the occasion and the beloved. Tables set with care and arranged for conversation and connection. Music that allows for talk during dinner and dancing afterward. Attire that honors the moment but relaxes as the party grows long.

Lavishness says, “Tonight is unique, a gift, especially planned for this appointed time.”

I’ll never forget a wedding I attended in Texas one Spring with my wife and family. The ceremony was to be held in a field near an old barn on property belonging to the family. As we arrived and were ushered to our seats, the spectacle of 10,000 full-grown sunflowers captivated our attention! “No wonder they chose this spot,” I thought, “This field of flowers is spectacular!” And it was true, but the story behind those flowers was even more wonderful!

The father of the groom knew the bride loved Sunflowers, and in preparation for the wedding, he cleared the field of what had been growing there, some basic crop, and took a chance on planting Sunflowers in their place. The Lord blessed his efforts, and the flowers were in full bloom for the ceremony, creating the most beautiful and personal ceremony I have ever witnessed.

This, my friends, is what lavishness can be! Thoughtfulness and love on display in the form of a beautiful gift to those being celebrated!

We couldn’t and shouldn’t do things like this every night or all the time, but there are higher times that warrant such effort and expense. Celebrations like the one I mention are, for us, a glimmer of hope, love, and glory in a world that is often hard, painful, mundane, and wearisome.

Lavishness invites a feast when so much of life feels like a fast. It reminds us that celebration is good and right, and that we belong in such spaces!

Lavishness honors our creatureliness. We are embodied souls living in a world of taste, touch, sound, and smell. Celebration invites all the senses to join the chorus of delight.

Biblical lavishness

Scripture is surprisingly lavish in its descriptions of feasting.

Jesus’ first miracle at Cana kept the wedding going, elevating the joy of the celebration with the finest wine. The prodigal’s return sparked the preparation of the fattened calf and the celebration of the whole household. Jesus’ worth was honored with a priceless jar of nard (Mark 14). Then, around the Passover table, He gave His disciples their final lesson in redemption, inviting them into a new covenant and a renewed hope. And one day, we will arrive at that great feast from Revelation 19, the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, to be celebrated and joined to our groom for all eternity!

God is not stingy with celebration. He invented it.

Our embodied nature is not accidental, and our capacity to experience delight is not a bug in the system. It is a grace. The curse did not kill our ability to enjoy goodness. Our bodies are the way we “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Lavishness Alone

Lavishness becomes a curse when detached from love. If lavishness alone were enough, the wealthy would be whole. But fullness does not come from filling one’s belly, satisfying every craving, or endlessly spending on spectacles, gadgets, or experiences. Without love, lavishness collapses inward into indulgence, comparison, and exclusion. Sensuality without soul. What seems like a bright space of delight becomes a black hole of selfishness.

Beware of lavishness without love, for man cannot live by bread alone (even if it’s a fancy baguette).

But under the rule of love, lavishness becomes generosity, an embodied grace. Together we taste and see that the Lord is good.

This has been part two of a three part series on The Anatomy of Celebration. I hope you’ll return for the final section on Liturgy, and some concluding thoughts on how they all fit together!

[This article was originally written for a published with The Collaborative. Check out their website and other work at WeColabor.com — I am reposting the article here with permission from my good friend, the founder and Principle of the Collaborative, Dr. Case Thorp ]

My wife and I were at a wedding for a dear friend not long ago. It was a destination wedding in an unbelievable location, the kind that would begin a Netflix film about a family taking the trip of a lifetime, complete with champagne at check-in and swan-crafted bath towels. The phrase “spare no expense” comes to mind when I recall all the ways the weekend was designed, not merely as a ceremony, but as a long, unfolding experience of joy.

One of the things I most enjoy about any wedding celebration is the rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal dinner is the night when the weekend-long celebration takes the shape not of worship or a dance party but of storytelling, toasts, laughter, tears, and the speeches that pour forth love, affirmation, and wisdom onto the couple. They’re beautiful and wonderful and almost always go well, but this instance was a bit different.

It began as many do. We gathered. We sat. We ate, and then the time for toasts began. A few early toasts were shared, brief, lighthearted, warm. And then the mother of the bride rose to speak.

She shared beautifully about the love she felt for her daughter and the joy of welcoming a son-in-law into the family. Her words were everything a mother’s toast should be: full of tenderness, memory, delight, and blessing. The room was moved. Many were teary-eyed as they thanked her for her words with gentle applause.

And then she sat down, and silence fell over the group.

Who in the world could follow that? Who could stand up next and offer a goofy college story? Who could share a lightly-scripted encouragement without feeling like they were diminishing the beauty that had just been spoken?

One or two bridesmaids bravely tried, and their words were sweet, but compared to what the mother said, they felt small, almost out of place. Within minutes, the toasts ended. Many things were left unsaid. The elephant in the room sat on our hearts and minds, rooted in a desire to bless these two young people, loved and adored by all present. The bride and groom, who should have gone to bed drenched in affection, walked away with a sense that a special moment had been lost, love unshared, vulnerability hidden behind social niceties.

What went wrong? Why was the joy of the evening cut short? Is there a formula for a good celebration? One that would have us leaving saying, “That was just right.”

I was chatting with a friend recently, retelling the story of this wedding and wondering aloud why we left that night feeling a bit sad. And he very casually said something like, “Well, sure, you had lavishness and love, but no liturgy. And I thought to myself, “There it is. That’s the formula.”

In Revelation 19 we read of the wedding supper of the Lamb. The long-awaited union of Christ and his bride, the moment that all moments have been leading to, and guess what we find?

⁶ Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:

“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.

⁷ Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.

⁸ Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.”

You guessed it, three ingredients: The love of God on display as he commits to marrying his bride, the church, lavishness in the garb of the bride and of the procession, and a liturgy of praise known and proclaimed by every person at the party!

These three ingredients, love, lavishness, and liturgy, dynamically stir us, vivifying the hearts of all those being celebrated and those participating in the joy of celebration.

Let’s explore each idea and how they dovetail to create something truly beautiful!

LOVE: The Animating Force of Celebration

Love is the animating force of beautiful celebration. It is the distinctive reason gathering is more than an event, a calendar item, a “To Do,” a social obligation. The love of someone, or some couple, or some group of folks, is what sparks the desire to lift ourselves above the ordinary rhythms of life to set aside time to celebrate!

I’m sure you’ve known the feeling. A birthday or a loved one is around the corner, or a co-worker is retiring after fruitful service at your side, and you want to do something special for them. Or perhaps a college friend is getting married (In the Bahamas) and love compels you to take off work, find a babysitter, and make the (Expensive) trip.

Love compels us to movement in the direction of celebration. Whether we are planning the event or offering our presence as a gift, we show up, not out of duty, but out of delight!

This sort of love is the foundation of a beautiful celebration!

Love is always the goal, the ideal, the guiding principle, the aim toward which every element of celebration points. We receive the command of love from Jesus Himself: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Celebration is a heightened way to express and experience this kind of love.

It is love that brings people from miles away to see each other face to face. Love that keeps us thinking about someone long before the event, searching for a gift that shows we know them, that we “get” them. The gift itself is lovely, but even more beautiful is the double blessing of having the gift and having been thought of rightly.

It is love that compels us to toast, to bless, to speak aloud what is normally left unspoken. In speaking these affirmations, we set aside time to reflect on the loveliness of the person being honored. We labor to put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard, shaping an ordered flow of encouragement, longing to tell a coherent story of how much we treasure this individual.

Perhaps a better way to say it is this: Celebrations take seriously the command to love your neighbor. They intentionally create spaces where love is the point and where joy and edification flow freely to all.

Love Expressed

In celebration, love takes form. It becomes visible through our presence, our gifts, and our words.

Presence

We honor those we love with our presence. We make time, hire babysitters, travel, pay for hotels, and leave our own homes to say to the beloved, “I want to see you face to face.”

During COVID, the ache of absence was felt by so many, especially those unable to celebrate or even say goodbye to dying loved ones. Presence is the first gift of love in celebration. To gather physically and be surrounded by embodied affection is something we crave. It’s something we long to have happen to us, yet are often too afraid to ask for, unsure whether we are worth the cost.

Gifts

Gifts enrich the experience of celebration. Sometimes the joy comes through practical generosity, wedding gifts that meet needs. The toaster and knives that start a home may seem utilitarian, yet meeting needs is a beautiful expression of love.

However, the gifts that move us most tend to carry a certain intimacy, a sense of knowing.

One of my friends is as good a gift-giver as you’ll find. She is deeply thoughtful and creative, and having her focus those gifts on you means you’ll feel deeply seen, known, and loved by whatever is under the wrapping paper. Those gifts become treasures.

One such treasure arrived after the birth of our firstborn son. We had struggled to get pregnant and were surrounded by a community praying for the realization of that hope. Just after Jack was born, we received a small vase designed to hold a single acorn. The box came with instructions on germinating the acorn and nurturing it into a sapling. The note attached described the pain of our journey, the beauty of our hope, and the vision of those seeds of prayer sprouting into the joy of this child, and now, the gift of watching Jack grow alongside that little tree. These sorts of gifts exemplify a beautiful sort of love!

Words

That gift was and is a treasure to me, but it would not have resonated so deeply without the note that came with it.

We all have an innate sense of the importance of words. God has given us this delightful faculty to communicate, making us far more capable than any other creature. Words are powerful. God spoke creation into being. Our words, too, can bring order out of chaos. With words, we cast vision for where we ought to go and what we ought to do.

We know their power to get things moving and done, and yet when it comes to love and encouragement, we often struggle to speak.

There is something profoundly humanizing about being spoken over, about hearing who you are in the eyes of those who know you and love you anyway. We crave words that name what is most beautiful about us. Such encouragements momentarily silence our insecurities and invite us to believe that the image of God truly shines in and through our lives.

Most of us, if we’re honest, don’t get enough of that. We move through life unsure of our goodness, unsure whether our love for others is being expressed in ways that can be received. We long for affirmation but rarely think to organize such moments for others.

Celebration is one of the few spaces where words of love flow freely, where affirmation and encouragement are the point. Perhaps we should do more of this while people are still around to hear all that we have to say.

Receiving love tends to be harder than giving it. It requires vulnerability, allowing oneself to be seen, heard, named, and honored.

Celebration trains us to receive love with open hands rather than deflect it with awkward jokes or self-deprecation. Celebrations make space for us to be open to enjoying the kindness shown to us. In receiving love, we proclaim to others that they, too, are worthy of such affection and attention.

Love is the beating heart. All of our celebratory acts flow from it. Without love, liturgy becomes sterile, and lavishness becomes indulgent. But with love, everything comes alive.

Love Alone?

There isn’t any real danger in love existing alone. At least not like the danger of the other two ingredients existing alone. The danger lies more in love not finding its expression.

There has likely been a time in your life when you had the best intentions of expressing and celebrating someone well, only to lose track of time and forget about the person or their special day altogether. There are few worse feelings, in my experience, than forgetting or missing an opportunity to properly express the love you truly feel for another in a beautiful and timely way.

Love is the heartbeat of celebration, but we will see that lavishness and liturgy can, for us, be the ways love takes shape and is offered to our loved ones!

This has been the first part of a three part series on The Anatomy of Celebration. I hope you’ll return for the sections on Lavishness and Liturgy, and some concluding thoughts on how they all fit together!

Psalm 32.1-5

1 Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.

2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.

3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

4 For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.

5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.

Guilt is only a gift to those who want to be well.

David begins the Psalm with familiar biblical language: “Blessed is the one...” Another way to say it might be, “Happy is the one,” or “Content is the one,” or “Whole is the one.” The idea is something like this: the blessed rest, favor, or goodness of God is with this one.

Whenever I see this word, blessed, I think of the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes that Jesus offers are meant to help us see the world as he sees it. He says to them, blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, the mourners. He offers an upside-down way of seeing the world. He tells them that their neediness, brokenness, aches, and pains are actually evidence of their right-sized dependency on him and the kingdom. To long for more in this world and to be filled by the Spirit of God in all circumstances is, in fact, the essence of blessedness.

Here in Psalm 32, we have something similar.

1 Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.

Not, blessed is the one who is without sin. Nor is it, blessed is the one whose sin is never found out. But rather, blessed is the one who has sinned and has known the joy of forgiveness.

2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.

Blessed is the one whose record is clean, for the Lord counts nothing against them, and they have no need to hide in deceit.

I doubt much of this is novel to you, particularly if you have believed in Jesus for any amount of time. God, in Christ, forgives us our sins and keeps no record of our wrongs. Duh.

I don’t think this Psalm came home to my heart until I began to feel verses 3–4 in my body. The more David tells me what his guilt felt like, the more I realize I may have some of it still on me. Sure, I know the Christian vision of forgiveness, but have I noticed the ways and places that guilt lingers in my body? Perhaps there is more for me to confess, more to forgive, more freedom that Christ wants for me.

3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

Is there sin in my life that I can’t dare to share? What does the silence cost me?

David says that when his sin was hidden, he could feel it deep in his body, down to the bones. You can almost imagine him remembering the days between his first look at Bathsheba and the final confrontation that brought him to repentance through his friend Nathan. The ache of guilt was heaviest on the inside. Bones wasting away, pain in every movement, every step.

Sin spreads like wildfire in our bodies, reminding us of the destructive effects of sin. It colors and touches every aspect of life. I can imagine the ways that all other parts of David’s life were crippled or tainted by this hidden guilt during that time. I doubt there was a feast, any fun, or even a fight in that season that could truly capture his full attention. Sin wounds us. Guilt tethers our minds to the festering wound, demanding that something be done about it.

It reminds me of times I have spent with folks in our church who have had the horrible experience of metastasized cancer. Their lives shrink down to two primary spaces: pain management and treatment. Their whole life and livelihood become a battle to stay alive. “They groan all day long.”

Maybe your guilt has never felt that intense, but maybe it has. Have you ever lost sleep over the ache of something you’ve done, or spent hours mentally justifying some action or words? More times than I would like to admit, I have buried the sin and ruminated in guilt, hoping to treat the symptoms by overthinking, justifying, or even criminalizing the other person as a means to quiet my aching bones.

Like refusing to remove a splinter for fear of the needle, holding our guilt in silence becomes an ever-present pain. Before we know it, we’re walking funny and end up with a fever from the infection in our toe, sick all over, from that tiny misstep.

Sin has a way of making itself the center of our attention, anxiety, fear, and ache. Guilt is an alarm we work to silence, as if the house really isn’t on fire.

4 For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;

David turns from the internal feeling to an external cause. The weight of guilt comes from a hand, heavy upon him. Guilt is a relational experience in which God presses in to keep our sin from metastasizing. He longs for us to be healed and whole, and that means a thorough search and critique of any cancer that remains in our hearts.

my strength was sapped

Our unconfessed sin consumes our energy, expediting our exhaustion as we carry it under the weight of the undeterred sun. Our bodies need the protection of shade and places to rest, but in guilt we seem to be left out, exposed and unprotected from the brutal effects of the heat and light.

As I have pondered these words of his, the bodily experiences ring true. The consuming nature, the exhaustion, the growth of the ache and sickness. I have felt all of it over what is left unconfessed. It reminds me of times in my life when I have run from God, dismissed my guilt, and done all that I could to move on while the splinter was still lodged in my foot.

People on the run, with suspicion and fear guiding their hearts, are unable to slow down to receive a gift. If you run toward isolation when you feel your guilt, then shame is your destination—or perhaps shamelessness. We begin to believe the lie that our sin is most true about us. Not something we did, but someone we have become.

Shamelessness takes over when we try to cover sin with sin. Take another look at the David and Bathsheba story and you’ll see what I mean.

God uses Nathan as a heavy hand on the back of David to help him see. Sometimes we are spiraling so rapidly in sin that we can’t imagine a different way. Shame is awful, but humiliation seems worse. It’s one thing to choose shamelessness; it’s another to be seen as shameless, evil, rotten to the core.

Humiliation is the experience of standing before others characterized by all that you hate about yourself. But humiliation is also the gateway to humility.

5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you

Guilt is a gift because it invites you to experience what you truly need: forgiveness.

Without a heavy hand or the scorching sun, perhaps you keep walking with the splinter. Perhaps you keep moving through life, wounded and wounding others. That story ends in a lonely death, but at least you’d never have to tell anyone you were wrong or ask for forgiveness.

The truth is that eventually there would be no one around to receive those words or give you the words you so desperately need.

Guilt leads us to the humiliating space of confession, admittance, owning our wrongdoing. We must not cover our iniquities any longer. All must be known.

And this feeling is the worst. That’s why they named it humiliation. It is a forced lowering. All the false pretense of your own goodness falls away in these moments, and you are seen.

But this is also the place where grace sweeps in to move us from humiliation to humility.

Humility is the space where our weakness, wrongness, and brokenness are known, and yet we are embraced by, and fully embrace, the overwhelming love of Jesus.

Some of us have been taught to think of humility as something like doing better than we used to do, quietly. No muss, no fuss; just don’t screw up anymore. And while humility can lead to a quiet obedience, that is not all that it is.

Humility is dependency on God for your rescue, restoration, and rest.

Humiliation leaves confession with a new list of to-dos. It tells itself, “I was forgiven last time, but I really need to get my act together.” It leaves without being healed from the shame. It leaves with the mentality that the way forward in life is to earn a place through good behavior.

Humility leaves confession feeling restored. Not unaware of all that it is capable of, but deeply aware of the love and kindness of God, knowing that the wounds sin creates in us can be healed by the precious blood of Christ.

Humility believes that the Father longs for us to be more than obedient. He longs for us to be well.

Guilt is a gift that can lead you to wellness, but only if you know how to receive it.

“For some reason, we prefer to think of ourselves as a complicated apparatus in need of analysis more than a living being in need of good food.”

“The Soul is not a mechanical problem that needs to be solved; it’s a living being that has to be fed.”

“The soul needs to be fattened, not explained, and certain things are nutritious, while others are without taste or benefit. Good food for the soul includes especially anything that promotes intimacy: a hike in nature, a late-night conversation with a friend, a family dinner, a job that satisfies deeply, a visit to a cemetery. Beauty, solitude, and deep pleasure also keep the soul well fed.”

I was reading The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore over the week, and this chapter in particular resonated with me. He names it “The Interiority of Food” and offers the invitation to “re-enchant” our experience around food for body and soul.

I need both reminders, but this short section that I quoted above gave me a new imagination for the ways my habits are nourishing or starving my soul.

I doubt the current state of my soul could be considered fattened. I also might not have thought of it as emaciated either. More like rigorously trained for ultra mileage. Aerodynamic, able to keep going, striving, earning. Perhaps I would have called my soul lean. Feeding it just enough to keep the rest of me moving.

I am near tears writing this, as I am worried I have been mistreating my soul, in part because of how deeply I have misunderstood myself, for quite some time.

“The soul needs to be fattened.”

Not simply fed, but fattened.

Like a baby after birth. Like a calf before the slaughter. Like an orphan once placed in a home.

There can be no scarcity perspective if you want a soul to thrive and flourish. It must be fed, and fed well, with the right stuff. That seems to be the case that Mr. Moore is making. I have experiences where this happens, but most often it feels as though it is accidental. I am not planning for these moments so much as I am experiencing things that fatten me, and then I often comment, “Oh boy, I needed that.”

A good, long, deep laugh at something silly. Getting lost in a book where the world is full of magic and wonder. Talking late into the night with good friends, swapping stories from the past or dreams about the future. Playing a game with my wife and kids that allows Ash and me the pleasure of feeling small and silly again. Longer movies. Slow bed time prayers and answering all the questions. Wrestling with the boys. Dancing in the living room. “Oh boy, I needed that.”

While I’m reading this book, I am also reviewing my life and the “Rule” I live by right now. In an attempt to see myself better, to invite others to see my heart, and with the desire to grow and become someone different, someone more beautiful in the likeness of Jesus by next year, I am writing a new rule. I am doing what I can to be honest about my current situation, how I spend my time, how I run to vices and distractions, and even doing what I can to say why I think I do these things.

What comes after the reflection and reading of my habits is a sort of discernment and replacement. If I want to change at all over the next year, then it will happen in the micro moments. The mindless “snacking” on habits that have no nutritional value for my soul will have to go.

My soul is not lean, as I thought, but malnourished. I’ve been on the run. For quite some time, I looked in the mirror and saw a marathon runner. My soul: thin, nimble, quick, and in continuous motion. But I was not running for sport. I’ve been running for my life, scared, afraid, in constant, aimless motion toward who knows what. Away from who knows what. The soul in the mirror could not be described as fattened in the way Mr. Moore describes it. This soul doesn’t yet want to feast on those sorts of things. I have sadly chosen a different diet.

Why can’t I slow down? Who is keeping time? Is this the soul I want? Is it the one I am stuck with? Is it the soul I want to hand off to my wife and children? Is this the diet I want being eaten around my family dinner table? Is this the type of pastor and friend I want to be, teaching others to stay thin, lean, and in constant motion?

“Good food for the soul includes especially anything that promotes intimacy.”

Intense is more my style and pace. Bigger, faster, stronger. An old family rule. Eat on the go, there are things to do.

Intimate is much harder, much slower, much more tender. Intimacy moves with a different cadence and has time to truly feast. It sure is hard to be fattened when intensity is the standard. And I want a fattened soul, but that will require some redesigning. I’ve been eating the wrong stuff.

“Somehow, eating the wrong things brings a curse in life.”

As mundane as an apple from the wrong tree, so too are my habits that are hollowing out my mind and soul.

“Good food for the soul includes especially anything that promotes intimacy: a hike in nature, a late-night conversation with a friend, a family dinner, a job that satisfies deeply, a visit to a cemetery. Beauty, solitude, and deep pleasure also keep the soul well fed.”

Fasting from the junk.

Feasting on the good stuff, anything that promotes intimacy.

Part of my challenge in fattening my soul is my lack of imagination as to what may fatten me. I have treated this space similarly to the way I treat lunch each day, with very little imagination. My co-workers laugh at my PB&J that is slapped together for the sake of efficiency, simplicity, and because it’s cheap. I choose it so I don’t have to think about what I’ll eat.

The soul doesn’t work that way. The soul needs to feast on intimacy and belonging — the joys of a shared life with others. I hope to gather this sort of food to myself like a bear prepping for hibernation. I’d love for my soul to double or triple in size as I begin to delight in slowing, stories, silliness, and silence.

I doubt I will come to it easily or quickly. I’ve been on the run for a while. But perhaps you’d join me, or at least pray for me as I begin.

(There will be spoilers. Proceed with caution. I have also read the book and watched the film, which may mean I conflate the two a bit. Apologies.)

It has been two weeks since I saw the movie, and I continue to think about it often. Perhaps it is because it both is and is not your run-of-the-mill save-the-world film. Yes, there is a massive narrative about whether the world will survive, but just as compelling is the story of the kind of man who is aboard the ship, carrying that weight.

The Gap: Who we are and who we want to become

The author uses flashbacks to emphasize the two different Dr. Ryland Graces we come to know. There is the Dr. Grace on the ship, the Project Hail Mary. One of three people chosen out of 7 billion to save the world. The best of the best. Even without completing the mission, you would call his willingness to go heroic. He fits our vision of a movie-worthy hero.

Then there is Dr. Grace, the middle school teacher. A man who has given his life to educating youth. He rides his bike to work, keeps his head down, and creates engaging environments for 13-year-olds. Honorable in many ways, until you realize he has the capacity for the highest levels of academia and is, in many ways, deferring that potential. He has embraced a posture of apathy, muting his gifts and hiding behind the image of the “cool teacher,” while capable of much more.

Along the way, you learn he has been disagreed with and hurt, which nudged him toward a kind of cynical arrogance. The only relationships he prefers are with students that last nine months at a time. He gets to see them grow. He remains in control. He leaves them with a strong impression of himself, then starts over. He is friendless, without a lover, and safely contained in his cocoon of loneliness. C. S. Lewis may have called him a man “without a chest.” Loveless, passionless, resigned to a simple life where old wounds remain hidden.

That is why the story is so compelling. You know he is on the ship, but how is a man like this humanity’s best shot? The film confronts you with the humanity of heroes and then closes the gap between who he was and who he becomes.

How do people change? What pushes and pulls us toward transformation? How does Dr. Ryland Grace, the middle school teacher, become Dr. Ryland Grace, the astronaut willing to give himself up?

He is pushed and pulled.

Push: Confrontational people

Just after you learn the world is ending, you meet Eva Stratt. She leads the international task force to save the world. Deliberative, strong, wise, focused, unflappable. Her authority is absolute, and you trust her to carry it.

From their first interaction, Grace is pushed into places he does not want to go. He wrestles with his autonomy, wanting control, resisting being told what to do. Yet with each push, he becomes more engaged, more successful, more invested. Under Stratt’s pressure, this numbed-out teacher comes alive again.

The classroom fades as Grace works with Stratt around the clock. He becomes a lead scientist and part of her inner circle. Others defer to him, and he questions it. He is still unsure, still insecure, still unaware of how deeply he is trusted. He is becoming someone who has all the resources a hero would need, you can feel the story driving towards what you already know to be true. He ends up on the ship… and yet his character transformation is far from complete.

Pull: Love that draws us out

Grace wakes on the Project Hail Mary to grief. The coma drug that carried him through space has erased his memory. He discovers he is the only crew member still alive. The people he lost were his friends. Worse, he is light-years from Earth and completely alone.

Then he meets Rocky.

Another being. Another mind. Another creature trying to save his world. What begins as necessity becomes friendship. The companionship of two lonely travelers is quietly beautiful. They work the problem together, their gifts complementing one another as they move toward a solution that could save both their planets.

But something else is happening. Grace is growing a heart. You see it most clearly when he learns how Rocky’s people sleep. They cannot wake mid-sleep, even in danger. So they watch over one another. They stay awake to protect each other. It is love in action.

The film plays this for humor at times, but it becomes one of the clearest markers of Grace’s transformation. After an accident, Rocky risks his life to save Grace and is left motionless. Grace, wounded but alive, refuses to leave him. He stays awake (as best he can), watching over his friend.

Rocky wakes to find Grace still there and something has changed. The irony is hard to miss. Grace learns how to be human from someone who is not human. This is where the contrast between who he was and who he is becoming is sharpest. Virtue is becoming his first instinct. The love of friendship has changed him.

The breaking point

Then comes the memory of his final day on Earth.

Grace was never supposed to be on the mission. After a tragedy removes the original crew, he becomes the only viable option. Stratt asks him to go. He refuses. What??? This was supposed to be his moment. We could all see it from a mile away, this decision was going to be offered to him and his hero transformation was to be completed upon his acceptance of the opportunity… but no.

All his fear and insecurity rise to the surface. Even knowing he is humanity’s best chance, he cannot say yes. He is a man without a chest. He cannot imagine losing his life, even to save the world.

So Stratt chooses for him. She tells him he will board the ship. He has no other choice. They will induce his coma early. When he wakes, she believes he will do what needs to be done. It feels both right and wrong.

That is what makes it so difficult. You know it is the right call, and yet it violates something deep in you. How can she do that? How can someone demand that another give their life for something greater? Heroes are supposed to choose heroism on their own. Right???

This moment splits you in two.

On one side is the instinct for autonomy. The cry of, “How dare you impose sacrifice on me?” The sense that Grace owes nothing more.

On the other side is the quiet recognition that we often need hard things chosen for us. That left to ourselves, we shrink. Like a child on a bike for the first time without training wheels yelling, “Don’t let go,” but parents do and kids learn.

There is something deeply human here. Sometimes decisions are made for us, and those decisions break through fear and insecurity and create space for growth. Grace is pushed into a larger life.

The turn

By the time he remembers all of this, something in him has already changed. You can feel the shame of his earlier refusal. He had 7 billion people he could have given his life for, and he could not do it. He had to be forced onto the ship.

But now he is different.

The story gives him one more chance to return to who he was. The man who is self-consumed and primarily self serving. He has a chance to go home. He can survive. But if he chooses to live, he knows that his new friend, Rocky, will not.

This time, there is no hesitation. Grace turns the ship around. Virtue has taken hold. Love has reshaped him. What once had to be forced is now freely given. He sacrifices his future, his comfort, even his life, so that his friend and his friend’s world might live.

Hero arc complete.

Why it matters

I love stories like this because I can find myself in them. Not as an astronaut, but as someone who wants to become more than I am right now. This story suggests that the agents of change are often outside of us. They are the pressures that confront us and the relationships that draw us forward. They stir the right affections in us, a love for others, a love for the common good.

It also challenges the story we tend to believe. That we belong entirely to ourselves. That virtue must be self-generated. That it is unfair to be pushed into sacrifice.

This story offers a different vision. We are shaped by pushes and pulls. We need outside forces to shove us along or woo us into new visions of love and connection. It is remarkable that Grace has to go to space to learn how to be human, but maybe we do to.

I will never face a moment like this. If I am the best shot to save the world, we are all in trouble. And yet, I do want to learn what it looks like to be saved from myself. Project Hail Mary, to me, is a parable for becoming. May the Lord bless us on the journey.

Prayer is, perhaps, the simplest way to obey the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. It is also the most expedient and immediate practice available to us to practice humility. Let me share with you three things that happen in prayer.

First, prayer and the greatest commandment.

“Raise your heart to God and thank him for the assurance you have that he looks down on you and will bless you. Through such an act of faith, you honor God and draw your soul away from being occupied with itself.”
The Prayer Life (93)

As we turn toward the Lord in prayer, it is wise to remind ourselves of why we are able to pray at all. It has nothing to do with our own wisdom, strength, or earned status, but instead it is based on the graciousness, loving-kindness, and invitation of the Father, through Jesus, by the power of the Spirit. When I am reminded of the gift of conversing with the Creator and Sustainer of all things, my heart is properly lowered into a place of humility and gratitude.

Psalm 8:4 “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Love and gratitude flow from a posture of humility. Who am I to presume the God of all things would have time to spend with someone like me? Who am I to believe that my feeble words, whispered in the night, could reach the ears and the heart of the Lord of lords?

I am a child of the King, a son of the Most High God. I am full of confidence that I am welcomed to the throne of grace at any hour of the day or night. It is right for me to cry out, “Abba Father,” because I belong to him. My brother Jesus has made it so. Therefore, I will gladly turn my attention to the secret place, where the space between heaven and earth grows thin, a place of dwelling in the secret heart where I am known and loved by God.

In prayer, my attention has now been fixed on a greater object of affection. Do you see the twofold nature of what has happened in this short time in prayer? Murray calls it the “inner chamber,” and I love that. As Murray says, to honor the Lord and seek to love him in our prayer, we have successfully drawn our souls away from being occupied with the self. Prayer gives us a way, all day long, to turn from selfishness and the love of self and instead delight ourselves in the Lord.

Whether you do it when you wake, at midday, when you lie your head down to sleep, or anytime in between, prayer offers you every opportunity to practice and obey the first commandment. Being drawn away from the self makes space to be drawn into the Father in love.

“It is the great work of the Holy Spirit in us to make us willing and to enable us to seek God with the whole heart.” The Prayer Life (112)

Next, prayer and the second greatest commandment.

“Let your heart be enlarged.”
The Prayer Life (96)

Prayer is often the space we think of when we want to make our requests known to God, but perhaps a better way to begin is to allow prayer to make space for us to love our neighbor. What if we approached prayer as entering the inner chamber on behalf of others before making our personal petitions known? How might we be changed by this subtle shift?

As a pastor, I have the opportunity to pray with people all the time. There is such sweetness in reflecting the desires of another person’s life to God in their presence. But there is an even greater sweetness in ongoing prayer for my friends, family, and our flock. To bring these people to mind when we are apart, to petition God on their behalf on my drive to work or during scheduled times of prayer, keeps me current in my love for them.

I keep a little note on the dash of my truck that I update once a month or so. It is just a simple list of people who are asking God for help with all manner of things. I read through the list each morning and ask God to do all that they are asking. There are times that the list nudges me to send a text or make a phone call. Other times, I get to cross through an item because the Lord has answered, and we accept a “no” or rejoice through a “yes.” Sometimes items make it through months and months, where I join a friend in the ache of deferred hope.

Regardless of the outcome, I am being shaped into the type of person who loves more deeply because I pray more regularly.

So much of the work that prayer does in us is reorienting work. Prayer steals time back for kingdom things by inviting us to attend to and cultivate a deeper love of God and neighbor. Many times I have gone into a time of prayer utterly consumed by my own wants, needs, hurts, and sorrows and come out with a heart full of ache, wonder, or joy for another friend or neighbor.

Prayer gives the gift of ever so gently removing my focus from myself and turning me toward a more beautiful way of love.

“A weak child of God only prays for himself, but a full-grown man of Christ understands how to consult with God over what must take place in the Kingdom.”
The Prayer Life (96)

Finally, prayer and the self.

When love is properly ordered, first toward God and neighbor, we find that the love we long for is not lacking but rather is available to us in abundance. Often our selfishness comes from a mindset of scarcity, that there is not enough love to go around, or perhaps if we do not love ourselves, no one else will. Sadly, those lies from the enemy are root lies that poisoned humanity at the start.

Prayer is a reminder that love need not be scarce, and God’s love for us is the Father’s love for a child. He invites us to ask, seek, and knock, and his love will open to us in the most beautiful ways. Prayer is a way to experience the humility of dependency. In prayer, we are creatures kneeling before the Creator, asking for his presence, provision, and peace.

Ironically, arrogance and pride are the reason this sort of prayer gets choked out in our lives, along with all the other forms of prayer. While you might think selfishness would turn your prayers into constant petitions for all that you want and need, which it can, it can also do the opposite. In our arrogance, we act as though we do not need any help. We want to be strong enough to handle things on our own, to not be needy or dependent on anyone, especially God.

Imagine instead seeing yourself rightly before God as one of his children. He delights in you. He cares for you and your needs. He has a vision for your life that will one day culminate with you enjoying his presence forevermore. He will never leave or forsake you. He will not waste any experience you have ever had. He is for you, not against you. You can trust him, for he loves you so.

Prayer invites us to be with the Father each day, listening for his voice, being filled with his love, having our minds and feet set on the things he has prepared for us, knowing as we go, we go with his Spirit empowering each of our steps. Dependency, in this way, is full of light and life, and it is available to us in the early hours of the morning or the late hours of the night, when we are alone in the presence of the God of the universe.

“God, an ever-flowing fountain of love and blessing, and I His child, a living channel through which every day the Spirit and life can be brought to earth.”
The Prayer Life (117)

We are now well into Eastertide, with Lent well in the rearview, but I just had to ask—how did it go?

Just after Lent began, I posted what I called a Liturgy for Longing. It was nothing more than the embodied experience I was having as I did what I could to resist the thing I had decided to give up for Lent.

I want.
I reach.
I remember.
I retreat.
I ache.
I wonder.
I repent.
I receive.

These are the words that seem to both describe my experience in my Lenten fast while also reminding me that there are things that God wants me to see and receive in the midst of this fasting.

I’m not sure how many times I had to work this liturgy over the course of the 40 days, but let me assure you, it was an embarrassing number, and I only sought to refuse myself one element of my common vices. I doubt my mind, body, and soul could have taken on much more for this time. It’s as if my legs represented self-control and I had been bedridden for years. Walking in this new way was, sadly, much harder than I anticipated.

And yet, here I am, a few weeks into Eastertide, clinging to my liturgy and to the grace of Jesus to continue the fast that began in Lent. I learned a great deal about myself in these short 40 days, but I also learned, in an embodied way, something new about the good life. Little deaths are leading to budding life.

I hope to taste and see more and more freedom in the space that I have been denying, which used to be a collection area for guilt and shame. I hope the soil in that part of my soul has been tilled through this Lenten season of dormancy and will one day burst forth with blooms like the joy of springtime. I believe, more and more, that my life will need to continually take the shape of denial if I want to taste and see the goodness of God.

Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask what the ancient way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”

Lent has brought me once again to the crossroads, and I’m glad to have taken some steps down what seems like the ancient path. But there is much to do, much to see, and many longings that need discerning and submitting to the love and kindness of Jesus. This is the way… the ancient, slow, patient, long-suffering way of Jesus and to the rest he offers.

So I plan on keeping my liturgy. Over these short days, as I have walked through the steps, different Psalms have come to mind as a sort of narration of the journey, as if God were meeting me in and through these micro-moments, binding me to the Psalmist as a fellow journeyman in the way of self-denial and self-submission. Perhaps these steps and these Psalms will be an invitation to you on a journey in the ancient way, where rest awaits your weary, hungry soul.

I want.

• 42.1 - As the deer pants for living water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

I reach.

• Psalm 31.4 Free me from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge.

• Psalm 141.1 Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil…

I remember.

• Psalm 15.4 Who keeps his oath, even when it hurts.

I retreat.

• Psalm 119.59 I have considered my ways and turned my steps towards you.

I ache.

• Psalm 38.9 - All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.

I wonder.

• Psalm 37.7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

• Psalm 139.22-23 Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts.

I repent.

• Psalm 51.11-12 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

I receive.

• Psalm 103.2-5 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all of your sins, and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

• Psalm 16.5-6 Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup, you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places, surely I have a delightful inheritance.

Last week we took the kids to the local Barnes and Noble for some “we are so close to bedtime, how can we get through one more rainy hour” wandering. The Easter displays are front and center in the kids section, and my wife and I couldn’t help but giggle when we saw this particular display.

As you can see, if you look in the lower middle third of the photo, Jesus’ birthday is coming up! To be fair, the color palette of that Christmas book does trend a tad toward Easter; however, the content is clearly dated.

I guess there are any number of reasons why this little Advent book might have made its way to the Easter display. Maybe the clerk couldn’t read? Unlikely to land a job at a bookstore in that state, but I guess it’s possible. Maybe 2025 Advent book sales were down and they’re just trying to offload last year’s inventory? Though I don’t think it was half off. Or perhaps our world is changing…

Imagine with me, for a second, a 22-year-old being asked to build this little Easter display. She goes in the back to collect the necessary items and sees lots of “Easter” options. She grabs bunnies and eggs, pastels, and books giving off spring vibes. Just before she heads to the floor, she sees a book about Jesus and thinks, “Christians do something at Easter, right?” She grabs the first Jesus book she sees that could fit the display’s overall aesthetic and proudly arranges it all for purchase.

You may hear this little story and begin to despair. In a country that still proclaims, “In God We Trust” on all of our money, it is hard to imagine folks trusting what they do not even know. And yet, that is precisely why I feel encouraged in this secular age.

More and more, in my experience, it feels as though we are living among a post-reached/unreached people group. They have been told to reject Christianity and its premises but have never heard them from a reliable source. They may claim to know about the existence of Jesus, but they know nothing of his miraculous birth, flawless life, compelling vision of a new Kingdom, sacrificial death, and his promise to make all things new. They have been told that all religions are the same, and yet Christianity, in its true form, stands apart from all the rest. They have been told that religion is the opiate of the masses, and yet it seems the Western masses have taken to sleeping pills, alcohol, and other drugs to quiet their restless souls.

They have been told life is brief, struggle-filled, and ultimately meaningless, and yet their bodies, hearts, minds, and souls have a suspicion that there ought to be more. In a sense, folks are living with tweet-worthy descriptions of worldview. They have never gone to the source texts to try to understand or decide for themselves what seems to be the most true, good, and beautiful way to see the world.

Why is that good news? Well, it means when you share about the good news of Jesus, the transforming power of his love, the truth of the resurrection, and the hope of all things new, you will be sharing something many folks in our modern world have truly never heard about—like, ever! They likely will not have rigorously tried Christianity and found it left them wanting; instead, they will have never tried it at all. At best, they have vaguely explained generalities about Jesus and Christianity that are easily rejectable alongside a plethora of other religious ideas that offer nothing more than a different system of earning your place. But the Kingdom of God is so much better than all that.

In a class I was teaching this weekend, we were studying the Southern Kingdom of Judah as it is told in Kings and Chronicles. This is the time frame in which Isaiah is a prophet to the nation and offers us a most compelling vision of the type of “Messiah” who will come to right all wrongs and save the people.

To this point in history, the sort of Messiah the people are looking and hoping for would be like any other mighty conqueror in our world. A powerful King who could raise armies, ride on the front line, lead the people in battle, and expand both land and ideology across borders, consuming or destroying all in their path.

While Isaiah does offer us things like, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulders” (Isa. 9:6), which may lead us to believe the Savior will be David-esque in his battle readiness and political aspirations, Isaiah’s portrait of the Savior transforms into something utterly and beautifully different in chapters 52–53. Read this from his most famous vision of the Suffering Servant.

Isaiah 53.1-12

53.1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

This is our Messiah. This is our Savior and Lord. One who conquers through condescension. One who gives his life for many rather than taking many lives that he might reign. One who offers himself most perfectly in life, in death, and in his resurrection.

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

As we continue our journey into Holy Week, I want you to keep in mind this portrait of our Savior as you also think about the store clerk who is unsure which Christian season is being celebrated. Imagine this young person struggling under the weight of sin, shame, guilt, anxiety, and hopelessness. Perhaps you can imagine yourself in that same spot before you came to know the hope of Jesus. Remember the freedom you enjoyed once you felt the weight of your sin leave your shoulders and rest on his. What a joy it would be to offer that sort of relief to a fellow wanderer.

If you are willing to share, you will likely be offering something to this person that is entirely new. They were likely raised in a purely secular world. They have no transcendent resources or ideas at their disposal as to how to handle the biggest questions and challenges of life. Their imaginations have been stunted by our secular age.

They have no concept of life beyond death, hope beyond guilt, or springtime beyond the winter.

You will likely not need to argue with this person about the possibility of Christianity any more than you would need to argue with a thirsty person as you ask them to take a glass of water. You can offer the hope of Christ crucified and Christ risen. You can offer a vision of belonging to a King who is full of love and grace, and to a community of people who have found a hope that has changed everything. You can teach them that in the Christian year, Christmas is good, but Easter is the best.

May we go in grace with the good news on our lips.

He is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed!

The kingdom of this world is a kingdom of mirrors.

Everywhere I go and everything I do serves as a way to better see the self. All of life reflects me from every angle. I’m not sure I have truly met another person, but rather have tried to meet myself through them. I’m not sure I have ever truly encountered a canyon or a waterfall. Rather, I desired the sensation of feeling big and mighty, or small and insignificant beside them.

The flesh fixates on the self so much that all things, to me, are simply mirrors. All of life becomes a way to see and know the self. To be made in the image of God is to be a creature of love. The enemy knows love is not extinguishable, but it can be disordered. Mirrors aim my gaze and my love at myself.

Eventually I learn to choose and avoid the reflections I hate, particularly the ones that make me feel small, distorted, or perhaps reveal things that are true and ugly. I gravitate instead to the mirrors that cast the right lighting, the right angle, the right distance, the conditions that make me seem just right in my own eyes.

The Kingdom of Mirrors is a place of insecurity, loneliness, and conditional love.

The Kingdom of Heaven, however, is full of icons.

An icon stands as a depiction of a thing more glorious and good than itself. The world is full of living, breathing, walking, talking icons. The work of Christ has removed the mirrors, or perhaps simply given me the right eyes to see the world in truth. I know now that the glory and delight of the kingdom of heaven is not found in self-reflection but through transcendent representation. I look to others not to see myself, though there are similarities among my kin, but to catch a fresh glimpse of the glory of God.

The mountains and valleys, rivers and oceans, canyons and waterfalls all whisper of the power, magnitude, beauty, and wonder of God. Yet the greater picture, the more beautiful icon, is my neighbor, brother, sister, and friend.

In these faces and bodies I sometimes find small glimpses of myself, but only in the way that two brothers may share the shape of a nose. I’m reminded that we are members of the same family, yet entirely unique in our work and worth as icons.

In others I see the resemblance of our Father, his walk, his talk, his values. In others I see the transforming work of Christ, our brother, where grace transforms nature. In others I see the power of the Holy Spirit, our guide, renewing their minds and stirring them toward love and good deeds. In others I see the hope of creaturely dependence and renewal, reminding me of all that God is doing in the world and all that he wants to do in me.

Living amongst icons lifts my heart and reorders my love. I am no more made for self-giving love than creatures were made to inhale what they exhale. Love is meant to pour forth from me towards God and others, trusting that it will be returned in God’s economy of grace.

To belong to the Kingdom of Heaven is to wake each day longing to see God and being delighted to find him in every square inch of this world.

Mirrors prove weak when icons abound, for those who have eyes to see.

Lent – 40 days of lingering in the dust while we await the celebration of Easter morning. For many, Lent is 40 days of giving something up to reflect more deeply on the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus.

Something I have noticed this year is that in this season of cutting out or giving up, Lent is as much about wanting as it is about waiting. The more I try to practice self-control, the more I am aware of my wanting.

What do I really want when I want the thing I gave up?

That’s the question that keeps bouncing around in my noggin. Giving something up seems to tune my body and soul, once again, to the melody of needfulness, finitude, and grace. I am needy, finite, and thirsty for a deeper sort of grace in my life. I’m just so full of micro and macro longings, and I am so quick to meet these aches with expediency and thin satiations. But Lent treats me like I was meant for more.

It doesn’t matter so much what you actually gave up, so long as it is something that you normally want or feel as though you need. Lent is after the thing under the thing. Lent wants to transform your wanting. Lent wants you to keep bumping into this question…

What do you really want when you want what you gave up?

I think that’s the point, the magic, the pain, the cost, the beauty of Lent. It reminds us that we are dust and finite. It reminds us that we are incomplete in and of ourselves, and that feeling of incompleteness becomes feelings of longing, lacking, neediness, and desire. All things that are true all the time, but in God’s kindness Lent presses this deeper onto our foreheads and into our hearts.

Lent tells us who we are—dusty and desirous—it asks us to slow life down enough that we might work through all the feelings of a micro moment of desire. Here’s what it’s felt like for me.

Step One – I Want.

My life is full of these moments. Wants and needs rise to the surface, normally met with my own might and right to meet those needs in whatever way I’d like. But Lent disrupts the cycle that my body is used to.

Step Two – I Reach.

Reflex, reaction, the reach—whatever you want to call it, my reaching is second nature. I don’t even have to think about my doing. Once the feeling of want hits my heart, I am already in motion.

Step Three – I Remember.

Then I remember. I gave that thing up. The thing that would have calmed the storm of want or need in me has been sworn off for 40 days. I deleted the app. I threw away the treat. I locked the door on that one thing.

Step Four – I Retreat.

I pull my hand back and suddenly realize how bad I am at self-control. I mean, do I refuse myself anything? Do I say no to my own wants with any regularity? Yikes, maybe it’s worse than I thought.

Step Five – I Ache.

Being left with the raw feeling of unmet desire is something I am not all that used to. It hurts more than I want to admit. After all, it’s just a scroll, sweets, a drink, and a little shopping. But is it? Maybe I ache for more than just the immediate experience. Maybe my scrolling, snacking, and shopping are numbing something deeper that has been trying to surface for quite some time?

Step Six – I Wonder.

What do I really want when I want what I gave up?

What is the deeper need, longing, ache that is trying to be seen, heard, and tended to? How have I been trying to quiet my fear, loneliness, hurt, guilt, or shame with shadows and whispers of the real thing?

Step Seven – I Repent.

Sometimes this looks like prayer. Sometimes it looks like confession. Sometimes it’s the nudge to go run around with my kids, hug my wife, call a friend, go for a walk, read a Psalm. My body is learning a new way to cope with the ache of longing.

Step Eight – I Receive.

With each micro-expression of self-control and repentance, I find the tender love and kindness of Jesus. He is slow to anger, abounding in love. I can feel it. I can feel the unwinding of old habits and the invitation to a more beautiful life in the likeness of Jesus. There is a whole lot of work to do, but I know this is the work: slow and steady sanctification in the light of God’s grace and love.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

Lent is an invitation into a 40-day walk toward the cross. The Christian calendar invites us, year over year, into a season of solemnity, reflection, and even grief. Even if your circumstances are currently pleasant, the cross of Christ sits just before us and beckons us to draw near.

Sadness and loss may be the most common human experiences. Hurt, pain, and loss come for all of us in big and small ways, but how are we to walk through such seasons? Are there better and worse ways to face grief and sorrow?

Paul, in Thessalonians, invites us to hold grief and hope together. I would call this lament and I believe it is the Christian vision of walking with God through sadness and loss.

First, grieve [To feel great distress over loss]. We have all lost something. Rarely does every person in the world experience loss due to a single cause. Every person in the world is experiencing loss due to this virus. Some have lost someone. The virus has taken many lives and will take many more before this is all said and done. At the least, we have lost a normal way of living. Our habits and patterns have been thrown off, we have lost hand shakes, hugs, weddings, funerals, travel, concerts, in-person shopping, sports, bars, coffee shops, hangouts with friends, and much more. The proper response to these losses, big and small, is grief.

Second, hope [Confident expectation in God fulfilling the promises that he has made]. We have reason to be confident in the Lord’s promises. Why? He has always been faithful. Regardless of the difficulty or hardship, the people of God have been given his promises and his presence, which is seen most clearly in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Humanity’s greatest needs and desires are met in the person of Christ. Do you need your debt forgiven? Done. Do you desire to be known completely and loved anyway? Done. The proper response to the gift of Christ, in the face of any circumstance, is hope.

“WE KNOW THAT!” Yes, I know I am not telling you anything new. We know grief is right and we know hope is right. But often, in seasons like this, we feel as though we must choose. Grief or Hope.

Third, paradox [Grief OR Hope]. If we put these two ideas on opposite ends of a linear spectrum we are forced to make a choice. Which will we choose?

We tell people, and are told, we need to figure out where we are on this scale. Too sad? Move back to the middle? Too hopeful? Move back to the middle. Unfortunately, the middle seems like low levels of both -- something like luke-warm. And luke-warm isn’t good for coffee or a popsicle. It’s especially not for our emotional response to grief. So what can we do?

I’ve got good news. There is a way to grieve WITH hope, as Paul tells the church at Thessalonica. Andy Crouch helps us see how we can have both saying,“What we need is not a linear “OR” but a two-dimensional “AND” that presses us to see the surprising connections between two things we thought we had to choose between and perhaps... having the fullness of one requires that we have the fullness of the other.” (Strong and Weak)

There are four quadrants in this diagram.

First, apathy. Apathy is the result of low levels of both grief and hope. When we are apathetic we run from hope to avoid disappointment. We run from our grief to avoid the sting of loss. We end up numb.

Second, despair. Despair is the result of high grief and low hope. When we are despairing the sting of loss is ever present and consuming to the point that we feel there’s no way out and nothing else in the world that matters. We can’t imagine the thought of existing apart from that which we lost. We only see what’s left behind.

Third, stoicism [the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint]. Stoicism is the result of high hope and low grief. When we are stoic in the face of loss, we endlessly proclaim the promises of a brighter tomorrow, saying that nothing can get us down. But our hope is disconnected from the pain of this world. There is no empathy, no weeping with those who weep. We only see what’s ahead.

Finally, Lament. Lament is the result of high levels of both grief and hope! This is the form of response to loss that properly honors both the sting of grief and the joy of hope. Those who lament cry real tears when they experience loss even though they know that death does not have the final say. Those who lament can laugh with real joy when sweet stories are told of those they have lost because they know they shall see and enjoy them again. Those who lament are silent and present with those who mourn, refusing to offer cliche statements concerning God’s sovereignty, not because they aren’t true, but because they aren’t needed right now. Those who lament cry out, honestly, to God saying, “How long O Lord, will you forget me forever?” And yet, have peace enough to say, “but I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation” (Psalm 13).

The beauty of paradox is, as Andy Crouch says,“perhaps...having the fullness of one requires the fullness of the other.” (Strong and Weak)

Our grief is more full in relation to our hope. As we have hoped for deep and abiding love, in this life, we have tasted it, only to have it whisked away by the pangs of death. We grieve because the love and delight that we had hoped for and experienced were, in fact, real. It is right to grieve over something good that has been lost. And yet the more beautiful, lovely, or real the thing lost the heavier the grief.

Our hope is more full in relation to our grief. Though we could not escape the immediate sting of death and the grief that we feel because of our loss, we look forward with great anticipation, to the ultimate death of death through the power of Christ. We look forward to a final union with Christ and a reunion with the saints who have gone before us. All of those we have loved and lost, we will love yet again, completely, and for all eternity. That is our hope in this season. He conquered. He is Risen!

How do we lament? Like Jesus. Matthew 27 tells us that Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross. He did not whisper, instead he “cried out in a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The words of our Savior are a plea for mercy, a cry for help, but be sure to read to then end of the Psalm. The forsakenness of Jesus gives birth to the fulfillment of the promises of God. Psalm 22 holds grief and hope together, in the heart of Christ, and in our hearts as well.

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭22:1-31‬ ‭

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him— may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!”

Other Resources for Lament:

Scripture

• Some Psalms of Lament - 12, 13, 22, 31, 86

• Job

Songs

• Is He Worthy - Andrew Peterson

• Sovereign Over Us - Aaron Keyes

• Great is Thy Faithfulness - Shane and Shane Version

Further Reflections on Lament

• On Death - Timothy Keller

• A Grief Observed - C.S. Lewis

• Andy Crouch, David Brooks, Lydia - Veritas Forum

• Every Moment Holy: Liturgies of Sorrow & Lament (pg 201-246) by Douglas McKelvey

  • For Those Who Weep Without Knowing Why (pg 241-246)

  • For Nights & Days of Doubt (pg 163-168)

• Disney’s - Inside Out

I. The Problem: Mistaking Information for Formation

We have restarted a small groups ministry in the life of the church over the past three years, and something has become more and more clear to me as I’ve watched this ministry grow:

Community is the curriculum.

Whenever you begin ministries like this, or talk with folks about getting involved, one of the first questions is always, “So what are we going to study?” It’s an honest question, and it comes from well-meaning people, but it often feels like the question that either wins them or loses them. We tend to assume that the content we’ll receive, or fail to receive, is the central factor in whether a group is worth our time.

But beneath this question is a deeper assumption: we think content is what changes us.

We have absorbed the idea that Christian character is primarily formed through curriculum. That the main problem facing us is a lack of information, a lack of teaching, an emptiness of mind that leads to a malformed soul. If we can just add more knowledge, we assume, transformation will follow.

This is where my mind has shifted.

It’s not that I believe we don’t need biblical teaching. It’s not that I dislike learning. It’s that I’ve become increasingly convinced that the core issue is not that people don’t know enough. The issue is that we don’t know how to embody what we know.

We settle for informational input rather than becoming people who live out Christ-like output and obedience. We tell ourselves that if we are learning, then we must be moving forward in discipleship. But learning is not always doing. Intellectual attention is not the same as embodied application. Filling your head is not always forming your heart.

II. The Proposal: Community Is the Curriculum

So what’s the answer? I don’t pretend to know fully. But I can offer the conviction behind why we are structuring small groups the way we are:

Community, itself, is the curriculum.

Christianity is rich with truth, wisdom, and depth, but it is not simply a system of ideas. Christianity is embodied epistemology—a knowing that transforms both being and doing. It is a faith meant to be lived, walked around with, practiced in real space and time among real people.

This is why community becomes the best curriculum.

Do you want to know whether you truly grasp Jesus’ command to love your neighbor? Go and do it. If you can create emotional, physical, and sacrificial space for another person, caring for their needs as your own, then your knowledge has begun moving from head to heart.

You cannot know whether the teachings of Jesus have taken root in isolation. You must bump into the real challenges of the Christian life, which are often not questions of logic but questions of love. The challenges are not immaterial ideas, but embodied individuals.

Community is challenging because it functions like a practicum. It is like when medical students transition from textbooks and hypothetical scenarios to real patients. They move from tidy answers to the messy reality of living, breathing, complicated human beings. Their learning accelerates because the stakes are real and the purpose is clear.

No one goes to medical school simply to ace tests. They go to heal people.

Likewise, people don’t follow Jesus to become more intellectually impressive. They follow because they have been transformed by His love, the deepest longing of the human soul, and want to live in that love with God and others. Christ’s way becomes the only way forward into life.

Community is our practicum.

Small groups are our teaching hospital.

They allow us to put down the textbooks and begin living into our learning. Community places us into dynamic environments where opportunities to love and be loved are always before us.

Our act of committing to a group and showing up consistently is an act of love. It means we are committed, even when inconvenienced, to being present to the people we seek to love. It means saying no to other things in order to say yes to this particular community.

Our acts of listening and sharing in community are acts of love. Our listening tells our friends, Your story is worth hearing, and I care deeply about your experience. Our sharing says, I believe I am worthy of love, and I cannot walk through this world alone. Will you walk with me? Dependency and dignity are on display over and over again as we gather around the Word of God, sharing what He is doing in our lives.

Our hospitality, by hosting or providing food or drink, is an act of love. Each week, we make space or offer sustenance for those we love, inviting them more deeply into our lives, allowing their presence to cost us something: time, attention, money, and more.

Our prayers are acts of love. We remind each other that though our lives may feel like small stories in a large world, the God of the universe never sleeps nor slumbers and cares deeply for each one of His children. In prayer, we remind one another of our great God and His grand story of redemption, which will one day make all sad things untrue. Until then, we are not alone.

These small communities create space not simply to learn the concept of love, but to conspire with one another against the schemes of the devil to allow what we know with our minds to penetrate our hearts, so that our knowing coalesces with our being. The devil would love nothing more than for love to remain conceptual rather than communal. Small groups allow us to embody the command.

III. The Practicum: Conviction/Confession, Conflict, and Celebration

If community is the curriculum, then conviction that begets confession, conflict, and celebration become three essential courses God uses to shape us. These experiences turn information into formation and move us from hearing the Word to embodying it.

Conviction Begetting Confession

One vital part of group life is learning to let the Word of God challenge, shape, and redirect us. At First Pres, our weekly discussions follow the sermon. Pastors prepare questions that invite us to look more deeply at the preached text, trusting that God continues to speak through His Word.

The idea behind this is simple: Every week, God has something He intends for us to hear.

Conviction is the movement from general truth to personal encounter. It is the experience of being laid bare before Scripture, exposed to the light of God’s Word, and invited into transformation. Many of us feel this in worship, but outside of community, conviction often fades before it becomes part of us.

Groups give us the space to bring these convictions into the open. Naming what God is pressing on invites others to walk with us, encourage us, and help us live into the invitation the Spirit is extending.

This is why we end every group with two simple questions:

What is God saying to you?
What are you going to do about it?

These questions move us from general teaching to personal obedience. They help us embody the Word of God, not just hear it.And as that Word begins to search us, it often leads us further: not only into conviction, but into confession.

If conflict calls others out, confession calls ourselves out. Confession frees us from carrying our internal mess alone. Many of us treat confession solely as a private practice between ourselves and God:

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us…” (1 John 1:9)

But Scripture also commands:

“Confess your sins to one another…” (James 5:16)

This kind of confession does not have to be about sins against someone in the group (in fact that would be better done individually rather than publicly to start). It is about letting the community see the burdens—pride, anger, envy, fear—that would otherwise remain hidden.

But that’s the sort of thing that scares us. We fear confession because we fear being known and rejected. As Tim Keller said:

“To be loved and not known is superficial.
To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.”

We feel the risk of confession, and also the risk of never confessing. How long can I pretend? How long can I remain unknown?

But communities shaped by love and trust can become confessional communities. They offer the embodied experience of being truly seen, truly known, and still loved. They remind us of the deeper grace of Jesus—that He was pierced for our transgressions so that we no longer need to be pierced by shame, and crushed for our iniquities so we no longer need to be crushed by guilt.

Confession becomes a doorway into freedom and deeper belonging.

Conflict

Conflict is another unavoidable and essential part of community life. In our home with two boys, ages four and two, conflict is constant—fighting over toys, meals, who goes first. We can go from zero to one hundred in three seconds flat. But this means we have endless opportunities to teach about pride, humility, repentance, and reconciliation.

The easy solution would be to separate them to maintain peace. But we want more than the absence of war. We want them to learn that the greatest gift they have in our home is not a toy, but one another.

Groups should work the same way. The goal is not a fragile peace that survives only if nothing hard is ever said. The goal is a sturdy peace, rooted in love, and trust that can withstand disagreement, dysregulated emotion, and discomfort.

Conflict in a safe community becomes a profound means of grace. It forces us to face the reality that we will not agree on everything, and yet we remain committed to loving one another. Conflict invites us to absorb the cost of another’s hurt, to forgive, and to risk love again. It gives us the chance to practice the real, painful, beautiful work of bearing one another’s burdens.

All real communities have conflict. It’s the fake ones that never quite get there. I never want our groups to rush into conflict or seek it out for its own sake. But if there is a lack of conflict after a time, then I often assume there is a lack of honesty and vulnerability amongst the members.

Through Jesus, we have been given the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 18). Or in other words, through Jesus, we have all that we need to endure rupture and engage repair, making our communities all the more beautiful through the practice of vulnerability, confrontation, and forgiveness.

Celebration

Finally, beautiful communities know the gift and joy of celebration. We may not always realize what a neat practice in humility it is to genuinely celebrate someone or something together!

As we gather to glory in the goodness of others say, for a birthday, anniversary, milestone, or work achievement we get to practice delight and encouragement in wonderfully selfless ways. We give our time, energy, maybe even some money or a gift, and most importantly, our thoughts and heart to the goodness and blessing that this person is to us.

One of my favorite moments in these sorts of gatherings is when one brave soul dips beneath the surface by offering words of kindness to the person being celebrated. They begin to tell them, almost apologetically, how much they care for them, how wonderful and beautiful they think their life and work are, to them and to their friends. They offer the sort of sustenance that the cake and steak and drink could not offer. These small tokens of praise are often the sort of moments that remind others that their Christlikeness is on display in ways they may not even be aware of. These are also the moments that our friends will revisit in their minds over and over again, not knowing how much they needed encouragement until after they have received it.

Celebrations make the right sort of space for these words to be spoken and affirmed by a community that knows us truly and loves us anyway.

The other things we likely gather to celebrate are things like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, or the turning of a year. These moments are not the same as the former, but they continue to form us into the sort of people who understand that the joy of a season is always more full when it is shared with those we love!

These moments often have us gathering around dinner tables and festive meals to see each other face to face, but also, to meet us where we are. Maybe you have had a season where you know it’s Christmas, but it feels more like Lent. The joy of Advent is not gripping your heart, and it is certainly not changing your circumstance, and you are at risk of feeling lost in the darkness of winter rather than the hope of the Light of the World dawning.

Beautiful communities will not demand that our feelings match the seasons, but rather will allow the seasons and celebrations to gather us together, that we might be plucked from our isolation and brought once again into the presence of our friends.

Our friend group just had this sort of odd experience. Our family caught the flu in October and generously offered it to all of our closest friends. Over the next two months, we passed the baton of sickness until it worked its way through everyone. We hardly saw any of these friends over that time, but we had a Christmas party pre-planned for a night in mid-December.

Over those two months, my heart ached to see these folks and enjoy them face to face. The night came and brought together a bunch of weary wanderers, heavy with the pain of suffering sickness and parenting at the same time. Our friend began the evening with a liturgy he wrote to remind us of the gift of Christ, the beauty of our season of life, and the joy of fellowship that remains with us in it all. We feasted and drank and celebrated the gift of life together. No place I’d rather be.

It’s not that the night erased the last two months, but it did remind me that the pain of loneliness and isolation serves as a warning that I am made for so much more than that. Celebrations like these, face to face with good friends, give us a glimpse of glory that spurs our hearts onward towards all that Jesus plans to give us when He comes again.

One day, we will be gathered up with a multitude of weary wanderers to feast and drink, laugh and cry with those God has made our family through Jesus. I doubt it will erase the past, but perhaps the isolation will grow dim in the light of His glory, love, and grace.

Community is the Curriculum

There’s more that a beautiful community offers, but I would argue that it shouldn’t be less than what I have outlined here.

Conviction begetting confession, conflict, and celebration together form the practicum of Christian community. They are the lived realities through which we practice the way of Christ.

May God use these spaces in our lives to give us more beautiful lives in the likeness of Jesus.

Yesterday I had the chance to preach from Ephesians 4.1-3 emphasizing the virtues that fill and form people into beautiful communities.

Paul says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Most of my time was spent inviting our people into a vision of a community that begins to live in complete humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit. Here is some of what I said, but if you’d don’t have time to read this whole thing… jump to the end and read the section on Community. :)

Humility & Gentleness

Humility is the gateway to belonging — pride is allergic to community.

Pride only builds transactional, conditional, hollow communities. Pride leaves out the useless folks and only keeps the others until they become useless to it. Pride is too filled with fear to make anything truly beautiful out of a group of people.

Humility knows what life is all about: loving God and neighbor. Therefore, humility gives itself away for the sake of others, doing all it can to obey the law of love. Humility knows itself well. It can tell the truth not only about its goodness and strength but also its weaknesses and flaws. Humility brings its whole self to a community, knowing where it can contribute and where it will need help.

Pride is allergic to community—humility is the gateway to belonging.

Gentleness is humility embodied. Gentleness is the output of a body and soul full of humility. It notices the needs of the other and is willing to go slower, restrain power, and respond in ways that make the other feel seen, known, and loved. While we may have gotten better at not throwing punches, there is likely room to grow in our gentleness in the way we speak and respond to those closest in our lives.

It has been so sweet to watch my 3-year-old learn gentleness with his baby sister. While he has learned grit and toughness from his 4-year-old brother, the vulnerability of his 5-month-old sister has taught him a new way of being. Gentleness is humility embodied.

Patience and Forbearance

Patience is self-control — impatience is a result of idolizing control.

Patience is a form of bearing with the other when they are not able to keep pace. Patience is the opportunity to put our timeline and desires aside for the sake of the other. Patience demands that we slow down to catch up to others. If we struggle with patience, there is a good chance we suffer from serving the idol of control.

Forbearance is a form of patience in which we have so deeply committed our lives to others that we are willing to bear with them even when they hurt us. The vision here is to feel so tethered to someone else that we are able to say, “I am not going anywhere.” It means taking the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to us in Jesus very seriously, trusting that the power of the reconciling work of Jesus is enough to bind person to person in unity, even when they hurt or harm one another.

Forbearance commits to a communal journey of sanctification, knowing that both sides need to grow, that both sides will sin against one another, that both sides will, at some point, want to eject from the relationship, and yet you stick with it.

Not one of these is easy, but can you imagine the beauty that would emanate from a community of people who were full of these virtues.

“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.”

Near the beginning of my sermon, I reminded everyone how much change costs. It is not easy, but it is made possible through the person and work of Jesus and the indwelling power of the Spirit.

Here in verse four, Paul reminds us of the effort it will take. There is so much to overcome for unity to prevail. Sure, we have all the divisions that humanity has been dealing with since the beginning: race, class, gender, ideology, etc. But we also have a modern challenge: the possibility of individualism.

A truly individualistic life has never been more possible. Tech and machines are luring us into isolated spaces more and more, as they allow us to curate our lived experience and promise to deliver as much as we want with as little friction as possible. Spaces of true community can’t compete if the highest value is a frictionless, conflictless, comfortable experience.

But what if that’s an empty value to aim your life at? What if you’ve been told that sort of experience is life and life to the full, but it is actually hollow, shallow, and lonely? What if you were made for people, and by embracing isolation, you are missing out on the greatest element of God’s glorious creation: the dynamic experience of seeing another person face to face and committing to love them?

Sure, the alternative of an isolated life is safe, but is it good?

You’ll have to answer that for yourself.

The invitation to the Christian life doesn’t dovetail with the cultural movement—it lets go of it. We refuse to be the sort of people who buy the lie that the good life looks more like a non-contact drop-off of Uber Eats than it does a family dinner around a messy, loud, argumentative, joyful table. Let me tell you, I am all about some uber eats from time to time, but I refuse to engage it as a metaphor for the good life. I’m all in on the mess of family dinner and face to face community!

And I am also all in on something else. This was an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for a while, and after I said it Sunday, I had a few people come up to me and say something like, “I can’t stop thinking about that.”

I am pretty convinced that even in the church we have bought the lie of individualism, and it shows up in a sneaky way. When we think about growing in the likeness of Jesus, our minds often go to learning. We need more books, more resources, more devotionals, more studies. We have decided we can grow our hearts through growing our heads. But what if that is keeping us isolated all the more? What if we aren’t really growing in our adherence to the greatest commandments through these efforts? Maybe we don’t need more learning. Maybe it’s time to just do it.

“Community is the Curriculum”

Do you want to learn humility? Step into a community with all of your pride, let it bump into other people’s pride, and commit to laying down your preferences for the sake of others.

Do you want to learn gentleness? Go serve in the nursery and hold a baby for an hour. Before you respond to a friend or a family member, take a deep breath and work on changing your tone from rage to tenderness or curiosity.

Do you want to learn patience? Go hang out with a toddler. Next time a family member is holding everyone up from leaving the house, don’t go sit and honk the horn from the car, but see if they need help. Go sit and let a little old man tell you some stories from his life.

Do you want to learn how to bear with someone in love? Commit to deep friendship with someone. Make time and space in your life for them so they know they are a priority, and invite them into your story as well.

I am not saying that I don’t love to learn or think it is necessary. I am saying that we can learn so many of these truths in ways that will, slowly but surely, transform us into the likeness of Jesus if we commit to proximate, intimate, consistent communities.

In the end, what makes these communities beautiful is not that they get it all right, operating with complete humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance every time. It’s that they know the beauty of love and reconciliation, which means every time there is a rupture, they find a way to repair it. These communities are rich and beautiful because they are good places to fail and the best places to grow.

They hum with the power of the Spirit, knowing that sanctification is a group project. They practice belonging together, day after day, knowing that the power of Jesus has overcome sin and death, and therefore there is nothing that a community can face that His grace is not sufficient to see them through.

Community is the curriculum. Every day offers opportunities to become more and more like Jesus with the help of His body. All that’s left, then, is to jump in. I know that’s no small thing…but perhaps if we can get past the fear, it might feel something like when Eustace got tossed into the lake after having his dragon skin ripped off by Aslan.

Eustace says, “And there was I, as smooth and soft as a peeled switch, and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much, for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything, but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious…”

Over the last couple of months, I have been reading a book called The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa with a few good friends. While I do have a tendency to get WAYYYY into the thing I am reading at the moment and overplay the importance it may have in my life long term, I think I can safely say this is one of those books that is going to live rent free in my head for a long time.

Hartmut Rosa, German sociologist, argues that modern life is built on one great illusion: if we can only gain enough control over our schedules, our bodies, our homes, our relationships, our futures, then life will finally feel secure, meaningful, and manageable.

But there is a problem: the world resists us. It is uncontrollable. And we can’t help but rage against our limits and demand more.

In this short little book, Rosa makes a compelling argument for this being the central problem of our modern experience. We long for control. We long to be able to reach ever further into our world and for nothing to exceed our grasp. Rosa casts a vision of two diametrically opposed postures that are possible in the world.

Aggression – trying harder to master life, force it to behave, bend it to our will. If we see the world this way, we see every moment as a “point of aggression,” something to win, conquer, or achieve. Every element of life is competitive, and everyone a competitor.

Resonance – opening ourselves to the world as something that speaks, addresses, and transforms us. If we see the world this way, we are more likely to envision our reality like a grand symphony, with music playing all about, and finding our way to fit in and fill out the beauty of the collective song of the world.

I would try to explain the idea more, but it would be better for you to pick up the book. It’s a little over 100 pages and worth every minute.

As I’ve been sitting with Rosa’s ideas, a film keeps coming to mind: The Book of Eli.

You may remember it. Denzel Washington walking across a brutal, post-apocalyptic landscape, protecting a sacred book with a kind of quiet determination. The film is a visual spectacle and a classic tale of good and evil. But after reading Rosa, there seems to me to be so much more.

If you encounter the book and the movie side by side, you might think they were written together, one as a work of philosophy and the other a parable to help us see through the philosopher’s eyes. To dominate as the aggressor or to open ourselves to a larger story, this is the question of the film. When the world has fallen apart, what sort of new world is worth building? What sort of new world is possible, and who gets to choose?

The Longing and Lie of Control

Carnegie, the film’s antagonist, is Rosa’s “point of aggression” made visible. In the midst of a post-apocalyptic world, Carnegie is one of the oldest characters in the story, someone who knows more than anyone else about the days before “The Flash.” He has old knowledge that he has brought into the new, barren world and has created a bit of an oasis in the desert.

Now, if you have seen the film, you know that last line is dripping with sarcasm.

Carnegie’s town is only an oasis in comparison to living in an endless desert entirely alone. His town is reminiscent of one you might find in an old Western—just enough civility to meet the basic needs of those in the community. But the truer story is that Carnegie is judge, jury, and executioner. He controls every facet of life for his little town and its people.

It is a hollow expression of a true and beautiful city, but in the absence of any other options, and lacking the wisdom of the old world, the townspeople do not believe there is anything better to be longed for.

While the town is subservient to his desires, you discover that Carnegie is still searching for something: a lost book. Not all the details are spelled out, but in the great war that brought about “The Flash,” all books were destroyed, most especially one particular book. The book that has the power to bring order, that grants power to its bearer to become the true master of the people.

The ache and aggression of modernity is to possess something that would make us powerful enough to possess all else and all others. The type of control we seek would make the world give us exactly what we want, when we want it.

The Rhythms of Resonance

Eli, on the other hand, is a completely different sort of man, holding a different posture toward the world as it is, and a different hope for what the world could become.

Eli is a listener. He is patient. In a world ruled by fear, he seems to know both himself and the situation at hand, knowing when to act and when nothing can be done. He moves through the world driven by something deeper than fear, greed, or ambition. His walk is determined but unhurried, always heading west, not looking for trouble, yet not easily deterred.

This posture of listening is a picture of the “resonance” Rosa describes. At times, that listening leads to action. When attacked by hijackers along the road, Eli responds not with recklessness, but with precision. While his opponents swing wildly, Eli moves almost effortlessly, his blade flowing like a choreographed dance, each step measured toward the quiet of being left alone.

His ears are tuned to threats, but he listens to other things as well. At night, he turns on his old iPod to listen to How to Mend a Broken Heart by Al Green. The song carries a calming pace and lamenting lyrics, echoes of an old world that give voice to the ache of the new one.

Eli also listens through reading. Each night, he opens his book, slowly peeling through its pages, absorbing its words.

He is not aggressive, but open. Somehow, he remains human in an inhumane world. While nearly every other character embodies the dystopian nature of the post-apocalyptic landscape, Eli has not lost himself.

One moment captures this resonance beautifully. Eli stumbles upon an old shack and searches for supplies. Opening a closet reveals a hanging corpse fully clothed, a brief jump scare for the viewer, but not for Eli. He checks the body and discovers a pair of boots. Sitting down to try them on, he struts around the shack with a grin, like a ten-year-old showing off new shoes on the first day of school.

It’s a subtle reminder that joy and delight can persist even in darkness—or in this case, scorching light.

Eli is determined to get the book west, believing he was called by a voice to carry it there. Throughout the film, Scripture narrates his journey, revealing that the sacred book he protects, and that Carnegie desperately wants, is the Bible. The very last one. Eli believes God is guiding him to deliver it to people who will use it for good rather than domination.

But his journey is not only about completing a task. It is about becoming a certain kind of person. One shaped by the words he carries.

Late in the film, fear begins to creep in. The weight of the task hardens him. He grips tighter to his abilities and grows colder toward those who need help. For a moment, he slips into a posture of control. But a relationship with a young woman interrupts this drift and reawakens his heart, prompting his quiet confession:

“I was so caught up in reading it, I forgot to live by it.”

That is resonance.

It is not enough to finish the mission. Eli refuses the creed of the age, “by whatever means necessary.” He must not only be called to the journey but formed by it. He becomes the first fruits of a new creation, a living witness to the story he has been carrying all along.

Seeing but Never Perceiving

The story comes to its climax in a tragic battle over the one book to rule them all. Eli and his companion hole up in a house along the road, with Carnegie and his cronies arriving to kill him and take the book they know he has. Carnegie’s crew overwhelms Eli’s, forcing him to surrender. They shoot him and leave him for dead, taking the book back to town, celebrating the victory they believe they have won.

Eli’s companion escapes the envoy and returns to save him. She finds Eli alive, and together they continue the journey west without the book.

Carnegie returns to his town eager to open the locked book and begin using the sacred text to bolster his power.

The film ends with a stark juxtaposition of experiences.The vision of control and aggression in Carnegie is exposed as he opens the book to find a Bible, but in Braille. He will forever be seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never resonating with the contents of the book of life. His envisioned world of control and enthronement, always just out of reach.

The vision of resonance is Eli, lying on a table, clothed in white, reciting from memory the book he has treasured along the journey. He has become the word of life and the beginning of the new world. His life is characterized by humility, subservient to a larger plan and resting in his right-sized role in the world as a scribe pens the words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Why This Matters for Formation

The book and movie are haunting pictures of modernity. We do not need an apocalypse to produce men and women like Carnegie. The movie hints that the war that led to the barren landscape came about because of people like him. People who hold a posture of grasping and demanding more of the world, and more power over it.

What is haunting is how easily we can make sense of the deranged characters. Bandits, thieves, rapists, murderers, and a corrupt King Carnegie all make sense to our instincts. Of course this is what the world would become if no one dictated a moral code, demanding obedience for the sake and good of others. A lawless world resorts to survival and domination by the fittest, craftiest, and most resourceful, which often also means the greediest, those who will do “whatever it takes.”

What is more haunting is how eerily similar Carnegie’s town feels to our own world. Power dynamics balanced by greedy, power-hungry individuals pulling levers, managing and manipulating the masses on the world’s stage. Carnegie was rebuilding the world he once knew. His vision of controlled corruption was not new, but old. In the absence of love, fear does not simply work, it reigns, both in the hearts of individuals and in our communities. A society desperate for control reveals its great secret: we are deeply afraid.

In contrast, Eli, his person, mission, and way of being, doesn’t make sense. It’s as if he is blind to Carnegie’s world, yet sees more deeply a better and more beautiful one. And he is. If you rewatch the movie knowing he was blind the whole time, you’ll notice the way he moves through the world. He depends on a different set of skills to perceive and resonate with reality. He has lost his sight, but gained a deeper way of knowing.

While others are controlled by fear, Eli lives with careful confidence, waking each day to continue a life of simple obedience. The man he has become over many hard years has shaped him into someone fit for the task. He meets every obstacle with calmness, wisdom, and appropriate action. He never loses self-control, in fact, it is the only control he exerts, and is able to engage an uncontrollable world meaningfully. He is a person of resonance, actively attuning to the world around him, trusting the voice that calls and beckons him onward.

Longing to Belong

You cannot watch the film and desire to be any character other than Eli. He is obviously the hero, but the ache runs deeper than that. As I watched again, I found myself longing for life to feel both effortful and effortless. Eli quotes 2 Corinthians 5:7: “I walk by faith and not by sight” — a nod to his physical impairment, but more pointedly to his way of resonating with the world.

I do not want to be like Eli because he wields his blade like a boss or wears cool neck scarves, but because I long to listen and respond to a voice that calls from beyond the world, directing my way, more deeply, into the world.

What I see in Eli, and what I want, is twofold. First, I long to hear the voice of God regarding the direction of my life. Eli is told to take the book and go west. There is no more clarity than that, but it is enough. Perhaps I have already been given that much clarity and am simply dense or dull, lacking eyes of faith.

Second, I long to embody Eli’s healthy shame. He knows how big and how small he is, how fit he is for the task, and trusts that the voice that called him will also sustain him. I want that clarity: to know who I am and what I can and cannot do. To know the truth about myself. To live with humility, never thinking too little of myself, and avoiding the danger of thinking far too much of myself.

My friend Ben once preached on meekness and defined it as “love-constrained obedience.” That’s a great way to describe Eli. That’s a great way to describe resonance. I think that is why this character still resounds in my mind fifteen years later. He is the sort of person I long to become and fear I may never be.

So What?

Rosa’s thesis is ultimately hopeful. The world may be uncontrollable, but it is not unresponsive. Rosa is not a believer, but he names religion as one of the ways people have long spoken into the world, longing for a response.

I think this is where we should end, quickly (woof, this was long).

What makes us the sort of people who can see the world for what it is and seek to love it more than we seek to possess it? I look around and see plenty of Elis in my life. People who have deferred the demanding drive for control and instead offer themselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God and pleasant to others.

But becoming more like Eli is what I long for. And there is good news: each day I wake up and decide whether I will hold a demanding posture toward the world or a posture of desire.

As I write this, my boys, three and four-and-a-half, are fighting behind me. The older is antagonizing the younger by laughing (how dare he), while the younger is yelling, “Shut your mouth, Jack!” Look at him, only three and already living with a posture of demand.

Parenting gives me a hundred opportunities a day to either scream my way through our relationship or serve my boys by teaching them the rhythms and rules of resonance. Shouting gets me back to writing faster. Speaking, refereeing, helping them name fear and greed, and inviting them into a better way of loving one another takes far longer.

But this is one way I can reject a posture of demand and control and instead embrace desire and resonance.

I want my boys to grow up in a household of resonance: messy, uncontrollable, dynamic, beautiful, responsive resonance. I want them to know how big and small they are, how burdened and beautiful the world is, how powerful and pervasive the promises of God are, and how delightful a journey west can be when we hear a voice beckoning us onward.

I want this for my marriage, friendships, church, and in all the space I get to inhabit. Maybe you do too.

May the Lord bless us, keep us, and give us eyes to see what is most true about our world.

There once was a man who lived his whole life in darkness, until he found a small flickering light that spoke to him words of kindness and love. Bright and warm, the man treasured the light he found and took it home to his cave.

In his cave, he was able to see all the things he had bumped into or learned to avoid over many years of living in the dark. Some things needed to be removed entirely. Others needed cleaning and proper placement. The small voice from the light directed his work, what should stay and what should go. After a full day’s work of moving, discarding, cleaning, and organizing, the light grew a bit brighter, and he could see deeper into the cave.

To his dismay, the cave was larger than he had realized, and more densely furnished than he had known. To see was to know, and to know was to long for the space to be as it ought—to be ordered, functional, clean, and beautiful. Beautiful?He had never thought of that before.

What is beauty when you’re in darkness? Beauty has no place, no meaning, no possibility without light to reveal that which might be considered beautiful, or perhaps that which might become beautiful. To live in darkness was to have one’s world closed off from the feeling of being beckoned, called, and drawn outward into beauty. But now a wider world, more open to possibility, had been revealed, all through this small light.

How could he have lived in all of this for so long without knowing the mess it had been, or become?

He must do more, must clean more, there must be a way to get to it all. The voice from the light reminded him there was no rush, but the man still felt the weight of the mess.

And so each day, when he awoke, he saw more, ordered more, cleaned more, and discarded more. He worked hard, and the work was worth doing. Through the gift and direction of the light, and his persistent effort and care, the cave was transforming.

The light was kind to him. Some days he awoke particularly focused and attentive, and the light seemed to shine brighter, revealing more on those days. Other days, he awoke dreary-eyed and low, wondering if his work mattered at all. On those days, the light revealed less. His light, his companion, paced the work, always gentle and humble in heart, dimming on some days so as not to overwhelm him, brightening on others when his strength was renewed.

But there were days when he grew weary of the work and hid his light altogether, choosing the familiar darkness instead. In those moments, he once again stumbled and bruised his shins on the objects scattered throughout the cave.

Yet he always returned to the light and found it faithfully burning bright. On those days of return, he loved the light all the more, delighting in its warmth, its kind voice, and the vision it offered of a more beautiful space and a more beautiful life.

As he grew older, the light continued to shine in the darkness, revealing more of the cave than he had time to tend. Yet he did not fear. For the light itself had become his companion, bringing joy to his discovery day after day. He knew he had become a person of the light, and in his cave he would never be lost in darkness again.

After many years, the man fell into the last sleep. When he awoke, the light was no longer there but he heard the all-too-familiar voice, and behold, a man. One he was just meeting, and yet felt he had known for a very long time. The man asked if he would like to see what had happened to the cave during his final sleep.

They walked the halls of the cave and found all things where they ought to be. All was clean and ordered, just as the man had always longed for it to be. The desire he had carried for so many years, to see the cave ordered and beautiful, was now his to behold. It was a perfect place to enjoy with his friend, the light of true life.

If I knew this story could stand on its own I might-could post it by itself. But I am afraid, so I decided to add this little pastoral/personal explanation of what this story has been to me. :)

For many Christians, the life of faith, sanctification, and growth, unfolds much more like this than we are often prepared to admit.

Much of my life as a believer has felt this way. My heart is a densely furnished and dimly lit cave, idols scattered throughout. The journey of sanctification has often felt like a never-ending work of discovery and renewal. The more I see myself in the light and life of Jesus, the more there is to be ashamed of, guilty of, and saddened by in my heart. The more I grow, the greater the gap I seem to feel between my heart and the holiness of God.

At first, this felt like an anxious struggle, to clean it all, change it all, to be renewed in every facet of my life, quickly. It was as though my shame were something I could erase before God, proving that he had made a good choice by making me alive in Christ. I grew deeply frustrated by the persistence of besetting sins and by the painful discovery of what felt like entirely new ones.

I remember this clearly when we had our second child. My anger, fueled by exhaustion, loss of control, selfishness, and disrupted sleep, began to surface again and again. I had never thought of myself as an angry person. Had I been wrong? My sin was (and is) ever before me. It felt like a losing battle. I had cleaned up so much external behavior, yet as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), sin runs far deeper than the surface.

My thoughts, attitudes, and desires, though often kept in check through discipline, continued to plague my mind and soul. Just when I thought I was growing, I found the light shining on something deeper, something I had never seen before.

The turn for me has come, and continues to come, through humility. The love of God meets me where I am: in the ditch, off the road, left for dead, and humiliated. He refuses to leave me there, whether I was beaten down by the world or harmed by my own foolishness. Either way, he is not afraid of my mess, my guilt, my wounds, or my shame.

He brings light and life, for he is light and life. He is my companion, my pacer, my guide and he delights in walking with me, step by step, into a more and more beautiful life.

Thanks be to God for his patience and love as we journey further down, further into the dark which is, in truth, further up and further in.

[I originally wrote and published this piece through The Collaborative Orlando in December 2024. With their permission, I am reposting it here so it can live alongside my other writing—and because it represents the kind of work I most love to do. It’s a longer reflection that explores the overlap between some of the most profound philosophical ideas I’ve encountered and the surprising simplicity of a children’s movie that, I believe, manages to illustrate many of those insights. Even if you don’t plan to read the full post, I would highly recommend watching Onward and asking yourself at the end: What is it trying to say about our world? What stirred my heart? Enjoy.]

I’ve always loved stories that explore magical worlds, so when I saw Disney’s 2020 animated film Onward, something stirred in me. There was something about Onward that seemed both to transport me to another world and tell me more about my own.

Onward characters include mythical creatures from any good fairytale—centaurs, elves, fairies, wizards, unicorns, and dragons. There are maps and curses, magical quests and mighty swords, all in a world full of mystery and wonder. What makes Onward stand out is not just the whimsical story or imaginative setting; it’s the way the film subtly explores a profound shift in how we experience our very mundane, unmagical world.

Onward shows us a world that was once magical, but we soon learn that has lost most of its magic. The movie opens with a glimpse of the past—a time of glory and wonder, where magic was as natural as breathing. As time marched on, the inhabitants of this once-magical world began to prioritize efficiency, comfort, and control over mystery and wonder. Magic, once central to life, became a threat, then irrelevant, then forgotten.

The story centers on two brothers, Ian and Barley, who live in the midst of magical relics, but are too young to have ever experienced the magic first hand. On Ian’s sixteenth birthday he receives a gift that will invite them into a journey to recover the magic. Their quest is driven by the loss of their father and the hope that magic can bring him back; classic Disney. Ian, initially reluctant to believe in magic, is eventually compelled to embrace the longing in his heart to see his father one more time. His despair pushes him beyond the bounds of what he thinks is possible and into a world of spells suspending the natural order.

Ian and Barley’s quest to see their dad once is simultaneously a quest to undo the malaise and very normalization of the world in which they now live. Each element of their magical journey forces them to question the conventional wisdom of their modernized world and to think like wizards. Living as if the world is full of magic proves difficult when everyone else in the world has accepted the sterilization and standardization of a non-magical perception of the world around them.

Wizards who once used their staffs to conjure flames now reach for light switches. Elves, centaurs, and other magical beings now live in boring suburbs, working common jobs. Their extraordinary abilities, once a source of awe, have atrophied from disuse. Fairies no longer fly; they drive motorcycles. Dragons, once fierce, have become docile pets. Even unicorns, once majestic, are now little more than pests rummaging through trash. The wild, untamed world has been domesticated.

Onward helps us see that something akin to Ian and Barley’s world has happened in our own time and very real world.

This Secular Age

Philosopher Charles Taylor, in his monumental work, A Secular Age (2007), traces the last 300 years as a time when men and women moved from embracing the worldview of their religion to the strict secular, unmagical, world we know today. Onward mirrors this same movement acting as a kind of parable, placing us in a post-magical world where creatures long for something more. The movie’s evolution and characters’ deep longing is more than just clever plot devices; it’s a metaphor for the broader cultural shift that Taylor describes.

For centuries, humans experienced their visible portion of their lives, families, villages, and nations as part of a much larger cosmos, infused with spiritual significance and inhabited by forces beyond our control or understanding. The story of humanity promoted by religion was the most real, and poured meaning and purpose into every aspect of life. Family, marriage, vocation, morality, worship, and questions of life after death were all molded and formed by transcendent stories originating in religious texts like the Bible. The question wasn’t, “Is there a god?” but rather, “Which one do you worship?”

For centuries humans believed that rain would fall and wars would be won because their gods or goddesses controlled all elements and happenings of this natural world. They believed their worship of the right or wrong gods mattered. They connected every dot between their action or inaction with the action or inaction of beings with more power, more control, and a larger vision of the cosmos than they could see. Be it the Egyptians, the Chinese, or the Israelites, each had a vision of our world and beyond shaped by the transcendent.

Taylor demonstrates how people once delighted in creating symbols and images that brought the intangible world closer, pointing to something beyond. The art, in pictorial forms, and the stories, written or spoken, carried a culture’s narration of gods at work in the world. Floods, famines, victories, defeats, each carried a story, a narration of the human experiences shaped by transcendent interventions.

Like the characters of Onward, we too, feel the sense of “magic” lost. Since the dawn of time, humans have been animated and driven forward, not primarily by their simple abilities, but rather by their ability to sense the call of something greater than the world we can see and touch. Taylor grieves the sterilization of our world arguing that the forward progress of the last couple hundred years has only proved to dislocate the transcendent from common human experience. Like a house that has always been two-stories tall suddenly having the second floor ripped off, our world, and social imaginary, has been deconstructed, leaving our world broken rather than whole.

Magic, in Onward, represents the characters’ connection to powers, abilities, and ways to engage the world that are unseen by the human eye. The old world, the one Ian and Barley are seeking to recover, was full of wonder, mystery, adventure, danger, and risk. Every character is unique and uniquely gifted to access different elements of the magical world. Wizards use staffs to cast spells while the mighty Manticore has the strength of the lion and the wings of an eagle. So how could a world of magic help us connect more to our own world, our selves, and the God whom we worship?

The Christian Worldview

The Christian Church’s journey has been similar, particularly in the West. Our stories of old describe a world with our God as the constant force moving this world from creation, through the fall, into a beautiful and long depiction of redemption and rescue, all the way through to the coming consummation. European cathedrals were built to lift eyes and hearts to realities unseen and yet hoped for. Their lavish windows and architecture depicted, in greater detail, the movement of this journey from creation to consummation. Church ceremonies and royal coronations boasted the movement of God’s hand to bring about new rulers, new seasons, and a vision for a hopeful tomorrow and beyond.

Over time, however, this enchanted world gave way to what Taylor calls the “immanent frame”—a way of understanding our world that confines reality to the here-and-now, the material and the measurable. It’s a world where everything can be explained by natural causes, and the idea of a transcendent dimension beyond the material is no longer taken for granted but is, at best, one option among many, maybe even dangerous or harmful.

In Onward, as the characters embrace the conveniences of modernity, light switches, cars, fast food, their connection to the magical, the non-immanent, fades. The world becomes safer, more predictable, and more controllable. The movie portrays the world, in its more manageable state, as empty, stripped of the wonder that once made it vibrant. This echoes Taylor’s observation that in a secular age, while we have gained unprecedented control over our environment and lives, we have also lost something essential—a sense of the transcendent, the divine, the mysterious.

Taylor speaks of “subtraction stories,” describing how humans have confined themselves to a secular and immanent vision of the natural order: birth, life, death, nothingness. If the immanent frame is all there is, then the world shrinks down to the days of our lives and nothing more. In Onward, Ian and Barley’s needs exceeded their capabilities. They long to see their dad again and are given a hint that it may be possible, but only if they are willing to engage the old, magical, ways of doing things. Without the yearning to transcend their common experience, to reach beyond the grave, who knows if they would have noticed the lack of magic in their world? This feels familiar in our own world. It seems that people tend to feel secure without the intrusion of transcendent gods or beliefs, until they are faced with god-sized problems such as deeper meaning, the need for hope when things are difficult or unjust, or perhaps the issue of death.

What we “subtracted” from the world by lopping off of the transcendent seems to unburden us in a certain sense. Life is less complicated and less demanding. We are more free to live in ways that align with the passions of the heart or genius of the mind.

Or, so we think.

When we are our own gods, we make the rules, albeit more collectively than we care to admit. We set the standards. We cast the vision for our good lives. What we fail to see, however, is our “subtraction” of God is also a subtraction of power. When our own capabilities bump up against our limits, we have no one to ask for help.

As Ian and Barley venture into the unknown, they uncover relics of the past. Magical artifacts that still hold power, despite being forgotten. They find maps that now function as coloring pages for kids at the local diner which turn out to be maps to the magical items they seek. They uncover worlds of old hidden just beneath the surface of the parking lots covered over with fresh asphalt. The writers continue to press into the idea that the remaking of the magical world into a sterilized, efficiency driven modern age is but a thin veil that is waiting to be torn open.

Even in our world dominated by the immanent frame, traces of the transcendent remain. These veiled relics and artifacts symbolize a sort of “haunting” of the secular age. Whether we like it or not, the transcendent has left its mark on human history. In our surroundings, we are confronted by hauntings on every corner and in every season. Our churches and cathedrals lavish our hearts with beauty and stories of old inviting us to believe in a God of the ages. Our Christmas songs are full of wonder and hope. Moments of silence for the dead beg our attention and act as though someone or something may be able to speak into the silence. Our ceremonial prayers to begin ball games, even our pledge of allegiance, all whisper of times past when the transcendent was at hand.

But it’s not just the larger story that haunts our secular(izing) culture. Our micro-narratives, the stories of our lives and our own experiences are full of feelings and happenings that cannot be fully explained by science or reason. Moments of awe, beauty, love, longing, and belonging that point beyond themselves to something greater. We are swept up in a longing to believe that all beauty in creation has an artist waiting to be recognized for his work. We long for the natural order to be suspended in ways that make cancer go away, sight come back to the blind, and the impossible, possible as we face hard things in the world.

So what? Is there anything to do to slow or reverse the secular age in which we live?

Reimagined Hope

Onward invites us to imagine a world where magic still exists, for us, where the divine is still present, even if hidden just beneath the surface. It’s a call to rediscover the wonder that our secular age has tried to suppress. The film also leaves us with a challenge: to reconsider the way we see our world. Have we, in our pursuit of comfort, control, and efficiency, lost something essential? Have we forgotten the magic that once infused our lives with meaning and purpose?

There are a few things I think could be helpful as we internalize this Disney parable and begin to make sense of our own world, devoid of the magic it once held.

First, as we watch Ian and Barley’s journey, we are reminded that our own world is full of relics from a time when the transcendent was not just a possibility, but the reality that vivified our immanent existence. Perhaps it is wise to pay attention to these whispers, these sign posts, these voices from beyond and allow them to more steadily shape our way of being.

One in particular that we observe in our church is the liturgical year. For centuries Christians used the liturgical calendar to guide their meditations, reflections, singing, feasting, and even their demeanor while journeying through the life of Jesus, annually. Rather than beginning our year like the rest of our world, with the turn of the calendar, we begin with the season of Advent, the first coming of Jesus. We allow the humble, incarnate, beginnings of our Jesus shape the season we all know to be Christmas. We let the early sunset and the present darkness remind us that our world is indeed dark, cold, and in great need of a great light. We walk through advent, lighting one candle per Sunday to envision the growing hope of the light, warmth and grace of Jesus that will soon burst onto the scene. By the time we reach Christmas Eve, we have brought the brass and the choir, the bells, the children, all together into a space of worship to announce to the world, “No more let sins or sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground, he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found!” And this is just the beginning of our seasonal adherence to the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ that speaks words of hope into the darkness.

There are whispers of the transcendent in so many places and spaces of our modern world. Many are more subtle than what I described here, but nonetheless, they all beckon us to move out of, what Taylor calls, the “malaise of modernity.” They all disrupt us just enough to make us wonder if there is more than what we can now see. Or, in the words of C.S. Lewis,

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. (The Weight of Glory – 1942)

Second, we live in a world where, as Taylor puts it, we experience the “cross pressures” of the transcendent and immanent world colliding. We are regularly asked to live in a world that dismisses external sources of hope, meaning, justice, and love, and in the same breath are told to value each of these things in a meaningless world. Said another way, the modern world untethered humans from meaning and purpose by killing the gods, but has now told us that we must live as if everything matters and we are responsible for what happens to the world. The lack of rational consistency in such a claim is bound to cause people to question their own existence and their responsibility towards others.

Onward illustrates these collisions as the magic and mundane interact, and clash over and over again. Throughout the film we find Ian wrestling with both the impossibility of magic and his longing to be swept up in the power he cannot see. We do well to anticipate these “cross pressures” both for ourselves and others.

People wake each morning to endless to-do lists, pressure from their places of work to get more done, make more money, work longer hours and yet the larger cultural narrative is, “Ultimately, everything comes to dust and has no enduring meaning or value.” We are all children of Sisyphus, pushing our little stones up a mountain only to have the same task tomorrow.

Christianity offers a better story. Toilsome as the work is, vegetables grow up alongside the thorns and thistles. Our work provides for us and for others. It is a part of our lives and a part of the larger story, but it is not the whole. We wake to to-do lists needing attention but not before we receive attention from the creator of the universe who also calls us sons and daughters. He pours his love into our hearts reminding us that we were crafted in his image with all sorts of capabilities to manage, maintain, and even cultivate good things in this broken world. And he also tells us that we are not alone, he is coming again, and all things will, one day, be made new.

More and more in American culture many assume that Christianity, and similar assumptions of a spiritual world beyond our own, are obsolete. These notions now rest safely outside of the modern person’s plausibility structure. Which means that when the “cross pressures” hit our secular neighbors, they will have nothing to pull from to make sense of these experiences. These moments may bring about fear, despair, or perhaps a desire to escape. But what a gift it may be to have Christian friends and colleagues in these moments of bewilderment.

1 Peter 3:15 says that Christians should, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” Whether it be in moments that feel miraculous or in moments of pain and loss, Christians have words to say when the secular age must remain silent. We have a story that reaches back further and stretches forward longer than those offered in the immanent, secular world. It’s good to have these stories at the ready when the “cross pressures” of this age come to bear on others.

Finally, one of the markers of the secular age is how lonely it feels for so many. Our experience of secularism has not only created distance from the transcendent, but also from one another. There are lots of factors at play in the movement towards a lonely and isolated life, but one that stands out is our growing independence through the gifts of technology. Our gadgets are making life more efficient, more comfortable, more accessible, but not necessarily more human. The transactional nature of our lives, devoid of the necessity of personal interaction reminds us of the sort of world we inhabit. It is highly efficient, moves at a fast pace, can meet your immediate needs of food, shelter, and clothing, but may miss your heart.

The secular age is lonely by nature, and people are relational by nature. The God of the Bible makes clear that human beings were made in his image and therefore, relational as he always has been. Our willingness to be humbly present to others in our secular age will whisper to their souls that they were made to belong. Just as Ian and Barley find the gift of brotherhood as a part of the restored magic in their lives, we, too, find the malaise of modernity beginning to lift, like the dissipation of a heavy fog, as we lean into personal and intimate spaces where people have felt alone for so long. As Dr. Curt Thompson says, “We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.”

The Christian story makes belonging to God and others essential and central to the human experience by making it the highest priority of Jesus. The goal of His person and work is the rescue, reconciliation, and restoration of his people, to their God, to themselves, to others, and to the world he made for them. As believers, we can be to them a foretaste of the work of Christ through our presence, grace, and love. And along the way, we will find that our lives are more full, too, as we journey with others towards a recovery of the magic of belonging in the Kingdom of God.

Onward?

Onward, this parable for our secular world, doesn’t get us all the way to the God of the Bible, but it gives me hope. Hope that I am not alone in mourning the deconstruction of the old world. Hope that the common grace of God is at work in the lives of artists even in Disney’s acclaimed writing rooms. Hope that there is a God and that he has truly written eternity on our very hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and in doing so, will not let us succumb to the malaise of this modern age.

In the end, Ian and Barley find a new way of life in their world. They do not get all that they wanted, but there is a bright and beautiful way Onward in their lives. Their friendship grows in ways that will bring you to tears. And their quest infects the rest of their town! The magical creatures regain their delight in the old ways of living, vivifying their city, bringing a renewed zest for life from all their mythical neighborhood friends. Perhaps a world like ours could be similarly infected by the hope of the Gospel of Jesus.

May God use stories like Onward, and philosophers like Charles Taylor to stir our hearts, to make us restless for the magic we have lost, and to draw us back to Himself, the source of all wonder, all beauty, and all life.

Psalm 130: A song of ascents. (NIV)

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
2 Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

5 I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
6 I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

Psalm 130 has been on my mind this Christmas season and I chose it as the text to reflect on for our Lessons and Carols service at FPCO. This is the edited-for-substack version of my homily from December 28. You can find our sermons in audio form here.

It would feel more normal to reflect on the beginnings of one of the gospels here just after Christmas but I have spent much time in the Psalms this year and Psalm 130 felt especially fitting. Not because Christmas lacks joy, but because joy so often arrives alongside sorrow.

Christmas is full of delight, beauty, and celebration. If I asked you if you had a great Christmas, you may tell me you did. But if I asked you if you experienced loneliness, grief, or heaviness during the season, you may want to, and yet, hold back. Why is that? Perhaps because we feel that Christmas is supposed to be joyful.

While nature succumbs to the darkness of winter, all around us we are being told things are bright, cheerful. We put Christmas lights all around town to mask the fact that it’s cold and dreary outside and the sun goes down around 5pm every night. We even sing songs proclaiming that it is the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Though it seems even nature is doing what it can to convince us otherwise.

Maybe your heart feels sort of stuck in winter, dark and cold, hoping for Spring. Maybe Christmas came at a hard time for you this year. I’ve been feeling that way.

In the days leading up to Christmas Eve, our church held two funerals. We celebrate the lives of around 40-50 saints a year through services like this. Even when the sanctuary looks “merry and bright,” sadness is never far off. Some of my friends faced struggles we never imagined they would carry this year: illness, exhaustion, loss. In our lives, it has been a year marked by both beauty and burden. And so the question that lingered with me throughout Advent was this:

What does Christmas do with sadness?

How does the gospel make room for grief when the season insists on brightness? Is Christianity like our Christmas lights, feeble attempts to brighten the all encompassing darkness of winter? Or is it something better? Something more?

The Psalm begins with honesty:

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.”

For many of us, the depths have felt like home. No amount of presents, hot chocolate, or Christmas movies can fully pull us out. Sometimes the weight comes from circumstances pressing down on us: loss, sickness, uncertainty. Other times it comes from within: sin, guilt, shame.

I’ve felt that deeply this year. Circumstances that have me feeling out of control. But also, my own lack of self control leaves me in guilt over my own sin. I have three children now, and they are so delightful!. And yet I’m often confronted by my own impatience, my thin tolerance, my selfishness. The depths aren’t always something that happens to us; sometimes they’re something we discover in us.

And when you finally reach the bottom of that ache, there is often only one thing left to do: cry out.

That cry sounds something like this:
Lord, do you not see what’s happening? Do you not see my friends struggling? Do you not see the exhaustion, the darkness, the brokenness of the world? Can you fix it? Can’t you change me? Make me a better husband and dad? Have you forgotten us?

The psalmist stays there for a moment. But then, crucially, he turns his gaze.

“But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.”

This is the invitation of Advent. The psalmist does not deny the depths; he reorients himself toward the character of God.

“I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

Waiting is not something we enjoy. We avoid it whenever possible. We want things now—delivered quickly, resolved cleanly. And yet, to belong to God is to belong to a waiting people.

The Old Testament is full of promises followed by long seasons of silence. Generations wait. Centuries pass. Even between the Old and New Testaments there is a long, aching quiet. God promises and then his people wait.

The psalmist gives us the image of a watchman on the wall. It’s cold. It’s dark. You’re shivering. You’re scanning the horizon again and again. Only one thing can end your vigil: the rising sun. Some of you know that feeling well. You’ve been waiting a long time, shivering in the cold, wondering if the sun has actually gone out. Waiting, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

And yet the psalm does not end in despair.

“O Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love,
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.”

This is Emmanuel—God with us. This is the promise that the God who speaks does not abandon his word. The seed of hope is planted in the first Advent, in the coming of Jesus Christ. But the Church is still a waiting people. We now wait for his return.

I wish I could offer something else. I wish I could promise that relief will come tomorrow, that the waiting will end quickly. We pray, Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Or, How long, O Lord, will you forget us forever. Waiting is angsty, slow, and at times it can feel hopeless.

But Christianity does something no other story does. It names the ache of our hearts and then gives us a true answer. One that doesn’t depend on our own effort or action to pull ourselves or this world out of darkness. Christianity says, “Yes, it’s dark, and here is the light.” The hope of our salvation comes in the person of Jesus, the light of the world. The Son of God.

Perhaps you feel like a watchman, shivering in the cold, and if so, I would like to offer you a word of comfort. First, you are not alone. The church is made up of people who have committed to waiting, together. You need not shiver alone. We will sit on the mountainside through the dead of night, begging for the sun to rise, together. Let this community hold you as we wait together for the morning.

Christ has come and we cling to the hope that he will come again. The sun will rise. For now, we wait.

I read through the Psalms once a month as part of a rule of life I follow with a few really good buddies. At the tail end of every month we trudge through Psalm 119 and all its language about the law, its goodness, helpfulness, and beauty.

But the idea of law as gift took a long time to resonate with me. For most of my life, I perceived the law as something that kept me from things, not something that saved me from things. The law felt like a hindrance to my happiness, a list of demands that proved to God whether I was worthy of him. In essence, communion with God felt conditional on my ability to keep or earn salvation through obedience.

And the more I broke the law, I assumed, the more angry God became.

Then I bumped into quotes like these:

“We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them—or else, by keeping them, rise through them to the fulness of freedom under God.”
— Cecil B. DeMille

“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”
— G. K. Chesterton

It’s not that I think God is pleased with sin, by any means, but it did get me thinking: perhaps God loves his people more than he loves his law. Maybe he longs for his people to remain unbroken far more than he is concerned with how the law itself “holds up.”

For those of us hidden in Jesus, the law is not the means by which we attain or maintain a relationship with the Father. All of that has been secured by Jesus’s obedience. His keeping of the law, his sacrificial death on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension. Which means the law can now become something else to us: a vision for wholeness in a fractured world, “a lamp to our feet and a light to our path” (Ps. 119:105) when everything around us is drowning in darkness.

That may sound like a subtle shift, but consider the implications. When Jesus asks, “Is the Sabbath made for man, or man for the Sabbath?” he is making this very point. God created Sabbath so that his people might rest from their work, depend on him for sustenance, and find themselves renewed, body and soul. Sabbath is meant to be a gift.

But if you struggle to trust God for your daily bread, or believe you must take hold of the good life through earning and achieving, Sabbath will feel like a hindrance to your deepest longings. How could you possibly rest when work seems like the only thing that will get you closer to what you really want and need?

On the other hand, if you believe you must practice Sabbath perfectly to please God, imagining him taking notes on your performance, you will lose the gift just as quickly. Approaching Sabbath this way is simply another form of earning. Whether you are trying to earn worldly comfort by overworking, or trying to earn God’s favor through obedience, you have missed what the law of Sabbath was always meant to offer: rest, renewal, and a reminder of where you fit in the world.

The gift of Sabbath only lands for those who know, love, and trust the Father. If you can’t trust him to take care of you, or if you are always trying to make sure you’re right with him. You’ll spend your life seeking to break it for your own good, or keep it to prove you’re worthy, but you’ll never enjoy it as a gift. It will be, to you, a duty and a burden.

And the rest of the law works like this too. A lack of trust in the Father, or a desire to earn his affirmation, keeps us far from him and at odds with the spirit of the law. But to know him through Christ, to trust his love for us as a sure and steady foundation, welcomes us into a new relationship with the law: as the words of a loving Father to his treasured children.

Suddenly Psalm 119:92 began to read differently. The more the law of God becomes my delight, his divine word, vision, and direction, the more I flourish in the freedom of being truly human. The more I trust that God is for me, not against me. The more I believe his law is really a law of love, offered in kindness to reckless people like me, the more I enjoy the life I was made for. The freedom to “run wild” in his ways was a completely foreign concept, even years into my Christian journey.

Call it scales falling off my eyes, another sort of conversion, or simple spiritual maturity, whatever the name, I feel myself slowly coming alive to the vision of the law in Psalm 119.

Sin causes perishing. Not always all at once, and not always in its final form (death), thanks be to God. But the more I trust the old ways, the ways of the flesh, the more I find myself breaking against his law. The more I trust the idols of a dark world, the more isolated, afflicted, and lost in the dark I become.

Obedience, on the other hand, feels like congruence: catching the current of love and order you were always meant to swim in. There is beauty in the law as it offers us a better way to live. There is delight when the soul syncs with divine design. There is goodness in self-control. Choosing this, not that. Trusting that his ways are better than the ways I’ve walked on my own.

“If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.”
— Psalm 119:92