the wind knew me
then,
a brittle leaf shrinking into a needle,
and in its ancient knowing
searched my insides like a compass point,
and brought me
there
in tears.
For I am full of things I have not known
and will never release.
I clutch to my chest
that which I do not understand,
and in holding on
I am held.
manna
I carried my daughter in my arms
out to watch
another Indiana sunset,
and as we staked our boots in the cold,
a flock of geese traversed the sky,
black ships navigating indigo seas,
between narrow burning isles,
and my daughter squeaked back at them
as they flew overhead.
We watched the clouds crocheting themselves into scarves,
in both of our eyes swimming
the sunset, ah! The glory
of that which fades,
and in its fading
fills us with further glories,
until we cease
to wonder what it is
and feast.
bread
The meadow grass gathers itself up
like shocks of wheat,
and the shocks gather together
flank to flank, heaving
out foggy breaths
over a bed of precious things.
And the precious things
gleam in the glancing
light until they melt away,
dew made daylight
in a winter dawn.
I look along the beam.
wine
I know again the winter trees
as structures
outlining a full-formed architecture,
as foundations of another world
intersecting, today, with my own.
And in them, through them, I know
again the winter sky
as a canvas spread flat
against which color may hold existence
and hold court with nature
and hold hands with truth,
a semblance of new sense
born of old sense
and held by senses here.
And by the sky, against the sky,
I know again the winter ground
on which I stand,
the potential of it,
the fullness of it, as great with Child,
a longing known in waiting,
a fullness felt by peace.
And of the ground, beneath the sky,
within the winter trees
I know again
myself,
a pair of feet wandering
over crypt and under tower,
beside the bones
of other beings: spread like stained glass,
speaking like saints,
lifting eyes like worshippers.
Unknown prayers bleed out of me,
released, it would seem,
by winter. Undone, it must be,
by the swelling belly
of a greater glory
pressing against
the groaning world,
longing to escape.
When my wife told me that she’d bought me tickets because, wise as she is, she knew I wouldn’t do it on my own, I immediately thought:
“Oh crap. Now I have to go.”
For those of you who may not know, Hutchmoot is the annual gathering of the community of (and surrounding) the Rabbit Room. It’s a weekend celebrating story, song, food, art, community, and Jesus. Sounds kind of wonderful, right? And I knew this before I went to it, because of how vocal the whole Rabbit Room Chinwag Facebook group was about it.
But even though I knew all this, I had a lot of reasons for why it wasn’t a good idea for me to go, ranging from the very real “Linnea will be three weeks out from her due date,” to the also very real social anxiety, to thinking that I didn’t belong with such an accomplished, artistic group of people. I am an introvert, and I hate crowds. I might have been just a little nervous that all of these enthusiastic people I’d met on a Facebook group were actually a super-secret cult that performed sacrifices of Hutchnewbs on an altar of Tolkien novels to Andrew Peterson.
Thankfully, my wife’s good sense (and years of training in snagging Door County campsites) paid off, and she convinced me to drive the eight hours to Nashville and attend.
That first night was crazy. I was tired from the drive and experiencing Hutchgaze, in which you stare creepily at a person trying to determine if they look like their profile picture before greeting them sheepishly by both first and last names. But I was in line for only a few moments before I got a big hug from Bailey Berry McGee and the greeting that would become the mantra of the weekend: “We’re so glad you’re here!”
I could go on and on about the highlights: John Cal’s songs and stories that made me look at the simple act of eating together in a whole new light, the craftsmanship in every creative work, the free-flowing Ethiopian Guji, the Poetry Pub championing each other and the oft-overlooked poetic value of cheese, the total welcome of every face, a list a mile long of things I can’t wait to read and listen to, and the session notes that I will continue to pore over.
(I wasn’t planning to gush. I was going to hold it together a little better. But as I think back over the weekend, gushing seems to be in order.)
Let me narrow it down a little, for all of our sakes…
When I first came in, I was cycling through anxiety, envy, and discouragement. I was coming out of a dry creative season. I had experienced some pretty deep disappointment recently and was muscling my way through it the best I could. In general, I was exhausted and wondering if this writing thing was even worth all of the effort.
What struck me most about Hutchmoot was that so many of my fellow attendees (at least the ones that God opened up conversations with this year) seemed to be in similar spots, or a little down the road in either direction from where I was. Many have dreams of doing more creative work and maybe even getting paid for it someday, and many are feeling like that might never happen. Many are in the thick of some grief, loss, or discouragement. Many are grappling with what to do next, or how to best steward the creative passion within them. We all are people who need a hug, a song, a snack, and the assurance that we aren’t striving alone or in vain. And we’re also all people who are willing to freely give those things to each other.
Maybe it’s an artistic personality thing, or maybe it’s just the nature of the landscape when it comes to creative work — but the sense of companionship and commiseration was truly a balm to my soul. It was remarkable just to sit across the table from someone I’d met yesterday and think: “you too?” It was something I didn’t realize I needed as much as I did, to know that I’m truly not crazy, nor alone.
And if you’re a creative who is struggling right now, you don’t need to go to Hutchmoot to know this. You’re not crazy. You’re not alone.
Of course, we all went back to our homes and communities bearing within us this knowledge, a kind of ember to keep us warm on the way. Hutchmoot, for all of its wonderful immediate welcome, is not a place to make a home. As Andrew Peterson said on the first night: it’s a wayside inn. It’s Rivendell, a homely place – but not the final Home, or even the earthly home I am called to inhabit. It’s a place where I caught a vision for homely-place-making in my own community, so that as I drove those eight long hours back to Middlebury, IN my mind was blazing with ideas.
It was as if Hutchmoot held up a mirror in which I could see myself more clearly: a beloved, broken child of God who likes to create stuff. And then it gave me a swift kick in the ass and said, “Now that you remember who you are and Whose you are, go do what He tells you to do where you are. Here are some tools you can use, and some people who will walk alongside you.”
And thankfully, those people didn’t sacrifice me to Andrew Peterson.
Speaking of creative community…
I’ve been running a campaign on Indiegogo to create a new hardback poetry book with original art. With the help of dozens of friends and family, we’ve reached 85% of our funding, with only seven days to go! If that sounds interesting to you, we’d love your help to boost us over the top! Go here for more info, and thanks for considering!!
The news about Joshua Harris backing out of his past ideas, his marriage, and his faith has been filling my feeds for the past few weeks. In the wake of so many spiritual leaders either failing morally or falling away from the faith entirely, I’m beginning to have difficulty mustering up an appropriate response. I recognize the disappointing nature of it, the anger and the fear involved. No one wants this. This isn’t the way it should be.
But when the news broke, forgive me… the first thing that entered my head was the line “another one bites the dust.”
I’ve begun, in other words (and for better or worse), to expect this kind of thing of “Christian” leaders when they get to a certain station in their careers. I don’t want to expect it, but it’s too normal now for me to be shocked by it.
I’m not all that curious about his reasons for “deconstruction” as he calls it, nor do I think the current obsession in finding out exactly why people “fall away” has much merit. Maybe behind the obsession is the all-too-human desire to discover the factors that contribute to failure and never, ever, EVER let those happen to us. I’m in Aslan’s camp on this: no one is told any story but their own.
But the recent glut of news on this subject, combined with the continually depressing sparring over politics and belief systems on every public forum available, has left me feeling heavier than usual. Coming as it did with a rush of “Christians” of all stripes certain that they knew what it really meant, Joshua Harris’s announcement still ended up giving me pause. I’m a young, Christ-following writer with hopes of getting my words out to more people, after all.
I have two thoughts that keep spinning around inside my head. Maybe they will be of service to you.
Be More Uninspired
I’ve written before about God owning our words. But here’s a reminder to myself and to you as writers and readers: as much as I know that God is involved in the creative process, and that I and many other writers want to honor Him with our words, none of us are capital-I Inspired. I know that this might seem really obvious, but the way we act sometimes doesn’t suggest that we know it.
We get so precious about our own words and ideas, about their rightness and soundness and excellence. We forget that in a couple of years we might have completely changed our minds about how important these things are or whether they are even accurate. We forget, in the heat of a passionate argument about how our viewpoint is correct, that we are dust and so, too, are all of our fancy ideas and systems. And when God uses someone else’s words profoundly in our hearts, we tend to elevate them in our minds to prophetic or divine status. We look past the flaws of their work and tell everyone about how it changed our lives. We forget, too, that they are dust.
I’m not suggesting that we go around totally skeptical of everything, or that we don’t passionately enjoy good writing, or least of all that God doesn’t work through the words of His people. I do suggest, as both a reader and a writer, that we invest some effort to keep it all in its place, and practice a higher level of discernment.
Just think about what a horrible weight we put on Christ-following communicators when we lift them up as Inspired by God. Remember how much of the “Christian” community did this with Joshua Harris, a 20-something who wasn’t even married at the time his book exploded? The impact of doing so has hurt a lot of people, not least of all Harris himself. Is it any surprise that unearthing the crumbling foundation of that system left so many other systems vulnerable for him?
When confronted by such elevated expectations and potential misuse of our words, communicators everywhere should follow the example of Paul and Barnabas by rending their clothes and shouting their shoddy humanity until it echoes in the streets. Paul said it well: follow me only as I follow Christ. Forget about names and titles and bestsellers. It doesn’t matter if Apollos or Paul or Joshua or Chris or Balaam’s ass said it. Test every word by the Word and follow Jesus, not all of us overly-voluble humans who can’t even lead ourselves.
This means that we’re embracing a culture of discernment, not just a culture of answers or a culture of questions.
Be Less “Christian” and More Like Christ
One of the telling statements from Harris’s announcement is the following: “By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.”
It is all too easy for us to intertwine “being a Christian” with other things that have nothing to do with following Christ, like our political affiliation, cultural values, or standards of holiness. Joshua’s statement is personal, of course, but what does it say of “Christians” that a young leader nurtured in the thick of the evangelical sub-culture missed the essence of following Christ, or at least was able to fake it for years before realizing he didn’t believe it?
I have to wonder if Harris’s understanding of “being a Christian” relied more on a Christianized culture of sorts (in this instance, the reactionary culture that birthed the purity movement) than on the Gospel.
We have to make a distinction between the systems and trappings of an oft-confused “Christian culture” and true faith in Jesus.
Anymore, I hesitate to use the word “Christian” without clarifying it (it was, after all, applied to early believers by the society around them). I also rarely use “evangelical” unless I’m describing a cultural state, and that not flatteringly. I try to avoid these terms now because, to quote the Princess Bride, I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. Instead, I’m gravitating to the hyphenated term “Christ-follower” or the simpler idea of being a “believer in Jesus Christ.”
Those capture more of the essence of what I mean when I talk about my faith than the other words. Our faith is, in the end, not something based on right knowledge or right action or right politics or right culture. It’s not based on being right in any way except being made right with God. The essence of the Gospel is Christ in me, the hope of glory. To unite us to His Father, Christ came down to our level, lived, died, and rose again for us, and now resides in us in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is biblical, and experiential, and vital. Life is not and never will be found in anything else.
I find myself feeling more and more lost in this world, and more and more found in Christ. I have no clue what political affiliation I have now, but I know that I am in Christ. I have no idea where I fit culturally, but I know that I am in Christ. I don’t feel like I can honestly claim a denomination, and even the words we typically use to align ourselves beyond denominational lines are losing their meaning. And from what I can tell, I’m not the only believer feeling this way.
Some might claim that we have commitment issues. But the crux is that we’re loyal to something higher than all of those other categories. We look to Jesus Christ, and we’re learning to be okay with all the rest falling away.
Contrary to having arrived in some safe place, however, relying on Christ for our identity is both home and journey. It is now and not yet. In Him I grow and in Him I remain. The burden is easy and the yoke is light. I die and I live. And all of this makes me less anxious about the larger world or some distant future and more present where He puts me. I am to focus on doing the next thing, loving the next person, living a quiet life, and working with my hands. I’m learning to make the choices that confront me instead of the choices I imagine I will be forced to make. I’m learning what it means to be in the world but not of it, and again — what I mean by that phrase is not anywhere near what many “Christians” or “evangelicals” mean by it.
What I’m getting at (perhaps poorly), is that as soon as man-made categories become more important to us as believers than those that Christ established (for instance, the sheep and the goats) we’re losing the gist of a living faith. And His categories travel across party lines, beyond the people of the pew, beyond our religious systems, our moral standards, and our cultural values.
How shall we then live?
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!
But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:10-18)
Look to the day of the Lord, saints, and release the fear and pride that says we need to reduce a living faith into the right boxes and systems to be able to maintain it. Look to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of your faith, not to the “Christian” rulers and influencers and celebrities that populate the world. Let God be true, and every human uninspired.
Over the last few months I’ve been digging into the book of Jeremiah.
I’ve read Jeremiah before, but what drew me to it this time was the desire to soak in God’s judgment, to understand more clearly the scope and reality of His wrath. This is part of God’s person that I’ve always known to be true but have had difficulty accepting. I would rather turn away from His judgment and focus on His love — which should be a perennial resting place for all of us. But after spending the better part of the last three months in deep with the weeping prophet, I think God’s wrath is something to rest in as well.
Along the way, I also received something of a surprising side quest in my study — what it means to be a messenger of wrath.
I’m not precisely sure where the idea of artist as prophet came from originally, but it’s not new, nor is it original. For eons poets, musicians, novelists, and other artistic types have been looking closely at their societies and telling them what they see. And because artists are, by definition, good at seeing beyond the surface of a thing, the truths they tell are often discerning, uncomfortable, and eerily prescient.
And Jeremiah was in a position to share some uncomfortable and downright appalling truth.
I believe that for Christian artists, this sort of forth-telling is divinely directed. Or at least, it should be. What are we doing with our art if we are not proclaiming with every stroke, with every note, with every letter, the glories and mercies of our Lord and Savior? When we speak the truth, we are speaking God’s truth. And He has given many of us — and definitely not just artistic people — ears to hear and eyes to see. Would that we also have mouths to sing, hands to write and paint and play, and bodies to dance the truth so that others may also see, hear, and know the truth of God.
So without further ado:
PART 1: RESTING IN WRATH
God’s wrath is righteous.
“Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you,” declares the LORD God of hosts. (Jeremiah 2:19)
This might be an obvious statement, but it bears repeating: God is fully justified when He judges, and we have no recourse but acceptance of it.
I think that one of the primary difficulties I face when I try to accept the wrath of God is my own confusion. I don’t have the mind of God, nor do I know the reasons or results of the judgment. Because of this, any cognitive dissonance I’m experiencing at the time might make it seem like God is doling out unjust judgment. I don’t think we can ever overstate the importance of clinging to God’s righteousness. He does not act on capricious whims or petty vendettas. He deliberately chooses what is right, because He is holy and true. If I begin to believe that whatever is happening is an unjust act on God’s part, I must rewind and find a different solution — because God cannot be unrighteous.
If we ever begin to downplay the weight of our rebellious actions, let us read Jeremiah and remember how utterly wrong it is to turn from our loving Father.
God does not delight in hurting people.
Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, “Return, faithless Israel,”declares the Lord. “I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful,” declares the Lord; “I will not be angry forever.” (Jeremiah 3:12)
God spends swaths of Jeremiah repeating His plea to His people: turn back from your sins and come to me. The agony of Jeremiah is clear and unequivocal: the pain God’s people are experiencing is not something that pleases God. He is not vindictive.
Jeremiah states that THIS IS NOT THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. This is the right and only response to sin, but this was not what God wanted for us. We should be driven to our knees by the truth that God has opened up another way. Such is the great love of our Lord, that He would rather take on Death Himself than be separated from us forever.
God’s wrath is a natural consequence of our rebellion against him.
A voice on the bare heights is heard, the weeping and pleading of Israel’s sons because they have perverted their way; they have forgotten the Lord their God… “Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.” (Jeremiah 3:21, 25)
When I discipline my children in some way for their actions, I am quick to point out that the reason I do so is to affirm for them that actions have consequences. Right now those consequences hurt in small ways, but it won’t always be that way.
When we turn away from Living Water, we will thirst. When we turn from the Bread of Life, we will hunger. When we pervert our way and forget the Lord our God, we will experience shame, dishonor, and ultimately, judgment. This is the natural state of the universe, which stems from God Himself. To turn from Him is to turn from true life toward death.
God’s wrath is always framed by and injected with mercy.
“I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” (Jeremiah 24:6-7)
Our original rebellion shook the foundations of the universe, as an act of saying “no” to a God who has only ever wanted our good. It is an incredible mercy that He has given any of us a new, whole heart at all, so that we have the ability to say “yes” to Him.
If it was up to us to turn back to Him, we would be utterly lost. But throughout Jeremiah, God is reaching out, wrestling with, drawing Israel in, pleading with her. It is only by His mercy that we can even understand our brokenness, let alone accept Him in faith.
PART 2: SPEAKING OF JUDGMENT
Jeremiah was obedient.
But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’ for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 1:7-8)
The deeper I dig into what could possibly qualify someone to be an emissary of God’s truth, the simpler it becomes. God’s messengers are those who are obedient. God says to go there, and they go. God says to say this, and they say it. God says to sit still, and they wait. This isn’t a revelation or a hot take, friends. God just wants obedient people to communicate His truth.
If you’ve been called to do this with your art, your words, your actions, your life — obey. Stop philosophizing about how to do it and just do it.
I’ve quoted her before, and I’m going to quote her again:
“The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command… I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” And the artist either says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.” (Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water)
Jeremiah accurately communicated the message.
And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.” (Jeremiah 1:11-12)
It’s stunning to me that one of Jeremiah’s first acts as a prophet is simply to tell God what He sees. He does so, and God uses it as a window into His truth. Seeing is often used in Scripture as a metaphor for active faith; while the people of Israel “have eyes but do not see,” Jeremiah “sees well.”
And from here on, Jeremiah is communicating precisely what God says.
This may seem obvious, but think about what this means. Jeremiah resolved to share every word — the good, the bad, and the ugly. And God had a lot of very grievous things to say to Judah through Jeremiah, who is not called the weeping prophet for nothing.
The stories God gives us will not always be pleasant or happy or bestsellers. As artists and storytellers we must remain faithful to the truth God has laid on our hearts, not the partial truth that gets us likes and shares. It will not always be pretty, but obedience matters more than popularity and reach.
And consider starting with what’s right in front of you. What do you see? God can use it, and He can use you.
Jeremiah accepted the consequences of speaking the truth.
“But you, dress yourself for work; arise, and say to them everything that I command you. Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them. And I, behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the Lord, to deliver you.” (Jeremiah 1:17-19)
Jeremiah wasn’t just saying God’s words. He was identifying with them to the point that he embodied them. He was considered a physical threat to Judah, and the people, false prophets, and leaders of Judah reacted accordingly to him.
Jeremiah went to his family, whom he deeply loved, to warn them about impending disaster. They didn’t listen, and in fact they mocked him and beat him. But he kept coming back, compelled by God and love for his people to tell them the truth, again and again — until he and his people were finally judged.
They never accepted the truth, and yet Jeremiah preached it to them anyway.
How often do we look to how people respond to what we say and do (in our art and otherwise) and either give up or change our message because of their responses? How often do we turn away from saying exactly what the people we love need to hear the most?
None of us are Old Testament prophets; we’re New Testament believers, though, and God has called us all to be obedient messengers to those around us. What a mercy! He doesn’t need us to accomplish His will, but He wants us to be involved. If we don’t, I’m pretty sure the rocks will have something to say about it. But why would we forego the privilege of loving God and others through speaking God’s truth?
See and hear. Believe and obey. Then speak, and speak with hope. For even God’s judgment is righteous, and shot through with new mercies.
Back in April, I had a funny little God moment that I wrote off as merely a nice confirmation of good things to come.
I was on the prowl for a full-time job of the sort that matched my resume – chock full of event and office admin experience. A friend of mine gave me the number of a friend in the construction business who was looking for someone to help him out in the office. On that slim lead (and a strong suspicion that I wouldn’t be a very good fit in any capacity in construction), I called this guy, Joel, up and asked him about the job.
Joel and I had a great conversation where he asked a lot of thoughtful questions, and we both agreed at the end that my suspicions were correct – I wouldn’t be good fit for the job. However, Joel left me with contact information for another job at a leadership development company in the area that had a job opening available for a coordinator.
Well, as a freelancer now, I know that you leave no word-of-mouth network stone unturned, so I turned that stone and sent them my resume that night.
Turns out, they had filled the position only a day before.
But wait, there’s more
That’s when the hiring manager on the other end said – “Hey, I see you have writing on your resume. Have you ever done case studies?”
I’ve done a fair amount of pitches in my time as a freelancer and aspiring author (I will claim the “author” moniker when I get a book published), and the best sort of pitch is the one someone asks for. I immediately pounced on the opportunity and told her, in no uncertain terms, that I had never written a case study in my life. (truth!) But wait! I write stories, and (as a quick Google search on “case studies” had revealed to me) a case study is essentially a story about how your product changed someone’s lives.
Just as an aside, when life presents you with opportunities to fudge your way into something or to be honest, be honest – and then fudge your way in anyway. It’s not about lying about your experiences, its about learning to apply them, and how to do so in a convincing way. You don’t need to have many experiences under your belt as long as you’re continually learning from them.
The fact of the matter is that she bought it, and gave me an opportunity to audition my writing skills, and then she hired me for regular freelance work.
I thought this was wonderful – a great opportunity to try my hand at actual paying gigs. I also considered it a sign from God, in a small way, that there was actual value in the direction I was looking at.
But wait, there’s still more
Fast-forward to July, and after three or four case studies and a dozen or so job possibilities falling through… this company offered me a job as a staff writer.
I always think of things in such small ways. I believe that God works in both big and small ways, of course, but practically I never think that those two sizes of miracles will ever intersect. But here, in the span of four months, a text from a friend made its way from two jobs that fell through to a freelance gig and a full-time job offer.
It reminds me – because I am so forgetful of these things – that the small things demand as much gratitude as the big ones. That whole butterfly effect idea, that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the globe makes a hurricane on the other, isn’t just a fancy philosophical idea. It’s basically how the life of faith works. You plant mustard seeds and they become the biggest tree in the garden. You pray a prayer and whole nations shift around it. You find a tiny grain of faith that shakes a mountain’s core. Our lives as Christians are riddled with examples of small made large.
And even if those tiny miracles just stayed tiny, would they not be worth celebrating anyway?
By the way, I talked them down to a part-time job, because between April and July I had built up a backlog of freelance gigs that were taking up so much of my time I could only accept part-time.
Our God is in the business of growth – our hearts, our minds, our worlds. I’m learning, slowly, that it’s best to be ready for anything.
