The lives which we give Him were already blood-bought, made valuable only because He considered them worth dying for. This is the wonder of His kingdom. He makes His murderers into His children. He makes the fearful ones into front-line fighters. He makes the foolish ones into teachers. He made Moses, who struggled to speak, into…
rest: small and glad, day 11
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." --Matthew 11:28, 29 O, how great Thy lovingkindness, vaster, broader than the sea! O,…
possible: small and glad, day 6
“I dwell in Possibility -- / A fairer House than Prose,” quoth Emily Dickinson. I always stop and look at that juxtaposition: possibility vs. prose. Not poetry vs. prose, nor yet again possibility vs. certainty — negative or positive certainty. I suspect Dickinson wanted me to look at it. To think that somehow she means…
Five Minute Friday: family (small and glad, day 2)
"See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him." 1 John 3:1 Stop and see. Not just called His children, but in fact His children. Such we…
Noticing, Day 20: but He did
This is a sprig of a beautyberry bush, genus Callicarpa, species americana. I've decided that October is the perfect month for noticing, because it seems that everything is lovely in October. Whenever I start noticing the colors of this world I get to inhabit, I think of a line from a Sandi Patty song on one of my childhood…
execute justice
"In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: 'The LORD is our…
Five Minute Friday (on Saturday): Exhale
July, and the long days lie in variegated sun and shade. The frenzy to grow has given way to an easy abundance: more leaf than blossom, fruits coming to a slow ripeness, crickets and frogs at a steady pulse in the evenings. Inhale. We ate fried chicken, threw water balloons and frisbees, watched a child…
know to death
"You can know a thing to death, " John Ames remarks, in Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead, "and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it." And I wonder how many things I've been knowing to death, without approaching understanding. All the mysteries which I accept and believe and even live, without their being any less mysterious. Because don't we…
Five Minute Friday (on Saturday): Lost
Lost words. Lost time. Lost sleep. Do they join the socks which go AWOL in the laundry, the bobby pins which kamikaze from hairstyles, the pencils which must be designated Missing in Action, (though they may be Prisoners of Other Writers)? I hear Alan Rickman's voice, as Colonel Brandon reading Edmund Spenser to Marianne Dashwood: "For…
Five Minute Friday: Release
Release. My last morning at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' Summer Institute, where we've been circling around the topic of "Freedom" through various permutations all week. The prophet Isaiah publishes salvation in my morning reading, chapter 52: "Shake yourself from the dust and arise; be seated, O Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter…
Between Blue Rocks 