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We’re not ready for the fun to end. So we are extending archive access for Hutchmoot: Homebound 2020 until November 15th—for everyone. This means that even if you missed the October 11th deadline for registration, you can still access the entire archive for $20. And if you were already registered, you don’t have to do anything. The archive will simply stay open. Over 24 hours of video content, over 50 speakers and performers, content for kids and families, curated food menus, secret missions, and so much more, will remain available for just $20 until November 15th.* So take your time. Sip the goodness slowly. And enjoy. *With the exception of time-sensitive content, such as Mark Meynell’s Hutchmoot: Homebound Challenge and the Tournament of Cheeses.

Four months ago, the Rabbit Room began wondering, dreaming, asking how in the world we were going to adapt to 2020 when it came to our biggest event of the year: Hutchmoot.⁣ How do we take an annual conference—marked by its in-person-ness, its ability to spark friendships over shared meals and long conversations in the hallway—and translate its magic into a primarily online experience? Can friendships still be made during this weekend? How about shared meals? Collaborative art? Communal singing?⁣ We believe the answer to all those questions is yes.⁣ Of course it’s not the same. We can’t re-invent the wheel of sharing physical presence with newfound kindred spirits. But I’m so proud to be part of a team that has re-imagined how to eat together, sing together, and make something beautiful together—even from a distance, even in a world ravaged by a pandemic.⁣ Adversity can bring paralysis. It can also prompt creativity. It has done both for me this year. But it’s so much easier to engage creatively with adversity when we do it together. For the past four months, that’s what the Rabbit Room staff has been doing week after week. Adversity can bring paralysis. It can also prompt creativity. But it's so much easier to engage creatively with adversity when we do it together. Drew Miller We cannot wait for all our work and play to spill over into this conference, and especially that unique gladness of watching creativity unfold in new and unexpected ways among guests and participants. It’s truly an over-abundance, the kind of joy that isn’t complete until shared.⁣ To me, that’s what hope looks like: new songs, new recipes, new stories, new relationships sparked in a year determined to snuff them out. And at the end of the day, it’s an act of defiance: pushing back the darkness, declaring that there isn’t a square inch of creation that will not finally be redeemed.⁣ I couldn’t be happier to be spending my weekend this way. Convene the Hutchmoot. Registration for Hutchmoot: Homebound will remain open until the end of the day Sunday, October 11th, and 90% of content will remain available for two weeks.

Wherein Jonathan Rogers reads his poems “Two Villanelles,” Janna Barber reads her piece Cinnamon, and Drew Miller shares the fifth Word of Befuddlement: soggage. First appearing in Volume 4 of The Molehill, Cinnamon is a memoir, which makes it extra special to hear Janna herself read it out loud. It’s the story of her very first therapy session and the winding road of healing that it set her upon. Janna invites us as fellow travelers to follow her into some of her most formative childhood memories and then back into the present day, witnessing the ever-evolving connections between her identity and her faith. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com. The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The fifth Word of Befuddlement, shared in today’s episode, is the noun “soggage.” You can send in your very own definition of “soggage” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E5: Cinnamon.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “Pictures” by Adam Bokesch “Beyond the Window” by Vesky “Take My Life and Let It Be” by Ron Block “With Love” by Analog Heart

To get where I’m going, I first need to invite you to my pity party. Please come, and please bring some levity. Beware the Ides of March The date is March 3rd. I wake up to a buzzing phone. I’m on tour in Chicago, and about a dozen folks text me to see if I’m alright. Apparently a tornado just ripped through our neighborhood in East Nashville. Driving down our street that night feels like driving into the Twilight Zone. Debris litters the streets, the power is out for blocks, and the iconic Basement East is lethally scarred. The sky is still menacing, as if to say there’s more on the way. There is. Pulling into my driveway, I watch a passing car knick a possum. Though possums are the children of Beelzebub, a slowly dying animal always gets me. It clearly has a marathon of pain still ahead of it, so I go looking for a shovel and come back with a brick. I reflect on my relapsed veganism and summon the full protection of my fragile machismo ego. Lord, beer me strength. By the time I get all the blood out of my shirt, it’s time for another tour. But a few days into the 30-show run, the pandemic leaves me stranded and gig-less in DC. The 10-hour return journey also has me nursing a boil that will go on to flirt with a staph infection, at least until two consecutive antibiotic shots in the buttocks bring me to life, a la Evanescence. I am woken up inside. Out comes a new song. Writing to Redeem For me, and maybe for you, this sort of compulsive creativity in the wake of the absurd is almost routine. For as long as I’ve written songs, I’ve viewed creativity as an exercise in redemption, albeit a haphazard one. While writing this new song, I referenced my precious boil, and I even tried to squeeze in the possum, just to find/force some purpose into the whole mess. This leads me to think that, on some level, my need to create is motivated by my unwillingness to sit still in the face of meaningless suffering. Because, if I can write about the absurd in a song, then surely it wasn’t so absurd after all? As in, there simply must be a purpose to the evidently purposeless if it leads to some sufficiently moving macaroni art. But while this strategy of creative “redemption” might help me cope with something awful, I don’t think it makes the thing itself any less awful. No amount of songs will redeem the devastation of the Nashville tornado. And that possum could never and would never care about my latest Spotify ballad. Quarantine has given me some space to reflect on the shadow of my meaning-making process. For the last eight months, the collective pseudonymous works of Søren Kierkegaard have been helpful. The Danish existentialist covers a lot of terrain, but one idea that I’ve found particularly helpful / disturbing is his notion of faith. In one of his early hits, Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard dissects faith in order to show himself, along with all of enlightened Christendom, that faith is an exceptionally difficult task—more than enough for one lifetime. On some level, my need to create is motivated by my unwillingness to sit still in the face of meaningless suffering. J Lind Kierkegaard’s discussion centers around the notorious “knight of faith,” the extraordinary or maybe especially ordinary person whose life is marked by two simultaneous “movements.” (Yes, he keeps the lingo of the philosophers of his day in order to make his dense authorship even less comprehensible.) The first “movement of infinity,” as he calls it, is one of resignation. The knight of faith must resign themself to the earthly impossibility of the promise at hand, the promise whose fulfillment is their deepest desire. Abraham must recognize and feel the weight of the fact that killing Isaac will make it humanly impossible for him to be the father of a people as numerous as the stars in the sky, just as Mary must appreciate the impossibility of conceiving a child as a virgin. If they don’t sit with the impossibility of the promise, then they’re not “knights of faith;” they’re just naive. Leaping to Resignation This quarantine (as opposed to other quarantines), I’ve questioned whether my creative process has ever been marked by Kierkegaardian faith. In being so quick to reach for the pen, I don’t think I’ve really resigned myself to the genuine impossibility of the task at hand. Because I don’t think that any song can imbue devastation or death with meaning, or at least not with sufficient meaning to make either worthwhile. No number of sermons can bring back Job’s children, just as no number of Renaissance paintings can justify the crucifixion. This leads us to Kierkegaard’s second movement, the “leap of finitude.” This is where the knight of faith, having resigned themself to the impossible, makes a groundbreaking “double-movement.” (Again, I’m sorry that Kierkegaard is so unapologetically enlightened.) This second movement involves believing that God will do precisely the impossible: the promise will be fulfilled by killing the very son on which the promise depends. God will surely raise Isaac from the dead, even though that’s absolutely ridiculous. Mary will have a child even though that’s, you know, biologically impossible. And it’s probably the absurd impossibility underpinning this movement that leads Kierkegaard to believe that genuine faith is exceptionally rare in the modern world. No, I don’t think he would count Sean Feucht’s viral worship rallies. In sum, or at least according to my reading of Kierkegaard, each of us has the terrible responsibility of working out our faith with fear and trembling. I’m no father of existentialism, but I really don’t think I’m anywhere close to that absurd double-movement. Do I lack faith? I don’t even know if that’s the question to ask, much less how to answer it. But if Kierkegaard is onto something, then it seems like it’s at least time to meditate on that first movement that I’m so quick to forego: the movement of infinity. The leap of resignation. Sitting with the full weight of the meaninglessness, terrifying though it may be. Maybe that’s the only way into the Land of Canaan.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Charlotte Donlon, author of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other and host of the Hope for the Lonely podcast. Jonathan Rogers and Charlotte Onlon discuss the two-way street between loneliness and belonging, the power of stories to de-stigmatize our loneliness, and the crucial difference between loving someone and understanding them. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 45 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Wish you had time to re-read and enjoy that daunting stack of Charles Dickens novels? Take heart: Dickens enthusiast Gina Dalfonzo has done the heavy lifting for you. In short, readable excerpts she presents the essence of the great novelist’s prodigious output, teasing out dozens of the most memorable scenes to reveal the Christian vision and values that suffuse all his work. Dickens can certainly entertain, but his legacy endures because of his power to stir consciences with the humanity of his characters and their predicaments. While he could be ruthless in his characterization of greed, injustice, and religious hypocrisy, again and again the hope of redemption shines through. In spite of—or perhaps because of—his own failings, Dickens never stopped exploring the themes of sin, guilt, repentance, redemption, and restoration found in the gospel. In some passages the Christian elements are explicit, in others implicit, but, as Dickens himself said, they all reflect his understanding of and reverence for the gospel. The Gospel in Dickens includes selections from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Sketches by Boz—with a cast of unforgettable characters such as Ebenezer Scrooge, Sydney Carton, Jenny Wren, Fagin, Pip, Joe Gargery, Mr. Bumble, Miss Havisham, Betsey Trotwood, and Madame Defarge. Click here to view The Gospel in Dickens in the Rabbit Room Store. Curious to learn more? Click here to listen to Gina Dalfonzo’s conversation with Jonathan Rogers on The Habit Podcast, where they go into greater depth on the editing of this book and the intersection of faith and literature.

Back by popular demand, it’s the Rabbit Room Christmas Gift Exchange! But wait, what is it? It’s a “Secret Santa” program. Everyone who wants to participate signs up, then we pull names out of the virtual hat, and everyone gives a gift (or gifts) to the person whose name they receive. You can remain anonymous if you wish, or you’re welcome to be as open as you like. How much should I spend on a gift? We’ve set a suggested gift value of $30. We’d love it if you bought your gifts in the Rabbit Room Store (this is a great time to share your Rabbit Room wishlist—click here and log in), but you don’t have to, and we encourage folks to give creative gifts, something handmade maybe, something you made maybe. Be creative! But please ensure that the gift you give is something you’d value at about $30. You’re welcome to lavish your recipient with more if you like. (And please feel free to disregard the wishlist and shopping options built into Elfster—see below.) Where do I sign up? This link (also at the bottom of this post) will take you to the Elfster website where you can sign up for the exchange. The site is a little clunky (and we hate the ads) but the exchange has gotten so big in the last couple of years that we need to use a system like this to administrate it effectively. What if I don’t get a gift? We urge everyone to be sure they mail or deliver their gifts well in advance of Christmas Day so that no one feels left out. However, should your Santa drop the ball, please let us know on or after January 1st. We’ll do our best to remind them and resolve the situation, and if necessary, we’ll make sure that person cannot participate again next year. Can I be a backup Santa? Yes! You can! If you’d like to make yourself available in the event that someone doesn’t receive a gift, please let us know via email at info@rabbitroom.com. We hope you won’t be needed, but we’d love to have your help if the situation arises (put “Backup Santa” in the subject line of your email). When will I find out who I’m giving a gift to? Sign-up starts right now. The sign-up deadline is Monday, November 23rd, and names will be drawn on Tuesday, November 24th. NO LATE ENTRIES will be permitted. If you miss the sign-up window, you’ll need to wait until next year—this isn’t because we’re mean, it’s because it’s a closed system that cannot be amended once names are drawn. Everyone who enters will receive an email with their target’s name and address on Wednesday, November 25th. Any other questions? Ask in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer. Have fun! And please use the comments section to introduce yourself. You might also want to let folks know what your interests are and what books and music you like in order to give your Santa some hints to work with.

This year, it’s not a given to be thankful. In fact, one could go so far as to call it an accomplishment. So we’re not here to pressure you into it, silently waiting to cut the turkey until you’ve shared what you’re thankful for this year. However, we are here to offer some words and melodies that stir thanksgiving in us, recognizing that perhaps now more than ever, gratitude is a necessity too often mistaken for a luxury. Typically on Thanksgiving, one of the pieces we share is Doug McKelvey’s “Liturgy for Feasting with Friends” from Every Moment Holy. And while we’re still including it for those of you who have the excellent fortune of being able to safely share a meal with loved ones, we also recognize that for so many of us, that will be impossible, and it comes as a great loss. So alongside that liturgy, we are sharing other liturgies that are all too applicable in 2020: liturgies “For Missing Someone” and “For a Meal Eaten Alone,” as well as several more. All of these are available for free download at EveryMomentHoly.com/Liturgies. In addition, here’s a new song from our friend Becca Jordan called “Autumn Gold.” It is at heart a prayer—for daily bread, for stillness of soul, and for the sustaining of hope, day after weary day. This is a prayer we could all use this year, and it gently nudges us into the waiting season of Advent.

The ark of the covenant was hidden behind a network of barricades. You couldn’t stroll into the temple and lay hands on the seat and symbol of God’s presence. There were sacrifices to be made, garments to be worn. After ritual cleansings, there were sacred coals, incense, showbread, a bloody altar. If you ran this gauntlet, if you leapt every hurdle, still you would not meet God. You’d come face-to-face with a thirty by sixty foot wall of fabric. As it wasn’t made of stone, perhaps the veil gave an illusion of flexibility, of softness. But make no mistake: it was there to keep you out. It was there to prevent your entering into the holy of holies and communing with the Most High God. It is the season of Advent, two thousand and twenty. I have done the ritual cleansing and worn the special garments. I have followed the protocols; I’ve made sacrifices. But all my labor and preparation has only brought me to the veil. I have stumbled into the wall of my irremediable loneliness, and there is no way through. I don’t want to wait here in the semi-dark, in a cloud of incense, alone. Waiting requires resources—incredible resources—and I have none. What I want is change. Relief. I want a dazzling, dramatic rescue. What I get is a baby, playing on the floor beside me. He is dark-skinned and bright-eyed, and he has found a loose thread at the bottom of the heavy veil. He’s pulling it, and a little piece of the hem is unraveling. I watch him, sighing. The veil is dense and high and broad. It would take a lifetime to unravel it. How long will I have to wait until the curtain parts and the light breaks through? How long until the air clears and the barricades finally fall? Today, I light a candle in hope. I light it in honor of the baby and the thread and the life that will prove a continual tugging. I light it in honor of the fellowship that waits on the other side and the God who is eager to pick up the conversation where we left off: in the garden, in the cool of the day. Original art for this post by Jonny Jimison. “O Clavis” by Malcolm Guite Even in the darkness where I sit And huddle in the midst of misery I can remember freedom, but forget That every lock must answer to a key, That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate, Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard, Particular, exact and intimate, The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward. I cry out for the key I threw away That turned and over turned with certain touch And with the lovely lifting of a latch Opened my darkness to the light of day. O come again, come quickly, set me free Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

Melanie Penn picked the perfect time to be so straightforward. Artistic work often includes laboring over the choice of the right analogy or descriptive phrase, a way to dress up meaning or cloud the obvious. Melanie’s latest album, More Alive Vol. 1, is earnest through and through. With a musical goal to provide hope and encouragement, Melanie and longtime producer Ben Shive (along with Cason Cooley on this project) delivered a surprisingly bright light for these dark days. As I said, her timing was perfect. In the midst of a global pandemic and social unrest, Melanie says her goal was to boldly state what God says to be true. There is hope on the other side. There is comfort for our grief. There is joy to be found today. I recently sat down with Melanie to ask her about the new album and what it’s like to release an album in a year like 2020. There’s an almost David-and-Goliath thing happening with this encouraging or optimistic release coming into such a dark year. Did that context worry or excite you at all? A positive message will conquer every time. I really believe that. A true positive message will go so far. In the short-term, it might not seem that way, but over time, the positive messages really endure. I really believe that. Let me lean further into that. Many times, the optimism is balanced out or shrouded in some imagery or something. Your album, on the other hand, is such a blatant offering of optimism—— 10 straight tracks! Yes, it is. Front to back, it’s one encouraging message after another, one bright light turned on after another. How intentional was that for you to create a package like this? Or is that just a byproduct of your natural disposition? It was 1,000 percent purposeful. It’s actually pretty risky business because I’m well acquainted with suffering. I never want to be an artist who is forcing people to smile or saying, ‘Things are fine, guys,” while in complete denial. That’s the balance that I have to work in with sensing what kind of artist I’m supposed to be. I have to hold that loosely so that I’m not trying to shove something down people’s throats. There’s this proverb that I really take to heart. It says “singing cheerful songs to a sad heart is like one who takes off a coat in winter.” I think of that all the time because you could potentially make someone colder because you’re trying to remove whatever defenses or grief they have that is actually preserving them. I never want to be doing that. So I just want to be aware. I don’t have strategies on how I hold those things in balance when I’m trying to write an album. I just try to be aware and hope that awareness solves it. Was there conversation around that with Ben or Cason? Tons. I felt so strongly about the album I wanted to make and for the material to be so optimistic, like you’re picking up on. We worked on this song “I Want To Know You” with a line in the chorus that says, “I want to share your sufferings like a child of God.” Which is straight from the Bible, straight scripture. I was like, “I don’t know about sharing in suffering. That’s not what I’m talking about. I want people to rise above.” I think Cason and Ben had to ground me a bit and help me tell a deeper story and a more true story by even referencing the word suffering in a poppy praise song, you know? So there were a few conversations like that. You mention a true story, and I wanted to jump to the final song, “Avenue of the Americas.” You end this album with what seems to be this really vulnerable admission toward the end with “Maybe this will be my year.” It’s the most singer-songwriter-y song on the album for sure. It’s definitely the most biographical. I want “Avenue of the Americas” to live in this genre of New York songs. Singer-songwriters have talked about trying to make it in New York for many years in their songs, so I wanted to pay homage to that. Of course I finished the song last year so I never knew that “maybe this will be my year” would become an ironic statement in 2020. Everyone’s dreams have been pretty much crushed. I can’t tell you how many years someone in the industry or someone else has told me, ‘This is gonna be a big year for you, Melanie.” So that line is also an echo of how many times people have said that to me over the years. No one actually ever knows what the big year will be. So I think that line works on so many levels. I think it works for us collectively as a very ironic note on the album. It’s also my heart as an artist, too. Everyone needs a big year. I think a good artist career has a periodic good year and then you move forward. But, yes, it is a very vulnerable, honest line. Which song are you hoping finds a home with listeners the most? One song that means a lot to me is “One Word.” What I love about that song is that it takes us immediately to that story of Jesus calming the storm with the disciples in the boat. Jesus’ power is on display and his ability to be completely nonplussed is on display, but also the disciples and Jesus experience this when they’re on their way to do something great. I would want us to remember in this very stormy year that we’re on a passage. We’re on our way to do something great. There’s great work on the other side for us to do. If we can look at this very crushing year in that way, I think it can help keep us going. This is the wave of resistance while we all have very important work to do and I think we can continue to trust that God will bring us to the other side. Anything else you want to say to readers about the new album or where you’re at? I love this album. I do intend to tour it when the world opens up, even if it’s a modest, socially-distanced kind of way. I’ll trust my instincts to know when that will be back and happening. It’s definitely another chapter in my artistic collaboration with Ben, and it feels important to continue to evolve with him and figure out what we’re doing. I know I could work with another producer, but my relationship with Ben is very foundational. For anyone following along, this is totally a step forward for us. Click here to visit Melanie Penn’s website. Click here to stream More Alive, Vol. 1 on Spotify and here to stream it on Apple Music.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Christiana Peterson, author of Awakened by Death: Live-Giving Lessons from the Mystics. Jonathan Rogers and Christiana Peterson discuss the link between mysticism and mortality, our culture’s lack of rituals for confronting death, the writer’s role in engaging with mortality as an antidote for self-absorption, and death’s ability to teach compassion. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 48 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Every month the moon grows to fullness, wanes to nothing, then grows back toward fullness again. That’s how it looks from here, anyway. In fact, the moon is just the moon, always there and always the same size, however it appears to us. This conceit is the jumping-off place for Janna Barber’s new memoir, Hidden in Shadow. From where we sit, God is often hidden in shadow. Nevertheless, God is always there. “I’m afraid my faith cycles through similar phases,” Janna writes, with characteristic frankness (and this is only the tip of the frankness iceberg). She continues: When it’s strong and healthy, its light pervades every corner of my heart, and I can’t picture it any other way. But shadows of darkness and doubt show up pretty often, and little by little, I lose sight of my faith altogether. This cycle repeats itself more often than I’d like, or more often than I’d like to admit, anyway. Most of the chapters of Hidden in Shadow run through this cycle: the faith of the memoirist wanes in the midst of sorrow and trouble, then waxes again—also in the midst of sorrow and trouble. Each chapter title is a place and a name: “Highway 17 — 1988.” “Silver Creek Drive — 1989.” “Julianne St. — 1990.” That seems innocuous enough, except that each of those place names represents another stop for little Janna as she grew up the daughter of a preacher who moved from difficult church to difficult church across Arkansas, staying only a year or two or three. We see young Janna learn to cope, largely by making herself invisible. We see her learn to cuss and learn to doubt and learn to keep her feelings to herself. Hidden in Shadow is one woman’s honest reckoning with the truth that even as our faith waxes and wanes, God is constant, and he loves his children even when they don’t know what he’s up to—which is to say, he loves his children all the time. Jonathan Rogers In one scene, an eleven-year-old Janna arrives home to an empty house and jumps to the conclusion that the Rapture has come and she’s been left behind. The scene could easily have been played for laughs, but it is surprisingly moving, encapsulating all the insecurities of a preacher’s kid who believes the stories but has a hard time believing that God loves her—and not just a preacher’s kid, but a preacher’s middle child, who has come to expect to be overlooked and left behind. As she moves into adulthood, the memoirist’s difficulties grow more difficult. She struggles with depression, she lives through miscarriages. She reconciles with her mother, she struggles with her children, she learns to let her children go. She takes up writing as a kind of self-care, then battles writer’s block. She learns to be angry at God, and she learns that God can handle her anger. In the end, Janna Barber spares us the tidy conclusion. Faith, as she says, is cyclical. Hidden in Shadow is not the story of one woman’s march from misery to triumph, or a guidebook to a faith that only waxes and never wanes. Instead, it is one woman’s honest reckoning with the truth that even as our faith waxes and wanes, God is constant, and he loves his children even when they don’t know what he’s up to—which is to say, he loves his children all the time. Click here to view Hidden in Shadow in the Rabbit Room Store. And click here to visit Janna Barber’s website.

The news was bleak. Despite decades of hit songs like “Blue Skies” and “Always” and enviable celebrity status under the pen name Irving Berlin (originally named Israel), by the turn of the 1930s America’s songwriter had peaked and was sliding with the stock market into oblivion. Not only was the country entering the Depression, but, more personal to Berlin, his only infant son had died on Christmas day in 1928, the new medium of the radio was killing his beloved music industry with free music, and he couldn’t seem to muster up any songs capable of fighting back the closing darkness. Though he plodded on with the habit of writing in the early 1930s, nothing he could pen would measure up in his eyes. As far as he could see his most joyous era was coming to an end, the country was collapsing, and the cliché phrases he daily penned were painful reminders of his draining well. We can see now what he couldn’t. At least one of the pathetic attempts at a song he discarded, “How Deep is the Ocean,” would eventually make its way to radio, the medium he so feared, and rack up all kinds of royalties, re-recordings, and celebrity performances. Less measurable is what that song would come to mean in the private lives of individuals. My wife, Lyndsay, has her own story with it. Her father, who outwardly often had a brusque, sarcastic exterior, was never more tender than when he would sing his favorite old standards with his daughters. Even after the most icy conversation, he could warm the chilled air by placing his hands on Lyndsay’s face and launching into a few lines from musicals like Annie, Ain’t Misbehavin’, or Fiddler on the Roof. “How Deep is the Ocean” was one of the most repeated though. They didn’t even sing it. They would recite it to each other fondly whenever she was old enough to part ways after a visit. Later when he gave her away to me at our wedding, he whispered it into her ear. On his deathbed over a decade later, she whispered it into his. How much do I love you? I’ll tell you no lie. How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? —”How Deep is the Ocean” Those lines were a gift, a parting benediction that repeatedly made even more tangible their deepest bond. Back when Berlin was writing one painfully dull phrase after another, he could see neither the public glory to come nor the private significance of the song amongst strangers. When we look back at the story of Israel at the birth of Christ from the vantage point of our 21st century explosions of holiday merriment, it is good to remember what Israel could and couldn’t see. The story of Advent invites us to persist in faith, to keep writing, to keep welcoming, to keep trusting not only the unseen heavens but God’s continuous covert work in the least newsworthy happenings on earth. Chris Slaten They could see the oppressive weight of Roman power. Empire after empire had captured, subdued, assimilated, and exterminated all but a remnant of the promised nation of God, and the Roman empire was just another conquest in this bleak chain. While there is some dispute about the purpose for the census at the time of Joseph and Mary’s journey, at the very least lives had to be uprooted and put on hold in order to travel to accommodate the mandate. One possibility is that it was initiated to account for taxation. If that is the case the census was another physical reminder that their hard earned shekels fed the relentless hand of Rome, the roads, the military, and the ubiquitous, egocentric artwork of their oppressors. Even their holiest standing temple was a government funded building project intended to remind them of Herod’s kindness, despite his habit of killing them. Today, the awkward Christmas dinner where the grandfather starts ranting about the IRS and government overreach might actually be an accurate recreation of the kinds of conversations being had in the rooms that were too crowded for Joseph and Mary. Anyone who looked instead to the hope that could come from within Israel faced a people crumbling from their divisions. Irreconcilable arguments between the conservative Pharisees, the liberal Sadducees, and the isolationist Essenes. Traitorous Jewish tax collectors pillaging their neighbors. A centuries-old bitter rivalry with the Samaritan Jews of the northern kingdom. Fiery debates between loyalists to Herod and those who longed for a descendent of David on the throne. Zealots stockpiling militia gear. All of this news mattered. The young couple looking for a place to stay did not, even though they carried the king who would serve a new, everlasting empire made up of enemies from every contentious faction, even Roman oppressors. Like Israel, like Berlin we can only see so far. But there is a gift that comes with recognizing our inability to see when we’ve penned words that will mean the world to someone else or brushed up against the Messiah. When we assume our blindness to the significance of the most ordinary moments, it makes way for mystery. It relieves the pressing weight of mass media events by allowing room for faith, an assurance of solid realities beyond the limits of our perception, “the conviction of things not seen.” The story of Advent invites us to persist in faith, to keep writing, to keep welcoming, to keep trusting not only the unseen heavens but God’s continuous covert work in the least newsworthy happenings on earth. Mary did know this. She had been given a privileged glimpse of Yahweh’s hidden, steadfast hand, and we can hear it in the words she chose as she privately rejoiced with her relative Elizabeth. Now we can rejoice with her: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. —Luke 1:46-56 (ESV) [Author’s Note: The dynamic explored here of God’s hidden work during catastrophic events was inspired by the song “Apocalypse” by the New Empires, which sings on a literal level about devastation during the Middle Ages and John Wycliffe, whom some call the “Morning Star” of the Reformation. On a figurative level those images can be taken much more broadly, particularly in 2020.] Original art for this post by Breezy Brookshire.

As a hard, strange year draws to a close, the season of Advent feels so timely and necessary. We enter the long, dark nights of winter, and even as we look forward to Christmas, there’s still the unshakeable sense that it’s going to be so different this year, our joy marked by grief for traditions put aside, canceled travel plans, absent loved ones, and the heavy toll of every loss and grief. For this reason, I’m thankful for Caroline Cobb’s new album, A Seed, A Sunrise. This is not your average jolly Christmas record, but instead it’s a collection of original songs that trace the story of hope coming into the world. From humanity’s broken beginning to the arrival of hope to the longing for Christ’s return, these songs provide the perfect soundtrack for the ache that feels especially strong this year. I had a chance to chat with Caroline over Zoom (of course) about her Scripture songs project, her new Advent album, and why it feels especially meaningful to release these songs in 2020. So this is your third album, and I understand it’s a continuation of a year-long project to record a song for every book of the Bible. Can you tell me about the story behind that? That started back in 2011. So, I was about to turn 30 on 11/11/11, and I thought that was a cool date. I had always written songs, but I had never really made a goal like that for myself. So I decided to write a song for every book of the Bible in one year, and it really married these two loves I had—songwriting and understanding God’s word as a story, seeing all the connections and enjoying his Word as a beautiful, rich thing. That began this trajectory of consistently writing songs from Scripture. With each album I would put out it was as if I was telling a big story. So similar to, you know, Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, there’s that concept of tracing a story way back to the beginning, all the way to when Christ was born. But for me it was different angles. The first album was called The Blood and the Breath, and it traced the story of death to life, songs that tell the story of redemption. And then the second one was A Home and a Hunger. I got to write about it on The Rabbit Room when it came out, and that one is more about the ache, this tension between the already and the not yet. A Seed, A Sunrise is part of a set of two albums that I recorded at the same time with producer Isaac Wardell (Josh Garrels, Porter’s Gate, Sandra McCracken). As the first entry, A Seed, A Sunrise is an Advent themed album, and the idea is to have this anthology of work that tells the story. The analogy I use is that it’s like a diamond. It’s so beautiful, but from so many different angles, you can just keep turning it and telling the story again and again and again. And you know, we’ll never plumb the depths of God’s story, which is what anchors our stories. I get to keep turning this diamond and telling this story in the way that I feel God has called me to do. And then the next one is really about Jesus and his compassionate life. The other albums were really panoramic, and this one zooms in on Jesus. Right now I’m calling it A King and His Kindness. I have in my head ideas for other themes and concepts in the future. It’s just something that I really love to do. While spending time with A Seed, A Sunrise, I did notice the narrative arc just kind of spanning from the beginning. It doesn’t feel like a traditional Christmas album in that way. It starts at the beginning. Exactly. I can’t help but see all the ways that it ties together. Like the first song on this Advent album really starts in Genesis 3. And then by the end, you’re talking about Jesus returning. So it does sort of go from the Fall and exile to Jesus coming and returning. The theme of the whole thing is like exile, homesickness and ache. And yeah, it’s not a traditional Christmas album. We talked about doing some carols, but I just had too many of my own songs. We just decided to do it a little differently and pull from Isaiah and lots of your typical liturgical Advent readings and things like that to make this more of a longing album than a Bing Crosby/Jingle Bells type thing. Yeah, as much as I love Christmas music, I think so many of us are all in for a collection of original songs. When I started playing this, I thought oh, this feels like Advent. I get that sense of longing and exile. Yeah, I think in 2020 we all are feeling that even more. I mean, it’s always been there. As Christians, we’re supposed to always be marked by this feeling of homesickness throughout the year, but at Advent we especially focus on it. I think in 2020 we’re all like, oh man… come back and heal this thing. We recorded these songs in February, a week or two before the tornado in East Nashville, and then I feel like 2020 just went from there. Some of the songs are older but for the most part I wrote them all within a year in 2019. As you’ve been bringing the songs and revisiting them for the release, do you feel like their meaning has shifted for you at all? It feels strange to say it, but the songs feel more relevant now. Again, I feel like as Christians, we should always be aware that we’re aching for a King and a Kingdom where everything will be set right. But I think 2020 has sort of uncovered our feelings of mortality and our awareness of broken systems around us, the brokenness within us. The pandemic not only made us aware of our mortality and our fragility, but also some of those other things that we had, our comforts and our idols. For me, God has used this to pull the rug out from underneath some of those things, and it’s made me more aware of the fact that nothing can be truly satisfying except for God. I think the election has caused us to think about how we want a King that upholds justice and righteousness, you know? And all the wildfires—it just reminded me of the desolation that we see in Isaiah, this idea of barren wilderness and ashes and how God promises gardens growing out of that. There’s sort of a tangible sense of that Advent longing brought on by the long list of things that have happened in 2020, between the election and racial injustice and natural disasters. The story of redemption is like a diamond. It's so beautiful, but from so many different angles, you can just keep turning it and telling the story again and again and again. Caroline Cobb I don’t want to say I’m excited to put this music out into this climate, because I wish it wasn’t happening at all. But I feel like it’s the right kind of Christmas music for this year. And I’m thankful that I get to come alongside people and give them a soundtrack that gives them that dissonance, where they can both voice longing and also joy. Because there’s a lot of joy on the album too, but I think the joy has been made more beautiful for the longing that comes before it, you know? It’s a privilege to release this into this particular Advent season. Yeah. I felt that too. It’s almost like everything terrible that’s happened this year has just been doing a slow work of exposure on an individual level, on a church wide level. I feel like we’re just having to really confront some difficult stuff. I do feel like it has been an exposing year, but I don’t feel like there’s been much resolution except to look to the Lord and say “how long” and “we need you.” Help us to bring your kingdom into this, to push back the darkness, to be lights. Could you speak to the garden imagery that runs through the album? I was really struck by the recurring theme of the garden, of hope for growth, especially heading into winter. I was writing a lot from Isaiah, so that’s a motif that he has. Gardens, and also light. I’m not sure it happened consciously, but those just started infiltrating the songs I was writing, this idea of a barren wasteland, and into that this beautiful garden. And then the same thing with this idea that the light is shining into the darkness. And that’s the idea of Advent, right? Advent is this time we set aside to purposefully look around and say it’s dark and we’re waiting for the light to come. And I feel like a garden is more beautiful if you know that before the garden was there it was a desert. What is your hope for these songs and the people who hear them? I’m hoping that this album and these songs are a good companion for people in this particular Advent and going forward. I think they give voice to this “How long, O Lord” ache and the hope that we have in Christ at the same time. And I think that, as Christians, we live in that already and not yet place constantly. I almost didn’t pitch this as an Advent album. I really feel like you could listen to this all year because it’s our story. And there’s definitely a lot of songs on there that, you know, if you weren’t familiar with Advent, you might not say oh, that’s a Christmas song. I’m hoping that people can continue to listen to this, and I love the idea of people just going about their day and, you know, taking a run or changing their kid’s diaper or working from home and having this story, God’s story, that they’re able to marinate in. As they do their everyday stuff, they can rehearse it and remember it and be rooted in it. That’s my hope with really every album. Learn more about Caroline Cobb’s new album A Seed, A Sunrise at her website.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Randall Goodgame, songwriter, TV show host, and leader of the Slugs & Bugs universe. Jonathan Rogers and Randall Goodgame discuss the essential role of collaboration in all of Randall’s work, the importance of writing out of freedom and not out of condemnation, and the irrepressibility of childlike joy. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 49 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

It’s 2020 and the holidays this year will look different for most of us. Events we look forward to all year may have been cancelled: family Christmas parties, church cookie exchanges, and *sniff, sniff* the Behold the Lamb Tour. But Advent—the season of eagerly awaiting the birth of Christ—hasn’t been cancelled at all. And anything that can point my family’s hearts in that direction is something I want to hold on to. If you haven’t been introduced to Randall Goodgame’s The Slugs & Bugs Show yet, it’s a delightful watch for the whole family with story, songs, puppets, and special guests, but it’s particularly engaging for the under-ten crowd. Goodgame has just released a 50-minute episode called “Make Ready for Christmas” with lots of guest appearances including Andrew Peterson, Ron Bock, Ellie Holcomb, and retired Olympic figure skater Scott Hamilton to name a few. What does it mean to have hope, peace, joy, and love not because of your circumstances but in spite of them? The Slugs & Bugs characters provide a poignant example. Carolyn Leiloglou “Make Ready for Christmas” weaves together several storylines using the four outer candles of the Advent wreath as a framing device. The candles can have different names or meanings depending on your tradition, but the meanings emphasized here are Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. This structure won’t be immediately evident to your kids or even you. Randall simply invites us along on a journey—call it an ADVENTure—of anticipation. During that journey, characters face situations in which things don’t meet their expectations: Maggie isn’t able to give Morty the kind of Christmas she thinks he wants; Doug’s gift suggestions lead to chaos; and bad weather keeps people from showing up for the pageant. What does it mean to have hope, peace, joy, and love not because of your circumstances but in spite of them? The Slugs & Bugs characters provide a poignant example. “Make Ready for Christmas” doesn’t spoon-feed a trite lesson like many children’s programs. Well-woven storylines emphasize multiple connected themes including giving in secret, homelessness, and Christmas traditions in other cultures. There’s even the Magnificat sung by a skunk in a gingerbread house. No, you didn’t read that wrong. It’s a beautiful moment. I don’t want to give the impression that this show is all serious. Your family will be singing along to the “Building a Gingerbread House” song and laughing at Doug the Slug’s Crisis Gift Hotline calls. The show takes its audience through a whole range of emotions. This year especially, when Covid-cancellations are changing the way the Christmas holiday looks for many of us, “Make Ready for Christmas” is a reminder that we can still have peace, that we can choose to give what we have, that we can be thankful and cherish those around us no matter how our circumstances look. And that’s a message that I need to hear just as much as my kids do. Click here to view “Make Ready for Christmas” on the Slugs & Bugs Show website.

My son and a group of his friends got together a few days ago and marked the start of the holiday season with a “hate-watch” marathon of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. I was genuinely torn when I heard about their plans for the evening. On the one hand, I could kind of relate. I first encountered the Hallmark Channel through my father, the most tender-hearted human I’ve ever known. For the last decade or so of his life, Dad spent each free evening seated at a card table, his attention equally divided between whatever jigsaw puzzle he was working on and whatever movie was playing on the Hallmark Channel. Each touching ending, each improbable-yet-predictable reunion, each romantic resolution would prompt another rush of happy tears from Dad. For my part, when I visited Mom and Dad I spent the evenings wandering in and out of the family room, shaking my head, rolling my eyes, and growing increasingly disgusted with the nightly line-up of cheesy, sentimental TV drivel. So my son came by his impulse to hate-watch honestly. On the other hand: particularly now that Dad has gone, I feel slightly defensive for him. I feel sentimental about his sentimentality, and there is a permanent tender spot in my heart for all the ways he was tender-hearted. Maybe I’m just never satisfied. Dad’s fondness for Hallmark bothered me because it seemed kind of sappy and mawkish. My son’s mockery of Hallmark bothers me because it feels a little bit cynical and sneering. Believe it or not, I’ve been ruminating on all of this for the last week or so as I’ve been thinking about Advent—this time of waiting—and the theme of joy. The Hallmark Channel has been wildly successful at packaging and presenting a particular brand of Christmas joy. Their holiday movies offer a festive and upbeat vision of the season that many (like my dad) find tremendously appealing, and that many others (like my son) find slightly ridiculous. And so I’ve found myself teetering back and forth between my father and my son, and thinking about the specific character of the Joy we celebrate at Advent. Josef Pieper, a 20th century German Catholic philosopher, has been helping to shape and direct my thinking. (Of special interest to Rabbit Room-ers: Pieper was also an admirer of C. S. Lewis, and translated some of Lewis’s writings into German.) Pieper writes: The reason for joy, although it may be encountered in a thousand concrete forms, is always the same: possessing or receiving what one loves, whether actually in the present, hoped for in the future, or remembered in the past. Joy is an expression of love. One who loves nothing and nobody cannot possibly rejoice, no matter how desperately he craves joy. Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves. —In Tune With the World: A Theory of Festivity, 23 Receiving What We Love Of the various criticisms of Hallmark Channel movies, two are the most prominent. First, they are predictable. The two leads who can hardly stand each other in the first scene will fall in love by the final commercial break. The high-powered executive stranded in the quaint small town will discover the true meaning of Christmas, and that there are some things more important than money and the executive suite. And so on. Looking out from the opening scene, we already have a clear and unimpeded view of the conclusion. Here is the second critique: the movies aren’t just predictable; they also predictably end “happily ever after.” However many dilemmas, obstacles, difficult backstories, and personality clashes the characters may traverse, we can be confident at the outset that after 90-odd minutes, all will be well in the world. The movies are, for that reason (this second criticism runs), completely unrealistic. “Life’s just not like that,” we complain. “That’s not how things work—where everyone ends up happy, misunderstandings are all cleared up, and everything works out the way it should.” (There are other criticisms or course—mediocre acting, for instance, and uninspired writing. Leave those to the side for a moment.) I once asked Dad about all of this. “Why do you like watching these things so much, Dad? Five minutes in, you already know exactly how the whole thing is going to turn out.” “That’s what I like,” Dad said with a smile. “I’m a simple guy. I like happy endings.” At least at one level there is a correspondence between what Pieper says about joy and what my Dad liked about Hallmark. “The reason for joy” Pieper writes, “is . . . possessing or receiving what one loves, whether actually in the present, hoped for in the future, or remembered in the past.” Joy, in other words, isn’t just a matter of thinking happy thoughts, or “looking on the sunny side.” We rejoice when we “possess or receive” what we love (whether, as Pieper points out, we receive it actually in the present, as a remembered past event, or as a future certainty). Because the ending is certain, the promised joy is possessed even now. And so Dad could chuckle when the protagonist storms out on her Hallmark love interest sixty minutes into the exposition of their romance. We know that what would be distressing or even tragic considered on its own, is actually only an interesting wrinkle in the unfolding romance. Assured of the outcome, we can experience difficulties and complications—even as they arise—as what they will one day be: simply interesting bends in the roads; endearing anecdotes the characters will share years from now at anniversary celebrations. (“Haha! Yes! Your mother actually threw the flowers right in my face, and screamed: ‘I never want to see you again!’”) The word “advent” is from the Latin “advenire”—to come or to arrive. In that sense we could even go so far to say that my Dad’s enjoyment of Hallmark movies had a kind of “advent character” to it. He enjoyed every minute of his evening at the card table, because he knew what was coming. A Christianity that has forgotten how to lament is damaged; a Christianity that has forgotten how to celebrate is dead. Steve Guthrie Joy functions in this advent-like way throughout the scriptures. Faithful people are able to endure or even rejoice in the midst of sufferings, because the joyful outcome is certain. So we read that “Jesus, for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.” (Heb. 12:2) Likewise, though there were fights and disagreements among the Christians in Philippi, still Paul could write: “ In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy . . . being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:4,6) Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves. Because we will receive what God has promised, because the outcome is beyond doubt, we experience even now the joy that accompanies the fulfillment of the promise. “Though you have not seen [Jesus],” Peter writes, “you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith.” (1 Peter 1:8-9) This is also the point at which the Hallmark Channel movies run up hard against the second critique mentioned above: life just doesn’t give us these kinds of “happily ever after” endings, we say. We can’t in fact be certain that we will receive any of the things that the Christmas movies promise us: irreproachably good marriages, immaculately happy families, and a deeply meaningful Christmas Eve spent in a charming, snow-fringed New England cottage. We mostly do not experience the sort of airbrushed perfection presented here. We know too that even the loveliest wreaths will fade. We may also think of the billions of poor in our world who could never hope to afford—or even dream of visiting—the delightful farmhouse in Upstate New York featured in the closing shot; with hardwood floors, and Pottery Barn furniture arranged tastefully around the stone fireplace. So if joy is “receiving or possessing” the thing we love, then the Hallmark movies offer us a false joy. Not because they offer us goods unworthy of our love, but because the goods they offer cannot be possessed: reliably, or permanently, or equitably. Adjourning the Chambers of Pessimism Having said all of that, I still don’t feel any better when I think of my son and his friends, laughing at the latest round of offerings from Hallmark and Co. I feel sad, in fact. My sweet, tender-hearted father exits stage left, and enter then the Hate Watchers; enter then the skeptics and the brutal realists; enter the sneering dismissal, and the sarcastic two-word review available to every sixth-grader: Yeah, right! This doesn’t seem like any sort of improvement. Gullibility may not be one of the fruit of the Spirit, but neither is cynicism. This is in fact an issue of profound importance at this particular cultural moment. Over the last several months our nation has had to confront extraordinary challenges and sorrows: a pandemic; racial tensions; protests; a brutally contentious election; claims of fraud; threats of civil war. The question I’m interested in here is not what we should do, but how we should be. What sort of disposition, what sort of outlook, and demeanor should we have? We might retreat into cheery indifference. Things aren’t that bad—everything will be fine. Please don’t disrupt my happily ever after; my hot chocolate is getting cold. Conversely we might descend into bitterness and despair. Things are hopeless—there’s no way to fix this. There are no happily ever afters. They are both soul-destroying responses. A Christianity that has forgotten how to lament is damaged; a Christianity that has forgotten how to celebrate is dead. “Christianity is a unique religion of joy,” writes theologian Jürgen Moltmann. And Martin Luther King, Jr., at a time when there was little reason for optimism, likewise insisted: The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows. “Weeping may endure for a night” the psalmist writes “but joy cometh in the morning.” This faith adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. —“A Knock at Midnight” When we rejoice, we put the forces of terror and destruction on notice: your days are numbered. Steve Guthrie And so, at the very moment I am rolling my eyes at another sweater-wearing single dad with perfect teeth, I also want to argue in defense of happy endings. At the very least, I want to push back against a more general mistrust of such. Ernest Hemmingway wrote that “all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.” (Death in the Afternoon) Of course Hemmingway is right. Who could argue with that? And yet, it seems that the Christian must. The one Really True Story—the truest story, which is the plumb-line of every other story, does in fact have a happy ending. The world’s ending is a comedy, not a tragedy. What does that mean? It doesn’t undo the little happinesses and joys of Hallmark. Instead it underwrites and redeems them. It doesn’t so much expose these little paradises as a lie; rather it welcomes them in to the truth to which they are clumsily gesturing. An Advent Joy is wildly inclusive. In good times it says: “This lovely moment is an icon of the loveliness that will one day enfold all of creation.” It says, “This little family get-together, with all of its quirks and eccentricities, is a sacrament of the reconciliation of all people and all things that God is surely bringing about.” In this time of waiting (Advent) I am experiencing now a little bit of what is coming. Neither on the other hand does Advent Joy ignore the suffering of the world. In fact, to celebrate “Advent” is necessarily to insist on both the ultimate arrival of Joy and the present persistence of disappointment. If we say that the fullness of Joy is coming (advenire), then we likewise acknowledge that it is not here. (“Who hopes for what they already have?” Paul asks. (Rom. 8:24)) Advent Joy does not deny the world’s sorrow. Rather, it insists that sorrow is not the last word. “I see the injustice,” it says, “and yet justice will be done.” “I see the brokenness,” it acknowledges, “and yet there will be healing.” “I see the division and anger. And yet at the last day there will be love and community.” This kind of joy is profoundly countercultural. It is an act of winsome rebellion against the powers and authorities of this present evil age. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” When we rejoice, we put the forces of terror and destruction on notice: your days are numbered. My dad’s fondness for Hallmark, I said earlier, struck me as sentimental. And my son’s disdain, I said, seems cynical. But on further reflection, I think that maybe those assessments are too one-sided. I think my son probably laughs at Hallmark Christmas because he believes things are a lot more broken than they are portrayed in the movies. And I think my father probably wept at Hallmark Christmas because he believed things are more hopeful and beautiful than they are portrayed on the nightly news. They both are right; and in this season it is right for us to join them both; weeping and laughing with Advent Joy. Original art for this post by Jonny Jimison.

The Fin’s Revolution Podcast is back with the next 15 chapters of the tale! This month marks 10 years since the publication of Fiddler’s Green, and as he did with The Fiddler’s Gun, the author, Pete Peterson, is revisiting the story by reading it aloud via podcast. Join Fin Button and her crew of outcasts as they embark on a voyage to the Mediterranean in search of a lost countess and an end to the war. To win the prize, Fin will need the help of an ancient seafaring order, the Knights of Malta—and the resolve of one faithful knight could alter more than just the outcome of the revolution. It could mend the heart of a lonely girl and give rise to an American legend. Part 3, “The Crossing” (chapters 26-40), is now available via the Rabbit Room Podcast Network. Look for part 4 (and more bonus content) coming soon! Click here to listen to the Fin’s Revolution Podcast. And click here to view The Fiddler’s Gun in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with writer and letter enthusiast Reagan Dregge. Jonathan Rogers and Reagan Dregge discuss Reagan’s love and practice of the art of physical letter-writing, the personal attention it involves from sender to recipient, and the inherent embodiment of putting pen to paper. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 50 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

I started a most fantastic book last week, but I’ll get there in a minute. Eight years ago, I stood over a sliver of kitchen counter in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, pale and tight-eyed with lack of sleep in the blue light of a computer screen. I was still in my uniform, feet aching in subpar combat boots because I walked everywhere and didn’t know the good brands yet. Outside it was icy and dark, and I had to be up at 0530 to ride my bike to PT in the snow, but I was making breakfast. Because it was morning in Alabama, and I was straining to maintain a connection with my younger brothers from literally half a world away. My brother Pieter woke up early so that we could share a meal together before he took off on his own bike to the high school down the street. We were testing out fun holiday-themed foods. This time we carved snowmen out of toast, with an orange-wedge nose and two eyes made out of chocolate. Mine was a sad thing to behold, particularly since I lacked several of the decorative ingredients and had to make do with random odds and ends (a half-chewed peppermint for a hat, sugar cubes for buttons). My barracks room was cold in every sense of the word, with the world’s scratchiest, most rock-like green chair as a centerpiece. Yet, we laughed as we held our creations up to the screen for inspection and I waved him off to school. Tonight, eight years later, my brother and I bustle around the kitchen in my first home, making our first attempt at meatloaf from the recipe John Cal shared for Hutchmoot: Homebound. We swerve around each other as though we practiced it, darting for ingredients and slipping just out of each other’s way, in that dance that’s only possible with someone you’ve known closely for going on forever. There’s something in me that searches for symmetry—maybe it’s the poet. I’m stirring the meatloaf mixture, my brother hulking over a pot of potatoes beside me, and I’m suddenly struck by the memory of carving snowman-toast on an Army base in Korea. This time around, the meal is truly shared. There’s warmth, and savory scents floating about, and two pairs of hands at a common task. We laugh this time too, particularly when my crotchety old toaster burns one of the bread slices meant for our breadcrumbs, and we race around throwing windows open before my over-eager smoke alarm goes off. We settle down in front of the fireplace, and he clinks his plate against mine. “Cheers,” he says. To the warmth, and the company, and the delicious food we made with our own hands. I wonder if every shattered piece of delight in this life will have its fulfillment in the many rooms of our Father’s house, and we’ll all sit back in a joy we didn’t know enough to hope for and murmur, 'Ah, so this is what it was always meant to be.' Shigé Clark Now about that book I mentioned. I have the great fortune of being in the Supper of the Lamb discussion group that started last week, and oh man, am I glad I joined up. In the first chapter, Robert Farrar Capon talks about delight making treasure of trash, and I can’t help but connect that to our little meal of snowman-toast-over-a-Zoom-call. I think of how I could have seen that moment—as trash. A memory soaked with the grief of distance and difficulty. I could have been overwhelmed by how much it was not what it should have been. But at the time, I was too caught up in delight for what it was. As Capon says: “In a real world, nothing is infinitely bad. […] to be good or bad is not as much of an achievement as to be at all.” My teenage brother—who by common account ought to have viewed making holiday-themed breakfast with his big sister as the lamest of possible activities—wrested himself from sleep before a taxing day of school and wrestling to share a meal with me half a world away, and we carved snowman out of toast together. How delightful. Yes, there’s greater delight in this moment now. Things are more right in this meal than they were in that one. But the distance between the two doesn’t mock our previous joy. Instead, it fulfills it—blooming into our abundance the fullness of the delight we felt in our scarcity. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes with my brother, the ease we get to take beside the fire and beneath the twinkling glow of Christmas lights, are the fruition of the seeds of hope and love sown with toast under the light of a computer screen. It makes me wonder what future meal will be a fulfillment of this one. I wonder if every shattered piece of delight in this life will have its fulfillment in the many rooms of our Father’s house, and we’ll all sit back in a joy we didn’t know enough to hope for and murmur, “Ah, so this is what it was always meant to be.” Thinking back to my cold, blunt barracks room, I can’t help but reflect on this year and all its scarcity. A time when so many meals have become Zoom calls and gatherings have become less than they seemingly ought to be. In such a season, I’m grateful for the power of delight to reshape a thing that might have been garbage, and make it stand, as Capon says, “a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.” I’m grateful for my snowman-toast, my orange rinds, my livestreams, my masked-up meetings, my broken little feasts—for the great delights that they are themselves, and knowing that every foretaste of joy will be fulfilled far beyond what my meager mind can now imagine. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, and may we not be quick to toss them in the trash heap.

“He wants us to have peace. Happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves.” In the film A Hidden Life, a village priest offers this counsel to Franz Jägerstätter, an unassuming Austrian farmer who comes to believe he cannot pledge loyalty to Hitler. Something in me recoiled at hearing the words in this context, but in them I also glimpsed my tendency to conflate the three concepts: peace, happiness, and the absence of suffering. Yes, situations free of pain and conflict are one way to have peace. This awareness has given rise to many a prayer request in my own life, and it’s the reason that the priest and other officials in the film urge Franz to capitulate. Yet these men cling to a sinking ship, trading mast and rudder and hull piecemeal for a few more minutes of sanctioned survival. “God doesn’t care what you say, only what’s in your heart. Say the oath and think what you like,” the same priest asserts. His very words betray the tenuousness of his dearly bought peace, and they reawaken the question I have asked in my darkest, most fear-steeped hours. Where is the peace that will not disintegrate when anxiety throttles, when a child falls seriously ill, when once-friendly faces turn venomous, when the world goes to pieces? The answer has come quietly to me again in the readings for this season. “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38, ESV). The steadfastness in Mary’s reply, even as she ponders the mystery of her role in the story of redemption, has echoed elsewhere in history: through Elisabeth Elliot’s maxim “In acceptance lieth peace,” taken from a poem by Amy Carmichael; in Betsie ten Boom’s “The center of His will is our only safety,” spoken as WWII dogfights seared the night sky overhead. This kind of peace isn’t an embrace of fatalism. It is predicated on at least two truths: that God is a good God, a sovereign, omniscient, and trustworthy God; and that, therefore, the greatest good I can imagine in a given situation may not be the greatest good possible. This is the kind of peace, I believe, that allowed Mary to treasure up the events and words around her in her heart, even as the prophecy came that a sword would pierce her own soul (Luke 2:35, ESV). The piercing would come, the suffering would be unavoidable—but these were not the end of the story. The blow to her soul would, in fact, be evidence of the love of Christ that no sword would ever be able to cleave (Romans 8:35, ESV). The greatest good I can imagine in a given situation may not be the greatest good possible. Amy Baik Lee And that love is the mainstay of the peace I seek. The reconciliation I have with God because of Christ (Rom. 5:1, ESV), the peace that now allows me to bring every request to Him and be shielded in heart and mind (Phil 4:7, ESV), is not a peace of tranquil earthly circumstance. No suffering or trial can shake loose the fact that I belong to Him, and that all things shall be worked together for my good. From my perspective, it is as if I’ve been informed that the enemy has been attacking the wrong target all along, and that this is the most he will ever be able to do. My Home, my heart, and the Source of my steadiness are forever out of his reach, even in the moments when I am exhausted and my vision is clouded from the fight. Franz Jägerstätter reflects the same surety later in the film when, as a prisoner, he is directed to sign the oath: “Sign, and you will go free.” “But I am free,” he responds simply. In the end, the village priest is right; God does want us to have peace. But He does not give to us in such paltry measure and frail security as the world gives. The peace He gives makes us able to get up morning after morning in a world thick with argument and opinion and fear and disease, and sing previously unthinkable words. “What though my joys and comforts die? The Lord my Savior liveth.” It is a peace of relinquishment and of safekeeping guaranteed by a Word far stronger than the offers of man. And it is the peace of pierced souls who are enabled to go on with their scars and wounds, like the One who has gone before them, to love. He said, ‘I will forget the dying faces; The empty places, They shall be filled again. O voices moaning deep within me, cease.’ But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in forgetting lieth peace. He said, ‘I will crowd action upon action, The strife of faction Shall stir me and sustain; O tears that drown the fire of manhood cease.’ But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in endeavour lieth peace. He said, ‘I will withdraw me and be quiet, Why meddle in life’s riot? Shut be my door to pain. Desire, thou dost befool me, thou shalt cease.’ But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in aloofness lieth peace. He said, ‘I will submit; I am defeated. God hath depleted My life of its rich gain. O futile murmurings, why will ye not cease?’ But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in submission lieth peace. He said, ‘I will accept the breaking sorrow Which God tomorrow Will to His son explain.’ Then did the turmoil deep within me cease. Not vain the word, not vain; For in Acceptance lieth peace. —”In Acceptance Lieth Peace,” Amy Carmichael Original art for this post by Breezy Brookshire.

One evening in December of 2018, Kelsey and I had just finished a riveting chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We had been steadily plodding through the entire series for a couple years now, reading aloud to one another, reliving the tale that had so palpably awakened our imaginations as kids. As I brushed my teeth that night, I reflected on how far we’d come—indeed, how far Harry had come. And perhaps it was the season’s influence, or perhaps it was the prompting of Fate herself, but I suddenly found myself murmuring under my breath, to the tune of that beloved song: “Harry, did you know?” All of us go through life hoping for that singular, defining “light bulb moment”—the one so succinctly summed up by the timeless exclamation of “eureka!” But, elusive as these light bulb moments are known to be, we assume they won’t find us, and we quietly resign ourselves to the realm of the ordinary, not quite able to snuff out that secret hope that our own modesty will entice the muses to take pity and grace us with brilliance—not that this plan has ever worked. And even as the light bulb went off with undeniable force, toothbrush still in hand, I doubted that it was even an original idea—the internet would surely prove to me in short order, as it did with everything, that it’s all been done before. A quick search revealed a “Lily, Did You Know” but—to my complete astonishment—no “Harry, Did You Know” as far as Google could take me. And that was the moment when a playful idea became a moral duty. So I got up my courage to casually throw the idea out to Kelsey. I doubt that my air of casualness masked my sincere feeling of ethical necessity, but I did my best: “The funniest thing just happened! As I was brushing my teeth, I just found myself humming the tune of ‘Mary, Did You Know’…except it was ‘Harry, Did You Know’! Isn’t that just hilarious? Because the thing is, Harry doesn’t know anything. Isn’t that the whole point? The whole story is propelled by what he doesn’t know… I don’t know, I just thought it was funny.” A moment of silence. And then Kelsey burst out laughing, her eyes flickering with excitement. The muses had taken pity. “Well, do you want to write it together?” she asked. Our first co-write? Game on. There was little doubt as Kelsey and I began writing “Harry, Did You Know” that it would be presented to my sister as a Christmas gift. As a little brother, all the magic of Harry Potter was mediated to me by my cool big sister, Jessica. The physical books themselves only made their way into my hands after she had stayed up late into the night on the day of their release, tearing through them herself, learning and cherishing that secret knowledge of what happens next. And without fail, the next morning, positively enthralled by her newfound gnosis, Jessica would hand the book to me—here you go. It’s all yours. But the task of compressing revelation after revelation from 4,224 pages of storytelling into the duration of one song—that was where the real challenge presented itself. Kelsey and I quickly realized we had no choice but to write seven verses, one for each book. We began immediately. Before we knew it, Christmas Eve had arrived. We were about to give and receive gifts with my family, and “Harry, Did You Know” was one line away from being finished. My sister was in the shower. Kelsey and I called a huddle, and by the grace of God, we penned the final lyric just in time to sing it for my sister. Jessica laughed. She cried a little bit. And for the time being, we were satisfied with our work. Since I was busy recording and releasing my first project in 2019, “Harry, Did You Know” was, for a time, forgotten. Then, the following December (2019), Kelsey and I gathered with some friends in our living room to plan an Advent service for our church. Somehow the subject of Harry Potter arose and with it, our idea for this creative endeavor and a first public reading of the lyrics. “Harry, Did You Know” was met with laughter and shaking heads and an especially enthusiastic response from J Lind. This has to be a thing, it was decided. It must come to be. When I look back on it, this was the real impetus for what was to come. The encouragement of friends is central to the Harry Potter series, and so it is in the creation of “Harry, Did You Know.” It may have remained merely a funny idea we had one time were it not for the insistence of our friends that we move forward. And then, just a few months later, as the pandemic began to ravage the world, Kelsey and I realized: if ever there was a year for “Harry, Did You Know,” it’s this one. So we enlisted the expertise of Asher Peterson to orchestrate remotely recorded pieces into a well-ordered whole. We assembled a band: Kirby Waggoner, Cody Spriggs, and Evan Redwine. We asked some friends to lend their voices to the fun: Janie Townsend, Carly Bannister, J Lind, and Becca Jordan. And finally, Mindy Cook edited together the video of our dreams, which opened with perfect cover art from Leslie E. Thompson. Two years later, a light bulb moment has been brought to full expression and fruition. Kelsey and I have laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and even cried a little bit, as we’ve watched this video take shape. This project has played no small part in restoring our joy during one of the darkest years on humanity’s record—it’s our sincere hope that it may do the same for you. Click the names below to learn more about each person featured in this project: Asher Peterson, Evan Redwine, Janie Townsend, Carly Bannister, J Lind, Becca Jordan, Leslie E. Thompson, Mindy Cook

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Renee Mathis, fellow writing teacher and mentor at the CiRCE Institute’s apprenticeship program. Jonathan Rogers and Renee Mathis discuss Renee’s experience as a Jeopardy champion, her philosophy on mentoring teachers, the teaching methods used by Jesus, rhetoric as the pursuit of truth in community, and the still-relevant application of Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 51 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

I learned a French saying the other day: “surveiller comme le lait sur le feu.” It means “to watch like milk on the stove.” As someone who has all but given up on creamy oatmeal, I can appreciate with the French that if you walk away from a saucepan of milk on the burner, bubbles, toil, and trouble will inevitably ensue. I’m glad you could come by today. My grandmother’s candy is dairy-based, so I’ll be standing here a while. Grab some tea, move that cookbook off the barstool, and sit with me while I stir. My grandmother’s birthday was yesterday. She would have been 97. She passed when I was pretty young, but not before leaving me with happy memories and this recipe. My mom held on to it for years but prefers making my grandmother’s other sweets (there’s a piece of Heath bar cake on the counter you can try if you’d like), so she let the candy recipe pass to me, and now it’s mine alone. Well, I guess that’s not quite true. This recipe is mine to keep, but it isn’t mine to share. You see, before it belonged to my mother or my grandmother, it belonged to two elderly ladies with a rental apartment above their home, a proximity to Peabody College, and a dream of opening a candy shoppe in Gatlinburg. My grandmother lived in their apartment when she was in school. They always had a bowl of homemade pecan caramels that they’d happily give to anyone who asked, but the recipe they guarded with dramatic secrecy. That recipe was the key to their candy shoppe dream, so they watched it like milk on the stove. A few years later, my grandmother met my grandfather, and the ladies found themselves in need of a wedding gift. My grandmother had charmed them during their years together, and so they decided to entrust her with their treasure. They specified that my grandmother was not to share their recipe, but she could make and give the candy whenever she wished. I guard the secret of two women with a dream, and I carry the legacy of a couple who loved their community with the ferocity of a million small kindnesses. -Rachel Matar So she did. Every year at Christmastime, my grandparents spent a week boiling and stirring and wrapping hundreds of pecan caramels. Later, my mom and aunt would join them to cut the wrappers and lick the spoons. Year after year, they gave candy away to friends, family, and strangers. If you ever met them, and I hope you did, I bet you’ve tried a piece. My sister works down the hall from a man who interned under my grandfather when he led the engineering department. He’s in his 80s now, but when she brought in the candy a few years ago, he remembered it like the easy laugh of the kind man who first gave it to him. Memories are sticky like that. After my grandparents passed, the candy did, too. See, the recipe is good, but it isn’t easy. You have to stir continuously for hours. I can’t tell you how many, because I don’t know. Is it raining? That’ll change it. Are you using the big pot or the other big pot? That matters, too. And while imperfect candy makes a nice ice cream mix-in, it’s frustrating to spend hours on a project if you know it might not work. So for a while, Christmas candy became just a happy memory. My family chased it through candy stores and mall kiosks, wandering in to see if someone else had cracked the code. “Close,” we’d say, “but not quite it,” and we’d try to hide our disappointment. A few years ago, I was flipping through one of my mom’s recipe notebooks, and I saw the magic yellow glow of an old index card with “Christmas Candy” written in my grandmother’s hand. The instructions were imprecise, but it wasn’t raining, and I like a challenge, so I stepped into the story I already loved. 4 hours of stirring, 12 of cooling, and 5 of wrapping later, I gave it to my family to try. We were quiet as we unwrapped, tasted, and considered before pronouncing a victorious “that’s it.” So now I’m the keeper of this recipe. I guard the secret of two women with a dream, and I carry the legacy of a couple who loved their community with the ferocity of a million small kindnesses. No, I won’t sell any of it, although I’m flattered you asked. But you can take as much as you’d like. There’s still a few hours before the candy is done, so go on and head out if you’re tired. But this recipe is mine, and it’s precious to me. So I’ll watch it like milk on the stove.

A few years ago, my parents rented a beach house for a family reunion. Each of us cooked a few meals during our time, and for one of the meals, we made BLTs. My husband stood over the stove, making enough bacon for over twenty hungry people. We sat around the table, shuffling to make room as everyone filled their plates with sandwiches, chips, and salad. Eventually, he finished frying the last couple slices and started assembling his own sandwich, only to see the plate he had filled with bacon completely empty, save for a few spots of grease. I blushed in embarrassment at my ravenous family. We forgot to tell him the cardinal rule of the table: if you don’t eat fast, you don’t eat. We laugh about that meal now, and we’ve learned to be a little more considerate of others. My husband also eats a bit more quickly around my family. We love eating. But even more than that, we love feasting. But why do we bother feasting? Why gather around the table with good company and good food when we could eat only what’s needed to survive? We don’t feast merely to eat, drink, and be merry, or indulge our appetites like my family seemed to do that day at the beach house. When we feast rightly, we taste the goodness of God, see and participate in the Gospel, and look forward to the eternal feast. TASTE THE GOODNESS OF GOD In The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon wrote, “Man invented cooking before he thought of nutrition. To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste.” We need to recover taste, not for the sake of the food itself, but so that we can taste the goodness of God. King David uses the language of taste in Psalm 34:8, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!” I think we can almost literally do that as we develop a theology of feasting. At Creation, God could have given us the bare necessities, only food to sustain our bodies. He could have formed us without the need for food. But he gave us food to enjoy. He gave us variety. We have apples and dragon fruit, cinnamon and saffron. We’re able to not just taste food with our mouths, but see beauty on a plate. We can smell freshly baked cookies and hear the sizzling of butter in a pan. There is much to enjoy, much to savor. And it is good (Genesis 1:29-31). When God gave the Israelites the law, he commanded that feasts be kept, that the people eat and drink together in celebration. In Deuteronomy 14, the tithe is spent on a feast. Chapter 16 gives commandments for celebrating three different feasts. Passover as we know, celebrated God bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. The Feast of Weeks was in conjunction with the grain harvest, and The Feast of Booths celebrated the produce of the threshing floor, namely olives and grapes. The importance of feasting was clear in the Jewish mind. The Talmud, the record of rabbinic teachings explaining how to live out the commands of the Torah, devotes an entire section to feasting and festivals. When talking about feasting it says, “There is no rejoicing save with wine.” Wine and rejoicing go hand in hand. So when Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding in John 2, it’s not an arbitrary miracle. It’s essential for the rejoicing itself to continue. And when Jesus uses wine to signify his blood, that is no accident either. God commanded feasts to be observed first so his people remembered who God is and what he’s done, and second, for the joy of his people. SEE AND PARTICIPATE IN THE GOSPEL Fast forward a few years to when Jesus enters the scene. Luke 7 records that Jesus, the Son of Man, came “eating and drinking” (verse 34). He had a reputation. First century Jews took table fellowship and the accompanying etiquette seriously. The Pharisees sought the restoration of Israel, and believed that would happen as the people lived out the call to separation and holiness. When Jesus, then, sits down to eat with the likes of prostitutes, tax collectors, the poor (who were likely ceremonially unclean), he didn’t just commit a social taboo. For the Pharisees, he destroyed the boundary between clean and unclean, holy and unholy—which not only made them mad, but, in their eyes, could contribute to the delay of the promised restoration of Israel. To the Pharisees, Jesus compromised the very heart of the Jewish identity. But in his feasting, we see the Gospel unfold. From his first miracle of turning water to wine, to feeding the 5,000, to eating with the unclean, to his parables, Jesus redefined the meaning of the restoration of Israel and the Kingdom of God. We see in him the fulfillment of Isaiah 55:1, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Jesus is where we find our satisfaction. He gives living water so we will not thirst again (John 4). He is the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and in him the hungry find their satisfaction (Luke 6:20). And at that great Supper of the Lamb, with an eternal exhale and a shout of joy, we will say together, 'Behold, this is our God...let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.' In the new creation, we won't feast with symbols and foretastes. We will celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb with the Lamb of God. Sarah Hauser No more clearly do we see Jesus fulfilling our hunger and thirst than in the Lord’s Supper. It’s in the taking of communion that we don’t just see the Gospel, we actually participate in it. This first communion meal acts as a fulcrum, holding the Jewish understanding of feasting and food on one end, and the messianic banquet on the other. All the feasting and food laws and prophetic language in the Old Testament hinge on this meal as Jesus announces the new covenant. There’s wine at the feast, but Jesus says that wine is his blood of the covenant–a strange thing to say, since Jews don’t drink blood (Leviticus 17:10-11)! But once again, Jesus unexpectedly fulfills the law and prophecies. So they reclined at table, participating in the Passover feast as they always had, yet at the same time feasting in a new way. They ate bread, but now bread that stood for the body of Christ about to be broken. They drank wine, but now that wine was a symbol for the atoning blood of Christ. Now we also take the bread and the cup, remembering Christ’s sacrifice. In this feast of communion we participate in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In this feast, we see and participate in the Gospel. The Passover meal requiring a spotless lamb, hosted by the sacrificial Lamb of God, pointed to the eventual marriage supper of the Lamb. LOOK FORWARD TO THE ETERNAL FEAST Now we look ahead to what is to come. Those who believe Jesus is the Messiah, that he died and was raised declaring victory over sin, feast in a new way. For the early believers, this included freedom to partake in food sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8) and to no longer be bound to a particular diet (Acts 10). Jewish believers were to eat even with those Gentiles they used to consider unclean (Galatians 2). Paul told the Colossians, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (verses 16-17). The feasts, rituals, and laws in the old covenant were a shadow of the eventual marriage supper of the Lamb at which all believers will feast (Revelation 19). Tim Chester encourages us in A Meal with Jesus saying, “The Christian community is the beginning and sign of God’s coming world – and no more so than when we eat together. Our meals are a foretaste of the future messianic banquet. Our meals reveal the identity of Jesus. Our meals are a proclamation and demonstration of God’s good news.” I experienced a snapshot of this when my family gathered for breakfast one February morning. Shortly before we came to the table, my mom laid in her bedroom dying of pancreatic cancer. My siblings and I gathered around her that morning, knowing this moment was coming and wishing that knowledge made the process of death a little easier. But death is not the way it’s supposed to be. If you’ve lost a loved one, if you’ve stood by the bed as someone breathes their last, you know this in the depths of your soul. That scene in my mom’s bedroom is emblazoned on my mind. I will never forget the sounds of her gasps or the feeling as though someone dropped an anvil on my chest. But just like when we understand our sin, we understand grace all the more, when we see the grotesqueness of death, oh how much sweeter is the hope of resurrection! For those in Christ, death may be inevitable. But it is not final. My mom passed away that morning, and a surprising and almost awkward silence filled those moments after. We didn’t have to change her or feed her, fill pill boxes or wonder how much time she had left. What do we do now? We did the only thing we knew to do. We shuffled into the kitchen, and my brother heated up the cast-iron skillet. Someone else began cracking eggs into a bowl and slicing cheese. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure there was bacon being fried, too. We refilled mugs of coffee, and plates clattered as we set the table. And like King David after the death of his son (2 Samuel 12:16-23), we ate. I’ve had five years to reflect on that meal, and for me it embodied so much of the beauty of feasting. We tasted the abundance, provision, and indeed the goodness of our God. We saw death, but at the same time held deep hope in the resurrection. We looked forward, oh did we look forward, to the day when death would be swallowed up forever, and we would sit at the table, face to face, with God himself. Isaiah 25 says, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken” (verses 7-8). And at that great Supper of the Lamb, with an eternal exhale and a shout of joy, we will say together, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (verse 9). In the new creation, we won’t feast with symbols and foretastes. We will celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb with the Lamb of God. Friends, this is why we feast. In feasting, we taste the goodness of God, we see and participate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and we look forward to the day when we will dine, fully restored, with God himself. You can read more of Sarah Hauser’s beautiful writing at sarahjhauser.com.