“Bernie wanted to help. It was a sparkling, sunny, do-something day.” Those are the opening lines to one of my favorite picture books as a boy: The Do-Something Day, by Joe Lasker. It’s a simple story about a boy who feels unimportant and unneeded by his family. As a result, he decides to run away from home. He passes familiar businesses in town, telling each shop owner his decision to run away because no one needs his help. As a result he finds that each one of them needs his help for something, and as payment they each send him away with a gift. In the end he has a whole bag full of gifts to share with his family. Its a cute story, but the story isn’t what hooked me as a kid. I didn’t read well, and this book had really interesting illustrations. I loved all of the details in the various storefronts. Most of all, I loved the costume shop filled with Halloween costumes. I would scour its details nightly. They told a greater story to me than the words ever could. That book helped to birth the notion inside me that I might like illustrating childrens’ books one day. I kept my copy of the book, looking at it from time to time over the years, and still have it in my lap as I write this. A few years ago, I was awarded my very first book illustration job. It was exciting to know that all the years of dreaming, practicing, and working toward my dream were paying off. I felt so grateful that I literally wanted to say thank you to those who inspired me to do this as a kid. After some online searches, I came across the contact info for Joe Lasker’s son. I wrote him an email explaining the impact that his father’s book had on me as a boy and asked, if it were possible, would he thank his father for me? His response, why don’t you give him a call and thank him in person. That is not the answer I was expecting. I was tremendously nervous the night I called him. The phone rang, his wife answered, I explained who I was and asked to speak with Joe. She gladly put him on the phone. A 93-year-old Joe Lasker picked up on the other end and said in a time-weathered voice: “Hello.” The word was surreal to my ears. I felt as if I had just stepped out of a time machine. Somehow that little boy sitting on his bed with a picture book in his lap had caught up with its author, thirty years later. Our conversation was brief. So brief that I can’t exactly remember everything we spoke of. With so many, many thoughts and emotions swirling in my mind, the brevity of the call didn’t even give me the chance to sort through the thoughts and questions I had before it was over. What I will never forget is his reply after I thanked him for his impact on me and told him my love for The Do-Something Day. He simply said that it was nice to hear that and that he never really got to hear from people who read his books. Even as I write that, it breaks my heart, but it fills it at the same time to know that I was afforded that opportunity. Before I knew it, the call ended and we hung up. Several years later, just a few months ago, I completed illustrations on my ninth book, a sweet little novel written by James Patterson. I will share more on that in the future. It was an exciting book to be a part of so early in my career, and I thought of Joe Lasker once again and wanted to share this milestone with him. His son had asked me to stay in touch after our first email. I emailed his son to share the news, to express my hope that his father was still in good health, and to thank him once again for putting me in touch. He responded by telling me how glad he was that I got to speak with his father, because Joe had passed away in December. And just like that, my time machine broke down. I did not truly know him. Joe Lasker was a stranger to me, but one who impacted my life intimately the way so many authors and illustrators do for each of us. He illustrated thirty books for children in his career, writing and illustrating ten of them. Of those thirty books, one in particular crossed paths with me. Only one. One about a kid feeling helpful, but unneeded, and learning that he has something to offer everyone he comes in contact with. I don’t know why I was given the opportunity to speak with Joe. Maybe he just deserved to hear from, and be told “thank you” by, someone who enjoyed his work. Whatever the reason, that short phone call is one I’ll remember forever. I hope I can make every day a Do-Something Day. Joe’s Obituary

“Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.” The Henry David gem had been buzzing at my mind all day, and all day I had been tenaciously smiling it down. I had smiled it down when I cut out one of the skirt pieces upside down, and when I had to trot back to the store to buy the lining fabric I had somehow managed to forget, and—gritting my teeth a bit—when I found I had to rip a whole long careful row of neat stitches that just happened to be on the wrong side of the fabric. “I need to do this for myself,” I insisted to the air as I took a deep breath and hunched over the billows of pale blue eyelet on my lap. For weeks I had been so busy I’d scarcely had time to breathe. I had a barn-full of newly acquired baby goats and lambs and a whole litany of new responsibilities to go with them. A household regimen threatening to implode under the pressure of forestalled spring cleaning. A garden that had gone in by the sheer grit of one last burst of exhausted productivity. Not to mention a world of needs and their care that clamored outside the boundary markers of my own particular place on earth. And we were leaving on vacation the next morning, leaving all those babies and seedlings and dust bunnies to the oversight of others and packing-ironing-unpacking-repacking-cleaning-out-the-fridge-changing-the-sheets-watering-the-garden-remembering-to-feed-the-fish-and-don’t-forget-the-chicken-feed to get on the road first thing the next day. So, of course, it followed that the very best thing I could possibly do for myself was to make a new dress. After the incident with the seam ripper I stood up for a stretch, thinking a cup of tea would clear my head a bit (and maybe still the pounding in my temples). On the way downstairs I stopped by my desk and checked my email. A moment later I was in my chair with my head in my hands, weeping. Tasha Tudor had died. Peacefully, in her own home, the message said. With her loved ones around her and all the evidences crowding in of a life lived well. The life she had imagined and gone after with a passion rarely seen, in our age or any other. The life that had become a world for her family and friends, and for those of us all over the globe privileged to have a share in it through her books and paintings. The news drew me up, halted me in my mad career through the day. Sickened me with the sham I had been making of my own ‘life imagined’ of late. All she had imparted by her life and her works seemed to wash over me in a flood and mingle with my tears. Those little Nubian goats out in the barn were her doing—I had fallen in love amid the pages of her books. The dream of a kitchen hearthfire and fairy rings in the garden and magical Christmases and farm-fresh eggs (from the most coddled chickens, of course)–a homeplace where the old ways were revered (though of an 1850s variety on my part, instead of her 1830s)—these all came down to me through the goodly lineage of Tasha Tudor. Every day I have the opportunity to choose how I am going to live—this is a great privilege but also a great responsibility. Lanier Ivester Or they rose up in me, rather, latent longings that were as much me as the blue eyes I’d gotten from my grandfather and my slightly crooked smile. Tasha Tudor helped me to validate them, and a thousand others. To look the world and its expectations in the eye and say, “Well, hang it, this is the way I want to live my life!” This careful attendance upon beauty—this devotion to the moments that make for real living—for myself and those I love. Alone in the garden; sipping tea with a kindred spirit at my kitchen table or feasting with friends in the dining room; nuzzling a thoroughly spoiled goat in the barn; welcoming my husband back to a haven at the end of the day. I embraced the choices offered me as a young woman in the era into which I had been born. And I chose this. And Tasha had given me the courage to do it. But I’d gotten sidetracked over the unthinking course of a busy year; lost some of my moorings. I had forgotten how unnecessary some things were, and how essentially vital were others. I’d given my perfectionism its head and I’d jostled along brain-rattled in its wake. When choices had pressed in hard all around me, I hadn’t kept faith with the original vision. The vision was rooted in deeper things, of course, than a fellow human creature’s chosen lifestyle: it was anchored in the eternal and completely unique calling of God on my life. It had to do not only with the temporal elements of making a home, but with the undying realities sustaining it. I had forgotten. The life Tasha Tudor lived so graciously was her choice. Likewise, no matter what I had been saying to myself to the contrary, the pace I’d been keeping over all those weary months was my choice. It had been my choice to respond to every need that came to my ears as if I alone in the universe could answer it. It had been my choice to prefer one opportunity over another simply because it seemed more “spiritual” and important, personal desires notwithstanding. It had been my choice to try and do it all when I realized that personal desires were getting the shaft. Every day I have the opportunity to choose how I am going to live—this is a great privilege but also a great responsibility. The way of our dreams–the Alpine Path, if you will–is not a leisurely stroll in a shaded wood, or even a pleasant hike up a rolling grade. It is a daily battle. A limiting unto more freedom. A devotion and a discipline, and it will sometimes require a shedding or a pruning or a sundering. It means that I cannot be choice-less in the matter because every day’s fruit is only a result of the choices I have made all along the way, from the time I get up till the time I go to bed. Into this equilibrium for many Christians is added the uniquely evangelical bugbear of separating the “sacred” from the “secular”: the judging between options and activities based on so-called “spiritual merit”; the low priority of certain desires on the mere basis that they are mine and must therefore somehow be less than God’s will. The notion that tiredness is next to godliness. The goading to keep pace with the frenzied music of the world around me rather than the still, soft music that God would sing over my life. Viewing life as a compartmentalized series of duties and earned pleasures instead of the holistic dance of sacramental joy that it is. The voices hammer loud in my head: “What? Devotion to a lifestyle? There is nothing eternal in that outlook—it is all wrapped up in temporal things that won’t endure. And besides, you need to be out witnessing rather than letting your self-image get tied up in that house and whatever it is that you do there.” But then I brush fingers with the great ones and my heart breathes in the pure air of eternity: “Don’t be too easily convinced that God really wants you to do all sorts of work you needn’t do. Each must do his duty ‘in that state of life to which God has called him.’ Remember that a belief in the virtues of doing for doing’s sake is characteristically feminine, characteristically American, and characteristically modern: so that three veils may divide you from the correct view! There can be intemperance in work just as in drink. What feels like zeal may be only fidgets or even the flattering of one’s self-importance. As MacDonald says, ‘In holy things may be unholy greed!’ And by doing what ‘one’s station and its duties’ does not demand, one can make oneself less fit for the duties it does demand and so commit some injustice. Just you give Mary a chance as well as Martha!” C. S. Lewis, Letters to An American Lady “You can’t witness to a computer screen,” said one friend in exasperation at this supposed dichotomy. But because of Tasha Tudor and her example to live the life uniquely suited to one’s calling, I can hold my head up a little higher and say, “No, you can’t do much witnessing to a laptop. Or a row of tomato plants or a loaf of bread. Or to a barn-full of animals—but it’s highly unlikely they would need it. I prefer to let them witness to me.” And it’s at that computer keyboard, and in that garden, and kneeling amid velvety, inquisitive noses that I find God. It’s in the quiet mornings of a quiet life. It’s in poetry and music and fabulous talks with my husband on the front porch over a glass of wine. And chatting with my friends over a pot (or three) of tea. It’s in novels and in the classics of my faith and in old cookbooks. This is me. This is my life—the life I have been called and equipped to live. No one else will have the same destiny with God that I would amid flowers and goats and cats and dogs and stories and duets—this one is tailor-made for me. And for some reason, this is where He most pleases to meet me and show me Himself. This is where Christ dwells in me and where eternity touches time. And that’s what it’s all about. I grew to hate that silly dress I had been stewing over when I got the news of Tasha’s death. It’s an absolute dream, a frothy cloud after a 1950′s Vogue pattern. But just like the tare that inspired it, it’s too much. Too fussy; too burdened with its own presence. It represents a false me, a me that frets over stubborn projects just because I happened to think them up. A me that says I can do it all and still have grey matter to spare. And save the world while I’m at it. A me that is not me. Not really. And it’s such a relief to be reminded. So today I’m celebrating Tasha Tudor’s life and all the determined joy with which she lived it. I’m keeping her memory in the keeping of my dreams—many of which have been kindled into life by her own. My grateful and heartfelt love follows her, and my teacup is raised with another bit of Thoreau that Tasha’s friends will instantly recognize: I learned this, at least, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Now that you’ve given up something for the past forty days, what are you taking on for the next forty? “If Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things on. . . . If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. Auckland. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving.” —N. T. Wright

I had the privilege of presenting last weekend at the From Death Unto Life conference in Franklin, Tennessee, and one of my sessions was a short plenary on William Wordsworth’s immortal sonnet, “Surprised by Joy” (the poem from which C.S. Lewis took the title of his stupendously wonderful spiritual autobiography). I thought I’d share some of my thoughts here as we navigate the most important week of the Christian year. Bereavement lends such perspective to the great realities of our Lord’s death and resurrection—there’s just nothing like losing someone we love to seal the brand on our hearts of what “death unto life” really means. Surprised by Joy by William Wordsworth Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. I used to think this poem was about joy. After my father died last summer, I thought it was about grief. Now I know, of course—but as never before—it’s about both. At the exact same time. This lovely and heartbreaking sonnet exemplifies the concept of what the Orthodox Church has long referred to as Bright Sadness, that cohabitation of grief and joy that characterizes the keenest moments of our lives. Those moments when the veil grows thin and we know just how near the unseen verities really are. It’s the tension that Paul described in II Corinthians as “sorrowful, but always rejoicing”. When I stepped into the room after my father was gone, I suddenly knew, in a way I could never explain, that everything I believed about life and death and eternity and redemption was absolutely true. It was so devastating and so sublime I could hardly bear it. Death is arguably the most clarifying force in the world. But when you lose someone you love, there’s this frantic urgency to keep them alive by bringing them into everything you do. By constantly looking at the world through their eyes; imagining how they would react to things; interpreting events the way they would have. The single most oft-repeated phrase that has come out of my mouth since my dad died last summer is, Daddy would have LOVED this. Whether the oyster pie at our Christmas feast, Or the early spring announcement of the sandhill cranes overhead, Or offshore sailing in our new boat, Or the Joan Baez concert we went to last week— He’s here, his memory so integrated with my experience that it’s almost easy to pretend he’s not really gone. (It’s a game we all like to play, I think.) But a time will come when I forget to remember what he’d think, or say, or do. Not a permanent forgetting, of course. But a time when my grief grows gentle enough to lie still a while. When sorrow steps outside the frame lines of the camera lens, instead of standing front and center, an entity around which, under which, through which I see everything else. I dread that—my heart protests it. But the universality of this poem asserts that it will happen. Bereavement is so terrifying because it brings the loved one nearer than ever while flaunting their unattainable absence. The early shock of grief protects us from the full blow of death’s finality, and this is a mercy. But a necessary distancing must occur, a withdrawal that feels almost worse than the original loss. The Second Death, as Sheldon Vanauken called it. Wordsworth wrote this poem two years after the death of his four-year-old daughter, Catherine, a blow that was as sudden as it was cruel. The heartbreak here isn’t just that he’s forgotten she’s dead—he’s forgotten to remember she’s dead. He hasn’t kept up his end of the bargain—and we all like to bargain with death, don’t we? If we can just keep dancing in the tip of this precipice we won’t fall over the edge. (Some people describe this stage of grief as feeling like the loved one has died all over again. I’m not looking forward to that.) It might seem that this poem ends on a hopeless note, but I don’t think so at all. Honest, but not hopeless. It’s a heavenly face the poet contemplates—not in a disembodied sense, or as an overly sentimental assessment of the deceased’s virtues and qualities. Like Rosetti’s Blessed Damozel “leaning out over the gold bar of heaven,” it’s Catherine’s face he sees in his mind’s eye. Catherine as she actually was in life; Catherine as he will see her again. But he acknowledges the distance, the unbridgeable gap between himself and his little girl. Like the antimony of bright sadness, the unseen world is at once astonishingly present and impossibly far away. I love the fact that Wordsworth does not resort to platitudes in this poem. “Surprised by Joy” is pure lyric poetry, a raw outburst of the deepest feelings of the heart. He doesn’t offer us a cleaned up version of his experience, with a happy Sunday school moral tacked on the end, but the deeply Christian reality of joy and sorrow intermingled, inseparable. Undeniable. And it ends on Good Friday—the silent tomb, the grievous loss. But we’ve already seen intimations of resurrection in that impatient surging of life, in the surprise of that sudden, unlooked-for joy, where joy ought not to be—right in the midst of grief. Joy is the poet’s token in pledge—and it’s ours, as well. It’s a promissory note of the reunion waiting on the other side of separation. It’s the first golden shaft of Easter morning…

Today, besides being Good Friday, is Flannery O’Connor’s birthday. She would have been ninety-one. It is an altogether appropriate Holy Day for Flannery O’Connor, for Good Friday is the day when grace looks like utter disaster. On Good Friday, the parables run backward: The Kingdom of God is like unto a serial killer that has murdered your whole family and is about to murder you. The Kingdom of God is like unto a Bible salesman who breaks your heart, steals your wooden leg, and leaves you stranded in a hayloft. The Kingdom of God is like unto the King of Glory become a man, beaten and stripped and nailed to a cross to die. And you didn’t expect it to end this way, but now you don’t have any reason to expect it to end any other way. “In spite of that, we call this Friday good” (T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”). On Good Friday, 1958, Flannery O’Connor wrote to a friend, “When you go to Communion, you receive grace but you experience nothing; or if you do experience something, what you experience is not the grace, but an emotion caused by it.” I thought of this insight last night, when I attended a Maundy Thursday service. Surely this is the strangest service of the Christian year. After the awkward beauty of the foot-washing (which at times seemed like an experiment dreamed up by an off-kilter cultural anthropologist), the priest stripped the altar. He blew out the candles and gathered up the cups and plates from Communion and clattered them into the supply closet. He pulled off his bright vestments, down to his plain black shirt and pants, and stripped the vestments from the altar, and flung them all in the closet. He turned out lights. Meanwhile, a reader read Psalm 22: My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, By night, but I find no rest. When he was done stripping the altar, the priest stalked down the aisle and out the back door. No benediction, no dismissal. Mobile phones and social media are integral parts of a modern kid’s life. Researches tell that about 53% of children in the U.S. own a smartphone by the age of 11. And about 51% of teens aged 13-17 are reported to access social media at least once per day. As a parent, you need to keep an eye on your child’s smartphone activities. One of the best ways to do so is by using a parental control app, such as mSpy – if you want to know how exactly mSpy can prevent your children from being cyberbullied or groomed by online predators, read this review. #mspy #review #parental control #spyphonemax.com. We just stood there looking at the bare altar in a darkened room, then we wandered out by ones and twos. I’m trying not to skip ahead to Easter. I’m trying, these two days, to sit in the grace of the stripped altar and enter imaginatively into the place of the disciples, who only knew that their Lord had died, not that he would rise again. Flannery O’Connor’s stories are a help in that regard. Her characters suffer and boast and finagle their way through a broken world, unaware that grace is streaking silently toward them like a meteor that will throw everything off balance. I’m trying to live in that silence today and tomorrow. But I also have to note another anomaly of the church calendar this year. March 25, besides being Flannery O’Connor’s birthday, is normally the Feast of the Annunciation. Today is exactly nine months before Christmas; this is the day that the Church has historically celebrated the angel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear a Son. If we weren’t commemorating the death of Jesus today, we would be commemorating his conception. The beginning is in the end. The Alpha is in the Omega. Flannery O’Connor used to read Thomas Aquinas for twenty minutes before bed each night. She once wrote to a friend, If my mother were to come in during this process and say, ‘Turn off that light. It’s late,’ I with lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression would reply, ‘On the contrary, I answer that the light, being eternal and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes,’ or some such thing. The Light is eternal and limitless. On Good Friday, we commemorate an eclipse. We walk in the darkness this weekend. But the Light still shines, the beginning living even in the end.

In those days between Good Friday and Easter morning, I find myself tracing over the bruises that the crucifixion left—not just on the slain body of Jesus, but on the devastated souls of His disciples. You and I come into Holy Week knowing the all spoilers, so it’s easy to miss the living trauma of the middle of that story. We have trouble imagining the silence and the disappointment of those chaotic inner days when Christ’s followers were so shocked and so hurt, they weren’t sure what to do with themselves. Technically, they shouldn’t have been surprised; before His death Jesus was clear about what was about to go down.  He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.” There it is. Step by step. But James and John seem to miss all that. They don’t even say, “Oh, Jesus, that’s kind of bad for you; You’re going to be betrayed, and then you are going to die.” They’re too busy calling shotgun in the coming kingdom for the news to even register. Christ’s followers were so into what they thought He was about to do for them that they got obsessive. They put aside aside careers, relationships, and reputations, hoping to get in on this next big thing before it hit. (Think Apple stock in 1981.) Then they watched their one big hope humiliated and killed. If you’re watching election coverage this year, you’ve seen fear-driven masses, drunk on promises candidates are making to save America. Imagine if one of those political saviors suddenly crashed and burned. Let’s say he’s convicted of a crime and thrown into prison for life. The whole world is suddenly laughing at the man who was once your strongest source of earthly confidence. Not only is your leader gone, but your entire cause also becomes garbage. But Jesus wasn’t just promising national safety. He was more than a President. He was a sage, a counselor, a physician, a king. He was everything you’ve always wanted—and then He seemed to just break down overnight. Imagine that you’ve seen Him beaten to the point of being unrecognizable. You’ve seen Him hanging naked on a cross. He doesn’t even fight back. He’s passive. Then what? What do you do in those days when it looks like Jesus has lost? Do you wonder if He is some sort of fraud? Do you assume that He is just the last loser in a lifetime of disappointments? There have been times when I’ve felt like God has disappointed me. Sometimes that’s happened through a church leader who has used His name to promote something cruel or deceptive. Other times a friendship has gone sour, or a hero has talked about values that he wasn’t willing to live out. Sometimes time has just passed while I waited for God to step in and rescue me. I mean, I’ve been standing there with the Egyptians at my back, with my arms up in the air like Charlton Heston, waiting for the Red Sea to split open—and finally I have had to just wade in and start doggie paddling. When that has happened, the sound of the Egyptians laughing at my faith has burned almost as much as my middle-aged muscles. But there’s a worse disappointment still that’s come when I have seen my own worst faults exposed. What do you do when you come face-to-face with your own religious hypocrisy? How do you move forward out of that? Such weird emotions have risen up in the aftermath of these situations. I’ve embraced bitterness, and cynicism, and anger. I’ve sat in my parked van, crying, pounding the steering wheel, and yelling, “I would NEVER treat a daughter of mine like this. Don’t I matter to You at all? Why do You keep dropping me? Why don’t You love me?” I’ve wondered if He even existed. I’ve also grown so angry with Him that I’ve decided to justify sins that helped medicate disappointment. I’ve tried to use pleasure to fix the pain His silence has left—at least until that sin turned sour and made things worse. Or, I’ve let a lukewarm, postmodern, pseudo-Christianity take the place of real belief. I’ve embraced a loose cut spirituality that lets me stay in control. I’ve worshiped a “Jesus-lite” who would never actually let me be thrown into a lion’s den, or want me to survive several years of a broken marriage, or let me feel lonely, or let me feel abandoned, or let me get sawed in half for the gospel by watching one of my children live in danger. Chasing your bliss has popped on a plastic Jesus mask in certain corners of evangelicalism, and when you’re hurting, that’s a tempting god to chase. But no matter how I’ve tried to patch up disappointment, my jimmy-rigged solutions have never worked for very long. After I’ve run into a concrete wall hard enough, I’ve finally come to the point of having to just admit the honest truth—that sometimes it’s just the Saturday after Good Friday, and my hope is lying in a tomb waiting for Resurrection morning. The book of Job states, “When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. But he knows the way that I take; and when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” In other words, I can’t see what He’s even doing here! He’s invisible! That sort of reliance comes hard. We tend to have an allergic reaction to mystery, to patience, to submission, and to pain. It’s easy enough to wave our palm branches, and shout, and ask to sit in the important chair next to the King. But when we talk about having an actual authority, well, a real Sovereign can pinch. Tim Keller has said that “If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself,” which means following a real God is going to get bumpy some days. A litany that our church used last Sunday begins like this: Today we have cheered you on as our champion and hailed you as our hero. Forgive us tomorrow when our enthusiasm wanes. Today we have entrusted you to rescue us from hurting circumstances. Forgive us Tuesday when we think we can take care of ourselves. Today we have made you the centerpiece of our very existence. Forgive us Wednesday when we forget to remember who you are. Today we have called out to you loudly by name. Forgive us Thursday when we pretend that we’ve never met you. Today we have stared at you with the star struck eyes of fans and groupies. Forgive us Friday when we avert our eyes because it’s too painful to see you on the cross. Today we have expressed our unsuppressed hopefulness in the future you have in store for us. Forgive us Saturday when we believe all is lost. It was good for me to read those words, because no matter how fervently I welcome Jesus, when challenges come, I usually stumble. Sure, I believe that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it can’t do much good, but still I wonder if every caterpillar somehow believes that it is spinning a coffin instead of a womb. Even St. Paul the mighty and wise once admitted that his own troubles had shaken him to the core. He wrote: “I think you ought to know, dear brothers, about the hard time we went through in Asia. We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never live through it. We felt we were doomed to die and saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us, for he can even raise the dead.” What do you think of that angle? He feared. He was overwhelmed. He thought he would die it got so bad. The older I get, the more I see the grace of God as a spectrum. There are patches of darker shades and patches of lighter tones. There are long years of death interspersed with moments of life. We get disappointed. We get worn out with delay. We wonder what in the heck is going on. And like major and minor tones working together, God is working a hymn in all of that, because “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (II Corinthians 4:17-18) George MacDonald’s Lilith is one of my favorite books, because it shows a man walking in two worlds simultaneously. A music room in this dimension might be a bed of roses in the next, and this one dude kind of exists in both places at once somehow. I think something similar is true of us. But what we have trouble believing is that in the realm of the unseen, we are engraved on God’s palms. No matter how desperate things feel in visible land, no matter how abandoned and rejected I start to believe I am, He cannot forget about me. He’s taken on flesh and let it get run clean through with the love of me. He cannot forget about you, either. You were written on His palms way back in the time of Isaiah, hundreds of years before Jesus said His purchase of you was finished on Good Friday. For so long He had planned on those nail pocks, on being scarred permanently with His passion for you. You’ve been in His mind from the beginning of the beginning. He’s always loved you. He always will. The litany our church used on Sunday finished like this: Today we have been so certain of the ways you will set us free. Restore us Sunday when we are startled and awed by your rising. Restore us when we are startled and awed that the story is true. Remember being a kid on Christmas morning, and how you kids would all shout, “Santa came!” I mean, you knew he would. He came every year. But still, there the extravagance was before you! Piles of goodness in plain sight! You could get your fingers on it all at last. Easter is a nod to when we can finally get our fingers on the resurrection. We have the Holy Spirit to comfort and to guide us meanwhile, and yet we groan with all creation for more of the good we have already. We live through light and momentary troubles (which feel everything but light or momentary sometimes), fixing our eyes on what is unseen. We wrestle with disappointment. We wrestle with patience. We fail, and quit believing, then find ourselves believing again. I often find my spirit crying out in this season of middle earth with prayers that go something like this: “Oh, Hidden God. Alight, Thou, in me. In this spectrum of earthly life that moves from disorientation to bliss, in these bruised indigos of doubt, and in the giddy oranges of spiritual revelry, deep calls to Deep. I am fragile. I am frail. My every single death calls for Your life. Alight, Thou, in me. Burn bright, Thou, within.” “Alight Thou in Me” Music by Ron Block and Jeff Taylor Words by Rebecca Reynolds Ellie Holcomb – lead vocal Jeff Taylor – piano, accordion, bass accordion Ron Block – guitars, banjos, lead vocal on choruses Stuart Duncan – fiddle Barry Bales – bass John Mock – bodhranhttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Alight-Thou-In-Me-2.mp3 Soft bends the morn, Slight and grey, Bruised by the span of the night. Fragile and frail, Dust to dust. Deep calls to Deep (calls to Deep) (To Deep.) Alight Thou in me, Thy spectrum a hymn, Vision indwelling, Burn bright, Thou, within. Blown evensong, Poor and dim, Worn to a sigh in the loss. Flutter and fall, Hush to stone. Death calls to life (calls to Life) (To Life.)

This Good Friday, I commend to you the following excerpt from Chapter 4 of Robert Farrar Capon’s most outstanding The Supper of the Lamb. In the Law of the Lord, Leviticus, the eighth chapter, the fourteenth verse: Aaron and his sons laying hands upon the bullock’s head, blood poured at the bottom of the altar to make reconciliation; the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys and their fat—all burnt by fire for a sweet savor. Smoke, incense, wave breast, heave shoulder, rams of consecration, the pomegranate and the golden bell, sounding upon the hem of the robe round about; priest and temple, death and holocaust, always and everywhere. Why? It is tempting simply to write it off as barbarism, nonsense, superstition; to fault it and forget it; But the fact of blood still stands, reproving materialist and spiritualist at once; gainsaying worlds too small and heavens too thin. This superadded killing, this sacrifice, these deaths which work no earthly inter- change, this rich, imprudent waste Witnesses The City’s undiminishable size: Man wills to make of earth, not one Jerusalem but two; this sacramental blood de- clares the double mind by which he wills to lift both lion and lamb beyond the killing to exchanges unaccount- able and vast. Man’s priestliness therefore bespeaks his refusal of despair; proclaims acceptance of a world which, by its murderous hand, subscribes the insupportable dilemma of its being—the war of lion and lamb having no other likely outcome here than two im- possibilities: The one, a pride of victors feeding on the slain; but leaving the lion as he was before, trapped in ancient reciprocities by which at last all power falls to crows; And the other, a hymn to despair no victim will accept; it is not enough, in this paroxysm of martyrdoms, to stand upon the ship- wrecks of the slain and praise the weak for weakness; the lamb’s will, too, was life; he died refusing death. Sacrifice therefore Not written off, but recognized, a sign in blood of the vaster end of blood; a redness turning all things white; an impossibility prefiguring the last exchange of all. The old order, of course, unchanged; the deaths of bulls and goats achieving nothing; Aaron still ineffectual; creation still bloody; But haunted now by bells within the veil where Aaron walks in shadows sprinkling blood and bids a new Jerusalem descend. Endless smoke now rising Lion become priest And lamb victim The world awaits The unimaginable union By which the Lion lifts Himself Lamb slain And, Priest and Victim, Brings The City Home. [Artwork by Chris Koelle.]

This poem first appeared in The Molehill Volume 4. The dirt mingled in the water. Three years’ worth. Even the traitor’s. Even the denier’s. (Already named at the table— for there is no past, present, or future in one who is older than time.) Peter resisted. Would I have also? Said no to my king bowed low, towel in hand, wiping the dust of the earth he owns? The foot-worn mud and grime of past, present, and future dissolve in baptismal waters.

“Dust you are. To dust you shall return.” I don’t know what I expected, but somehow the way ashes felt as they smeared on my skin surprised me. There was nothing airy and mystical about this ritual. It felt as ashes probably should, like grit and earth, holding lightness and weight together. I didn’t feel the somber emotions I expected either, but I quietly took my place back in my seat for the rest of the service. I’ve practiced Lent off and on for the past few years, ever since I realized I was tired of Easter sneaking up, but this February marked my first step into the Ash Wednesday tradition. Chris had to work that night, so I took the step mostly alone. Somehow though, I kind of liked it that way — just me in the middle of the pew, contemplating how very short life is. The service ended in quiet and darkness. Some of us filed out in silence, while others stayed, heads bowed, until who knows how late. After the service, I pulled my beanie down over my smudged forehead, drove around Providence in the dark (mostly lost, unfortunately), and stopped at our favorite bakery to buy two Valentine’s Day cupcakes. Strange to go straight from meditations of death to pretty little indulgences. Such is the tension of Lent. *** Recently, I read this was the best season of the church calendar because there was no way the rest of the world would hijack and commercialize it to death. It makes sense. A world bent on consuming, selling, “Eat drink and be merry”; a world that uses slogans like “Because You’re Worth It” to convince us to buy something as boring as shampoo; a world that encourages every individual to be come a little god at the center of a little universe — how would that kind of world know what to do with a season of grief, reflecting on the the way our temporal bodies fade, fade, fade like summer grass? What can you do? Is Lent even a thing to celebrate? And odder still, I wonder if even the best of us ever face this season with pure motives. Good casinos place a lot of value on this and take great care of usability and good performance. User-friendliness is the be-all and end-all here, which strong online casinos offer at the absolute highest level. Everything must be easy to use, ideally self-explanatory and you must feel comfortable in the casino. We present you the best online casinos at https://ombrecasino.com . If an online casino loads slowly or is not easy to navigate, then this significantly reduces the pleasure of playing. For the first time in a few years, I “gave something up.” Do I think to pray when I catch myself wanting the thing I gave up? Am I going around with death on my mind, with sin and penitence coloring all my conversation in gray? Isn’t that how you’re “supposed to feel”? This morning, as I was opening up the shades, I saw a little rustling movement on the tree outside my bedroom window. Two sparrows, hopping around in the branches, no doubt enjoying the warmer turn in weather. Spring is starting to crack the shell of winter all around me. It’s kind of hard to mourn forever. *** Perhaps, that’s part of the beauty of Lent, the part that’s easy to miss when we’re tallying how we did giving up chocolate or Facebook or whatever it is. I used to think it was a solid six weeks of self-denial and moping about how awful I am. But traditionally, Sunday is a feast day, and interspersed in this season are moments of hope and celebration. We are reminded that we are dust. We are also reminded of fierce love and resurrection. We are still to gather together in hospitality, feasting, wild hope. All of our life on earth is an exercise in learning to live in tension. We need solitude, yes, but we need other people. We are dust, but we are more than that. Our bodies are both the least and the most important aspect of our whole selves, so intwined with our souls. When religious folks, no doubt the sort who would actually do Lent “right,” took offense at Jesus’ feasting, he countered “Why would you fast when the bridegroom is here?” We fast because we still wait. We feast because he was and is here. We live in a remarkable state of both ashes and glory, of withering and flourishing, of sacrifice, darkness, pretty cupcakes and laughter around the table. We dream of what’s coming and what already is. This celebration doesn’t make much sense in a soulless economy. But to us, it’s the fast and the feast worth celebrating.

Over the last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what Jesus looked like. A book I wrote and illustrated about Jesus, called Miracle Man, for Abrams Books for Young Readers, came out in February. As both a writer/illustrator and Christian, I had always wanted to make a book about Jesus, but imagined it would happen much later in my life. Deep down, I think I was terrified of all the challenges at the core of telling this story. The pitfalls are everywhere when making a visual storybook for kids about Jesus. How do you draw Jesus? What stories do I include, or worse, what stories do I leave out? How much can I editorialize the Gospel accounts? Am I trying to “reboot” the Jesus story? The first reason I wanted to write and illustrate this story is that I am a follower of Jesus. At a very young age, I fell in love with the Miracle Man. To this day, merely reading his words in the simple clarity of the Gospel story can stir my soul. I vividly remember being drawn to the red ink of his words in my very first Bible. The stark black-and-white tones of the Scriptures were broken with that sudden incarnation of vibrant crimson! In many ways, the illustrated and illuminated text in this book is aspiring to be like that first Bible of mine, bringing his words into vivid life. 

Even those who have heard of Jesus many times before, my hope is to share the familiar story with you in a new way. In fact, if you read this book with kids, you will notice just how much is left unsaid. This might seem problematic with a book that contains the truth of the biblical scriptures. But, what I’ve noticed is that when you open a door for children, they will rush through it. Kids love to guess, speculate and tell you their ideas. So, I longed to create a book about Jesus where there was as much conversation between the page turns as there was in the written narration. The only way to get that result is to leave some of the work to the reader. Jesus isn’t referred to by name until the very last page. In fact, I think the best way to experience the Easter story is to momentarily forget about the trappings of religion around it and see the man at the center. In my experience, the story changes when we think of the people who experienced Jesus in person during the time he walked among us. Those people didn’t have a steepled church building or know anything about Christian theology. They simply met a man, some of them for only a brief moment, and they were changed forever. Several observant kids have noticed that I hid a few “Easter Eggs” (in this case, almost literally) throughout the book. If you know your bible stories, see if you can find these hidden references: the temple curtain torn in two, the snake and the apple, Jesus drawing an Ichthys, the rooster of Peter’s denial, the lion laying down with the lamb, the coin in the fish’s mouth, a broken manger, the stump of Jesse, and the temple guard’s restored ear. Creating an illustrated book about the life of Christ is both a frightening challenge and a dream come true. As with all stories that have been told many, many times before, it is hard to avoid the familiar, well-worn paths. This is a particular challenge when visually depicting Jesus himself. In this book, I have aspired to render him as a man of his time and place and not as a construction of western idealism. In my book, some characters are named, but many are not. These edits and omissions were not meant to obscure but rather to cast the familiar in a new light. So much of storytelling is editing. In fact, I had to leave out my favorite gospel miracle, the raising of Lazarus. There just isn’t room in a 40 page kids book for all of Jesus’ wonders. I regret leaving anything out, but even the Gospel writer John notes this in John 21:25: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” I hear you St. John! Despite being one of the oldest stories humankind has ever continually told, the story never grows tired to my ears. Jesus did not remain in the tomb on Easter
 morning—and the unbelievable story of God Himself on Earth walked out with him. I hope you enjoy the book for many years if it is a part of your collection at home. You can find it in the Rabbit Room Store.

When Jesus heard Lazarus was really sick, he stayed two more days where he was, because, the Bible tells me, he loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Does that sound wrong to anyone else? Wouldn’t you go immediately to the house of a good friend who was at the point of death? Sometimes we get so wretchedly familiar with the events of the Bible that we miss out on how absurd and tragic and pointless some events must have seemed to the participants. Where is Jesus? Why hasn’t he come? Doesn’t he care? When Eve stood trembling with lies, distrusting God, and then Adam, too, God stayed where he was. When Joseph was thrown in a pit, sold as a slave, accused of attempted rape, and thrown in jail for years, God stayed where he was. When the Hebrews became slaves for years, for decades, then for centuries, God stayed where he was. Abram and Sarai were desperate to see God’s promise fulfilled. Years had gone by. Childbearing years are long gone for me, but Abraham might still have a chance. Hagar. Take her into the tent. And God stayed where he was. Most of us know all the stories. But do we know, really know as a gut-level knowing, the central theme, that shimmering thread that runs through all the biblical events? Resurrect. Why does God wait until all is dead and empty, until wombs are dried up, until there is no water, until chains of slavery cut past wrists and necks into the deepest parts of the heart? Why does he stay where he is, until we lose, lose, lose, until supple dreams harden like clay, into granite, and then crumble into dust? I more than suspect, after forty-some-odd years of my own ups and downs as a believer, that there is a core reality that he wants us to know – that his Life in us is greater than any outer death. The one who believes, who trusts, who relies on Christ is a partaker of that same Life. You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you, says the Apostle Paul. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the Vine; you are the branches; apart from Me you can do nothing, says Jesus.  Christ in you, the hope of glory, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and his energy works dynamically within me, says the Apostle Paul. I’ve been through a few of my own death-resurrection experiences. An early one: mom remarried a widower with six kids when I was seven. I embraced life with those four new sisters and two new brothers, and they embraced me. I was in. Johnny was my age, and for four years we did nearly everything together. Four years later, one bright morning, not long before I turned eleven, my Mom and stepdad had a misunderstanding. Mom tried to change his mind, but he was stubborn. I learned all of that ten or more years later, when I was in my twenties. My stepdad told his six kids to get some of their things together and get in his Studebaker pickup. I felt confused, and wasn’t sure what it was all about. But he looked at me, said, “Take care of your Mom,” and walked out the front door. My brothers and sisters quickly joined him. As the Studebaker started up, with three in the cab and the rest in the back, I felt nothing because it didn’t seem real. They drove ten feet and the truck blew a tire. My stepdad got out, frustrated, and our neighbor Don joked, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” My stepdad said he didn’t think that was funny, and bent down to jack up the truck. No one offered to help him. The rest of us stood around together, and my step-siblings got out of the truck, talking, but something was cast over us now, like a funeral service for someone with a once-bright future. We talked, but in hushed tones. The spare was soon on, and the truck was running again. They all got back in, and the Studebaker lurched and revved in first gear. Our narrow little street was short, maybe five or six houses long before it hit Mooney Flat Road and the road dipped down a hill just before it got there. The last house on the row had a small and faded red barn. I watched my stepsiblings watching me as they dipped out of sight. A moment later I heard the gears crunch at the stop sign. The engine revved again, the clutch popped, and I listened to that white Studebaker shifting up the road until I could hear nothing but the breeze, the birds, and a bee. The top-knot chickens in the back yard went on clucking. I went into the house and sat with my back against the wall at the back of the boys’ bedroom. I felt empty, blank. And God stayed where he was. I didn’t see them again for twenty years; it took longer than that to process it. Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Forty years later I can see eternal and temporal reasons for that seed falling into the ground and dying. Without it, I wouldn’t have moved at thirteen to my Dad’s house, or worked at his music store, or played music for a living. Without music I wouldn’t have met my wife, or had our two children. Would I have learned to run again and again into God if I had felt my life was good, full, and enough? The Father is more focused on our eternal, long-term benefits and character than our short-term, temporal enjoyment. Jesus had temporal desires and realities nailed to his cross. “It is finished.” Did God make my stepdad leave? Peter says to the men of Israel, “Jesus…being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.” “You have taken…and slain…” My stepdad did what he did. God didn’t do it. But Jesus could not be held by any kind of death. With that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living in us, neither can we. Resurrection is in the very nature of God, because he is Life. We get that. But what we sometimes miss is that same nature resides in us by the Holy Spirit, and we are alive with that same life. 2Peter 1:4 says we are “partakers of the divine nature” through knowing Christ, that we have everything we need for life and godliness in him who called us to glory and virtue. It’s not simply being saved from God’s wrath, and hell, but, as Paul puts it, “….do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:2-4) For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 8:3b-4) The Resurrection, for the believer, means a redefinition, a renaming of ourselves, a reorientation. It means life comes out of death. It means we know there is eternal life in us, life in this seed that is planted again and again in dark, muddy ground. Life in us will always spring up out of death, again, and again, and again, until the day there is no more death.

We are in the midst of the season of Lent, a period of 40 days traditionally set aside by the Church throughout history for contemplation and preparation leading up to Holy Week and Easter. It is a time to grapple with sin and mortality, the consequences of the fall, and to look forward to the overcoming of the Curse through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. For me, the observation of liturgical seasons is aided by many helpful practices and tools, one of which is listening to music. Here’s some of the music that I have/am listening to during Lent and through Easter. Brother by The Brilliance Brother is probably one of the most unique “worship” albums I’ve ever heard. If I had to label it I’d use the phrase, “liturgically artful contemporary worship.” The Brilliance takes ancient prayers and liturgies and recontextualizes them with a modern sound. As the title suggests, the album focuses a lot on reconciliation and unity within the body of Christ, but there is also a strong Lenten theme in songs like “Now And At The Hour,” “Does Your Heart Break,” and “Dust We Are And Shall Return.” A Collision by David Crowder Band The ever creative David Crowder Band introduced something unique to the world of Christian music when they released their album A Collision. The album is more a musical experience, rather than just 21 loosely connected tracks, and the arc of the narrative moves from mortality and suffering in “Soon I Will Be Done With the Troubles of the World” and “O God Where are You Now” to resurrection in “Come Awake” and “Rescue Is Coming.” Give Us Rest It didn’t seem possible to top the sprawling masterpiece of A Collision, but David Crowder Band did that with their double album grand finale as a band, Give Us Rest. The album provides another majestic musical journey, based on the structure of a Catholic requiem mass. Instead of combining modern worship elements with bluegrass and gospel as they did on A Collision, the band brings in liturgical elements to trace the soul’s journey through suffering, death, heavenly rest, and resurrection. Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn by Jon Foreman I previously wrote for The Rabbit Room about Shadows, the second EP in Jon Foreman’s four-part musical journey The Wonderlands. That album delves into temptation and dying to sin. Darkness continues the descent into meditating on human brokenness and suffering in songs like “Come Home,” “Beautiful Pt. II,” and “She Said.” In Dawn, Foreman gets the most explicitly religious in songs like “Inseparable” and the folksy-gospel sounding tune “Mercy’s War.” Ghosts Upon The Earth by Gungor Gungor also takes the artful worship album approach on this record, tracing the cycle of Creation-Fall-Redemption through songs like “Crags and Clay,” “The Fall,” “When Death Dies,” and “This Is Not The End.” Dear Wormwood by The Oh Hellos As described on their website, “Dear Wormwood is a collection of songs inspired in part by C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, mythology and folklore, and apocalyptic literature. The album tells the story of a protagonist trapped in an abusive relationship, by way of letters written to the antagonist.” As I listen to this album I hear about the painful journey of dying to the old man and awaiting resurrection. The Medicine by John Mark McMillan John Mark McMillan conveys the hope of resurrection with a gritty Americana / Springsteen vibe through songs like “Skeleton Bones,” “Death In His Grave,” and “Out of the Ground.” Economy McMillan continues to develop the sound he crafted on The Medicine with songs that celebrate the forgiveness found through Jesus, “God’s murdered son.” The Rising by Bruce Springsteen Speaking of Springsteen, I can’t think of Easter without thinking of Springsteen’s post-9/11 anthem of hope. And oh yeah, this guy named Andrew Peterson put out a pretty good album called Resurrection Letters Vol. II. What are some of your personal favorite Lent/Easter albums and songs?

Right in the middle of Slugs & Bugs Sing the Bible, Volume 2 is a song that doesn’t even pretend to be for children. This one is for the parents: Hear, O Israel— The Lord your God, the Lord is One. These commandments that I give to you today Are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home And when you walk along the road. When you lie down. When you get up. And when you ride around in your minivan, it could have said. And when you’re fixing lunch, and when you’re tempted to plop the kids down in front of the TV just to get them out of your hair for a little while, is that too much to ask? Since we’ve started listening to Slugs & Bugs Sing the Bible, Volume 2, it has become commonplace for my family members, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, to absent-mindedly sing the deepest truths of the Christian faith. “By his wounds we are healed…” “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ…” “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit…” It’s like living with a bunch of theologians. And it’s a sight better than getting the Gilligan’s Island theme song stuck in your head, or “The Final Countdown.” Sing the Bible’s great gift to the Christian family is its mixture of practical biblical advice with the foundational theological principles that make it possible for us to live it out. “Each of you should give whatever he has decided to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion because God loves a cheerful giver.” “Do everything without grumbling or arguing.” “Let your light shine so that men may see your good deeds.” That’s great advice, but how on earth am I supposed to do any of it with consistency? That question is answered abundantly, in song after song. “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God.” “You forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” Randall’s treatment of the Ten Commandments nicely encapsulates the method, the philosophy, and the theology of Sing the Bible. Here they are—ten relatively straightforward rules about how best to live your life. The music makes the Ten Commandments easy to remember, and an appearance by Frankenstein and Count Dracula spices things up. Classic Slugs & Bugs. But what really makes this classic Slugs & Bugs is the chorus that Randall added: The Ten Commandments. No one can keep them all. The Ten Commandments. Even on your best behavior. The Ten Commandments. No one can keep them all. The Ten Commandments. That’s why we need a Savior. Not even the Ten Commandments end with the Law. Randall doesn’t treat the Ten Commandments as an opportunity to tell kids to straighten up and fly right. He takes them as an opportunity to point to the truth that all of us need a Savior, grown-ups and kids alike. In the Mary Poppins movie, there’s a scene in which Mary Poppins gives Jane and Michael Banks a spoonful of sugar to help them choke down a disgusting tar-like medicine that fairly bubbles on the spoon. “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” she sings brightly. Maybe so. But it doesn’t do a thing to help the children love the medicine. One of my favorite things about Sing the Bible is that it awakens us to the truth that Scripture itself is sweeter than honey. Yes, there are lots of sweeteners in this record to make things more fun than they have to be. There is an unusually generous raccoon who gives away a Smokey and the Bandit pinball machine. There is a chorus of grown men shouting things like “You first, You first!” and “I don’t mind, you go ahead” in ridiculous unison. But those spoonfuls of sugar are very different from Mary Poppins’s. Rather than masking the flavor of the medicine, they are an expression of gospel joy and sweetness. The gospel does its work on us because it is already sweet. The goodness of God leads us to repentance. We love because God loves us first. We obey out of gratitude rather than out of compulsion. These deep theological truths can be hard to convey to small people (or to people of any size, for that matter). It is tempting to aim lower with our children. Sing the Bible calls us to something higher. [Sing the Bible Vol. 2 is now available in the Rabbit Room Store.]

The Commons podcast, hosted by Dr. Brian Phillips of the Circe Institute, contemplates the lives and times of people worth imitating. In this episode, Brian chats with Jonathan Rogers, author of Saint Patrick (among other biographies), about the remarkable faith – and fascinating legends – of St. Patrick. Click here to listen.

Eddy Efaw and I have had the great privilege of welcoming many visual, musical, and literary artists to the campus of the Harding Academy of Memphis where we work for the Institute for Faith & Arts. Eddy began the program a few years back and Andrew Peterson was our inaugural guest. Since then we have continued to welcome incredible craftsmen and women to share their craft and faith. I recently had the chance to interview the ethereal-voiced Jillian Edwards, who was our IFA presenter this January. Rusty Woods: When did you decide you wanted to make music? Growing up, did you think about being a musician? Jillian Edwards: I don’t remember a time I didn’t want to be a singer. I’ve always wanted to make something that is hopefully beautiful. Both my siblings and my parents all grew up singing together a lot. Growing up, from an early age, I felt a calling on my life to sing but I also had very real stage fright. My twin brother, Cole, has always been able to talk to a stranger and is comfortable out in front, but I was always more reserved. In fact, when I was younger, he would play up front at church and I would sing backup—which was something I was comfortable with. One day at a church event he turned things on me and put me on the spot. He was playing lead at the event and, pre-planned, turned with no warning so I wouldn’t have time to think of a way to back out and said, “And now my sister is going to play one of her songs!” I vividly remember shaking, but looking back that was the breakthrough moment. After surviving the spotlight there I began asking what steps I could take to become more comfortable singing in front of people since this was what I wanted to do. So that is when I got a job at Potbelly, a local restaurant, singing during lunch hour. That is where I got used to playing in front of people singing random country songs. Then I went off to college and started playing at Common Grounds Coffee Shop doing open mic nights. College is when I started doing little shows and then put out my first EP. RW: You mentioned being shy in high school earlier and some of your songs focus on insecurity. I was wondering if, even though you’ve conquered the stage fright, insecurity is still a theme in your life? JE: Who said I’ve conquered stage fright? [Laughs] Yeah, I don’t think I’ve conquered it as much as learned to channel it into a positive energy that propels me in front of people. But thanks for saying I conquered it, it’s so legit sounding. [Laughs] As far as insecurity, any time I write a prayer in a song where I’m at the end of myself or fed up with myself and need to lay it down and get it out, usually it’s because of insecurity. Sometimes it has to do with things like, “How am I gonna get paid next month?” Music is just an up-and-down, unpredictable business. Also as a woman and as a human there are insecurities the Enemy can use on every level to cripple your gifts. There isn’t a specific insecurity, just more the human struggle we have to lean into and lay before God. RW: I can hear that theme in some of your songs. One that comes to mind is “Sink My Feet.” We can all find ourselves in that theme and that song whether it’s “Does that boy or girl like me?” or “Am I going to make enough money to make ends meet this month?” JE: Thanks, that’s what I hope out of that song! RW: So we are sitting in a high school right now and you are in your twenties, married, and have a career. Is there anything looking back you wish you could say to high-school you? JE: Oh wow! Um, I generally had an awesome high school experience. It had a lot to do with having a twin brother and a sister who was two years older at school. I had a great church. I went to a big public high school. I guess I would tell myself to not worry about the general petty things 16-year-olds worry about. I suppose I’d say “Everything feels like a big deal at that age but nothing is a big deal.” I guess I would tell myself that now too. [Laughs] RW: I spend a good bit of time around high-school kids right now who all have great gifts. However, at this stage of life in particular students may know they have certain gifts but not be able or willing, due to insecurity or fear, to let those gifts loose in the world. Are there any songs in particular which were more difficult for you to release to the world for those reasons? JE: Yeah. Especially my early songs, which I still sing, are more that way. Although it’s harder now to write that personally because I am trying to balance my own thoughts and make music my living. That brings a complicated dynamic. However some of those early songs were more personal and written without feeling as much of that pressure. Does that answer the question? RW: Yeah, for sure. You are making a living with this so you want it to connect with people in a way that honors that. In both your old material and your new stuff you seem comfortable with what people hear. JE: Yeah, absolutely, and not that it’s less personal now that I have chosen it as a career path. It is just more complex when it’s framed that way as far as the factors I must consider. RW: Is there a song or two on the newest album on for which you’d like to share some of the background? JE: So Daydream was my last album or EP [2014]. After that I released two songs in October [2015]. One of those is called “Slow Burn.” It’s about me trying to put words to God’s voice as he is talking to me in this season I mentioned earlier of just like career path and how I am hoping for the next step or to do better and grow. All jobs and life-situations are in some way like this. In my world, at times, you have to just work as hard as you can and trust that things will happen. Sometimes it feels like just meeting the right person will help you get from this point to the next. “Slow Burn” repeats the words “You are right where I have you, you are right where I have you” because sometimes I just need to hear that. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting more and being more successful. “Slow Burn” is about trusting God and that I am the me God created to do what I am doing. The song is about how slow the process of getting to where you think you need to be can feel and being okay with where you are. RW: So you are a professional musician and spend time touring around and are also married to a musician (Will Chapman of Colony House) who spends time touring around. How does that work? JE: Yes, it’s crazy! [Laughs] Will, my husband, feels called to do what he is doing and people in the world need to see him live out his calling. I have that exact same understanding for me. I think if we didn’t have that rock of a foundation as our purpose it would be a million times harder. That foundation is what brings us both joy. It’s just too hard for us to do it otherwise with all the closed doors and uncertainty if we don’t believe we are meant to do it. It’s also huge that our family and the circuit of people we lean on think and live the same way. Will and his brother, Caleb, are in the band. Caleb’s wife and I are the same age and so when he’s out of town, both our husbands are out of town, and she is one of my best friends. Will’s mom and dad [Stephen Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman] have modeled a marriage that shows this can work. We also have a “21-Day Rule” that we can’t go more than twenty-one days without seeing each other. If it goes that far either he or I are getting on a plane. RW: Last question: What’s next? JE: I’m a writer for Razor & Tie, which takes songs I write and uses them on TV and other media outlets. Right now in 2016 I am writing as much as I can either for me or for Razor & Tie. So I can’t tell you what the next step is as far as a studio recording goes. I’m sure I’ll record in the future but for now I’m just trying to write some good music. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. #JillianEdwards

Every book. Every movie. Songs. Sermons. Those old episodes of Once Upon A Time. Pretty much anything my eyes see and my ears hear seems different these days. It all speaks to my heart and challenges my soul in a way that’s unfamiliar. I’ve been going through a rough patch. No doubt it started sometime in my past, when I missed a life lesson on vulnerability. Over the years I’ve learned to tuck away emotions like hurt and sadness behind calculated reactions to injustice and disappointment. “What you did is not right” and “You are acting inappropriately” have been surrogates for “I feel belittled by you” and “I feel embarrassed by you.” I have conditioned myself to wag my head, but rarely do I cry. This way that I’ve trained my soul has not served me well of late. It would be uncharitable to publicly say why. Let it suffice to say that there is a flesh and blood reason. Who it is is not the point. Nor does it matter so much that the person is wrong. Nor that the person is being unkind. Perhaps the only way God can get through the wall to my heart is a Babylonian captivity. Should I blame Nebuchadnezzar for being a nasty king? In many ways, jerks are less pitiable than the people who need jerks to jolt them out of dysfunction. Марката WinBet принадлежи на голям букмейкър от България, който приема спортни залагания в Интернет и има наземни офиси в цялата страна. През 2017 г. на платформата на този букмейкър беше създадено онлайн казино. Играчи от Русия, Украйна и Беларус могат да се регистрират в казино WinBet. За хазартните играчи от Русия и страните от ОНД е неудобно да играят в казиното на WinBet на официалния уебсайт поради липсата на интерфейс на руски език и поддръжка на техния роден език. I feel like I am in an uglier spot than my antagonist. So this is an interesting spiritual place for me to be while heading into Holy Week. Reflecting on my hesitance to be vulnerable, I have asked why am I resistant to fess up to sadness and hurt and inadequacy. Being close to Good Friday helps answer that question. I am resistant because the worst possible outcome to vulnerability is really bad: Crucifixion. Let’s be honest. The argument in favor of vulnerability is that friends cannot draw near and comfort us unless we are vulnerable. But that same argument means enemies can draw near and scourge us with a whip, sink a crown of thorns into our skull, and nail us to a tree. Vulnerability is risky. But if vulnerability is a risk, then Easter Sunday is the reward. Any day of the week I will take a resurrection, scars still visible but all the sadness gone. I say that. I know it in my mind. But it has only been recently that I’ve allowed the truth of it to dampen my eyes. This is going to be a journey. I cannot say how my rough patch will end. Perhaps with reconciliation. Perhaps with unresolved hurt. No doubt it will involve the discomfort of growth. But however it ends, I hope to get to the other side of it acting less indignant and more vulnerable.

Fantasy adventure and slapstick cartoon humor. Martin runs from dragons and bandits, while Marco tries to break out of a desert camp. The River Fox, volume two of The Dragon Lord Saga is now premiering one episode a week at Webtoons (also check out volume one, Martin & Marco).

Producer Gabe Scott and I are honing in on the final four songs on Far Side Of The Sea. I hinted at this in earlier posts, but now, neck-deep into the recording, I am more aware than ever just how vast a musical departure this album is for me. Production-wise, it is a sharp left turn. The strange thing is that the change no longer intimidates me. Gabe and I have worked very hard on this material, not only to avoid complacency and familiarity, but to be uncomfortably stretched. At Gabe’s request, I committed from day one to, musically, take the road less-traveled. I am glad to have been a part of creating something so far outside my comfort zone. I habitually present myself as an Eeyore, a gray spectre haunting an otherwise light, pastoral scene. Admittedly, this is how I have introduced the song, “Field Of Failure”: “Hello everybody, I’m a failure at everything I do, I can’t get anything right…you know, like Charlie Brown” [re-insert head into sand]. It occurred to me only recently that my introduction falls short of telling the crucial truth: on my own, in my striving to please and succeed, it is true that I am absolutely not enough. But in the shadowed refuge of God’s wings, and only there, despite my helplessness and failure, am I enough for the very simple reason that He delights in me. This is a sneak peek at an early mix of the album version of “Field Of Failure,” a song I played for the very first time live at Hutchmoot 2014.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Field-of-Failure-sample.mp3

The following story took place a couple of years ago, roughly three months after having open heart surgery. On my first day of cardiac rehab, I rode the elevator up with a man who was wearing a surgical mask. He was a complete enigma. He looked like a boy dressed in his father’s clothes. His shirt hung loose on his emaciated frame. He wore a baseball cap two sizes too big for his head. It looked to be carefully balanced, as though one quick move would shake it off. He looked like a young teenage boy, except that peeking out from under his surgical mask was a full beard. I never heard him speak. He moved very slowly. There was a woman with him—maybe his wife, maybe his mother—who led him around by the arm so he wouldn’t fall. I didn’t need to know his story to know that whatever had happened to him, he had become a shell of his former self. He spent four minutes on a treadmill set to its lowest speed, and then he went home. I saw him two days later. He followed the same routine—four minutes, then home. I only saw him one other time after that. Later that same week I met a man named Charlie at the EKG station. Charlie and I are the same age. I could tell when I met him that he had been at this for a while. He seemed to be back to his normal strength. He was friendly and talkative. He seemed to know most everyone there. When he told me he was almost finished with his rehab assignment, I saw a hint of nostalgia in his eyes—maybe even a bit of sadness. I asked if he had enjoyed his time in rehab. He had, very much. Charlie seemed like a man who enjoyed everything. I had been told it was okay to ask people what brought them to cardiac rehab. People here don’t mind telling their stories because we are survivors, and who doesn’t like a survival story? I asked Charlie, “What brought you here? Open heart surgery?” He said, “Not exactly. I had a transplant.” I said, “Wow. A heart transplant? Really?” “Actually,” he said, “I had a heart and lung transplant.” I suddenly felt a little star struck. I needed to know more. I said, “Were the heart and lung from the same donor?” He said, “Heart and two lungs. And yes, they were from the same donor.” Then he leaned in a little, smiled, and said, “And get this. The doctors put them in as a single unit.” He tapped on his chest with his fingers like it was the hood of a classic car. I didn’t know what to say. Who was this guy? The breath-filled lungs and beating heart beneath Charlie’s ribcage had been removed from another person, intact as a single unit, and placed into his hollow chest, and his body had received them. Amazing. Charlie and the man in the mask stuck in my mind like counterparts of each other—wealth and poverty, power and frailty, life and death. The man in the mask moved about the facility like a wisp of smoke. He was translucent—like a ghost biding his time on the wrong side of eternity’s door. But there was a certain grace in the way he moved, weightless, like he was already out of the earth’s gravitational pull and drifting slowly toward another world. He had come to rehab to put on some pounds in the hopes that it might anchor him down here for a while longer. There was something sacred about him—angelic even. Charlie, on the other hand, carried himself like a man who was getting away with something. Every time I saw him, he had this Mona Lisa smile on his face like he was savoring some clever inside joke none of the rest of us would get. I did not know Charlie before his surgery, but there had to have been moments in his life when he came close to fading into the shadowlands himself. He might have even looked like the man in the mask at one point. But here he stood, reborn and strong. He looked like resurrection—bright as Easter morning and as surprised as the rest of us that his tomb was empty. I am nowhere near the two extremes of Charlie and the man in the mask, but I have come to a point in my recovery where what I decide to do next will chart my course toward one or the other. So I show up. I put on my sneakers, stick the EKG leads on my chest, check in with my physical therapist, and do the work of recovery—me and the other survivors. ___________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

As a parent, I’m always looking for songs which will speak words of life and hope over my children and my home. But, here’s the rub: I’m kind of—okay, totally—a highly discerning arbiter of music (the word “snob” is so tasteless). So when the music of Nashville collective Rain for Roots crossed my path several years ago, I wanted to do the proverbial dance of joy at finding such lovely, talented allies in parenting from a place of godly imagination. Needless to say, their albums have been in constant rotation: at home, in the car, even at my wife’s kindergarten orientation this year where she had a Rain for Roots album on repeat the whole evening. Yeah, we love these gals. And why not? Their gentle folk melodies have filled our house with a sweet, sweet fragrance of beauty and goodness. The debut, Big Stories for Little Ones, featured Sally Lloyd Jones’ inspired words from The Jesus Storybook Bible set to music, and last year’s The Kingdom of Heaven is Like This toured Jesus’ parables. Late last year, the trio of Sandra McCracken, Flo Paris, and Katy Bowser released their newest album. Waiting Songs explores Advent through 10 tracks, from re-workings of the words of the Old Testament prophets to object lessons in the concept of waiting, and a pair of traditional Christmas carols. In both its focus on the oft-overlooked season of Advent, and the songs’ exquisite craftsmanship, Waiting Songs is a must-have. There’s always been a gospel feel to many of the RFR songs, but the themes on Waiting Songs—longing for deliverance and anticipating the coming of God’s kingdom—seem to bring the flavor of the old spirituals even more to the fore. An immediate highlight has been “Every Valley (It’s Hard to Wait),” which occurs early in the album. By fusing everyday occurrences of waiting—mailing a letter, waiting for a friend to return from a long trip—with the words of Isaiah 40:4, I think it’s bound to bring home the truth of Advent to little hearts through a rich, soulful melody. I also love “Magnificat,” a version of Mary’s song of praise from Luke 1. Should I mention the uptempo “Mary Consoles Eve” and the steady, earnest “Come Light Our Hearts”? Why not? I can see Waiting Songs opening up some new furrows in the well-plowed ground of the Nativity story, and I’m confident the conversations and meditations that result will be fruitful for our family. Is it too early to start trimming the tree? [For more information on Rain for Roots and their music, check out their website.] #RainforRoots #WaitingSongs

Fantasy adventure and slapstick cartoon humor. Martin runs from dragons and bandits, while Marco tries to break out of a desert camp. The River Fox, volume two of The Dragon Lord Saga is now premiering one episode a week at Webtoons (also check out volume one, Martin & Marco). map, is due south of Old Bill’s forest. If The River Fox looks different than Martin and Marco, it’s at least partly because volume two is drawn digitally. Martin and Marco was pencilled, inked, and scanned, then tweaked and processed digitally before being printed. The new process is much more efficient! Here are the tools I’m using these days: Manga Studio 4 – The best software to replicate that feel of pen on paper. Yiynova MSP19u Tablet Monitor – A screen I can draw on. Almost as good as a Cintiq, and a heck of a lot cheaper! Adobe Creative Cloud – Because EVERYTHING I do winds up in Photoshop before I’m though. Blambot – FREE comic fonts. If you have any favorite drawing materials, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below! [Click here to read The River Fox at Webtoons.]

Today is the day. After months of meetings, prayers, conversations, emails, and phone calls we’re officially launching the Kickstarter campaign to bring the Wingfeather Saga to the screen. Let me repeat myself: we’re going to make a serious run at animating—literally, “bringing to life”—all four books, the entirety of Janner, Kal, and Leeli’s story. What? YES. I’ll explain more, but if you’re like me and sometimes you don’t have time to read a tome of an email, then click here. You can watch the video, read all about our plan, and sign up at one of the reward levels to 1) support the project and 2) get some cool stuff. Here’s the quick rundown of how I ended up at this juncture, in case you’re worried that I’ve lost my mind. –I had no idea how much encouraging, overwhelming fun it would be to raise the support on Kickstarter for The Warden and the Wolf King. We raised 840% more than our goal, which of course made me ugly cry. Truly, I’ve never been a part of anything like it. (Thank you.) –When that book was finally finished I had the feeling that the Wingfeather Saga wasn’t finished with me. –I’ve gotten loads of sweet emails from readers asking when/if I’m going to make a movie of the saga. I never really got excited about that, even though a few different opportunities were presented, mainly because, well, I don’t have $100 million and J.J. Abrams’s cell number. I’d love to see a great film of this story, but I’d hate to see a bad one. –All of a sudden, another idea came to mind. Rather, two came to mind in quick succession. What if we made an animated film? Better yet, what if we made an animated series? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished there was a show like this on Netflix or Amazon, something that the whole family could watch, something epic, something that could really stretch out and go deep–and be as good for the parents as for the kids. –If I could be a part of the production team, I could make sure the animated version was true to the heart of the books. I know the ending, and I want to make sure every step of the way leads to that moment. That’s not something I can trust some random producer with. –Enter Chris Wall. Chris is a film producer–more specifically he’s a producer of animated films. You Hutchmooters will remember him from a few great sessions over the years. Chris produced several VeggieTales films as well as 20 of the 3-2-1 Penguins shows for NBC, so he totally knows what he’s doing. I kept pestering him and pestering him and it turns out that persistent widow thing sort of works. –Chris and I formed Shining Isle Productions, and now it’s time to get busy. Like, for real. We want to subcreate something beautiful and good and true. But we need your help. Hence, Kickstarter. I can’t stop thinking about Tolkien’s subcreation idea, that our imaginations are bearing God’s image when we’re building worlds and stories. Writing the books was one thing–and one of the most gratifying parts of my whole life–but seeing the concept art that Joe Sutphin and Justin Gerard and Aedan Peterson did for the books was another thing altogether. It was another step toward realizing the world of Aerwiar and I felt a tingle in my spine when the story in my mind was augmented by the artistic gifting of other people. Most of you probably don’t know this, but when I was in high school I had every intention of either going into animation or penciling Batman comics. I’ve always loved illustration, but am a total hack when it comes to drawing (which, thankfully, led to a music career). Even so, I’ve always leaned into the visual part of subcreation, whether with album covers or book covers or illustrations in the books. Not only does it excite me to think about executive producing an animated film, I would really love to see the Wingfeather Saga play itself out in a different format that might just get Janner’s story into many more kids’ imaginations. I don’t know how else to say it: this feels like something God has called us to. Now, that doesn’t mean this thing won’t fail miserably; if it does, it just means that God has called us closer to him by way of a massive failure, and that’s fine. (Painful, but fine.) But we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t hope that you guys would, in your great generosity and kindness and goodwill and awesomeness, join us in bringing this thing into the world. Whatever help you can give would be great, but if you can back us sooner than later that would be great. The first 72 hours, they say, makes a huge difference in the success of the campaign. And if you don’t mind sharing the Kickstarter page with basically everyone you’ve ever met, ever-ever, that would be a big deal. Thank you guys for all the ways you’ve blessed me and my family. We’re on pins and needles over here at the Warren. (The stories are true.) AP

Ben, I woke up around four o’clock this morning to sit with my father in his jon boat on the Kentucky River. The whole world was dark except for a new moon that lay on the surface of the water like a child’s glass of milk. Still waters feel fragile, so I held my breath, afraid that I would splosh light over the cup edges into the clean, black deep. A water strider cut straight through the moon’s reflection, dividing it into the rungs of a staircase. I didn’t see angels ascend and descend those steps, but a barred owl flapped her strong wings twice slowly over the water while the heron and the egret coughed and jabbered through their morning prayers. A snapping turtle’s nose rose and she stared at me with cold, black eyes, as if she were suspecting me of a great wrong, then she sank back down below. A carp jumped, leaving a beaded curtain of the river behind her. With her leap, I felt like she had grabbed my soul by its dorsal fin and given it a shake. She frolicked like David in his ephod, dancing before the Lord with all his might. The book of Genesis says that God once hovered over the surface of the deep, and when I am on the river, I can imagine that more easily. Some religious people claim that the Lord has directly spoken to them, but I tend to get cynical when I hear those claims — not because God is incapable of talking to people, but because I’ve seen this sort of language used to justify such selfish things in the past. You must remember Mrs. Joanna Thurman from Providence. She told me once that she has been able to sense God every moment that she can remember. She’s a humble woman, sincere and gentle, so when she says something like that, I believe her. But faith hasn’t always been like that for me. There have been times when I have been certain (or almost certain) that I have felt or heard the Lord, but there have other times when he has just seemed so terribly silent. That silence has been hard for me to talk about, because American evangelicalism tends to focus on mountaintop spirituality. We like to pass around “wow” stories that remind us of the goodness of what we believe, but stories about long, lost years in the desert are sometimes harder to tell. We feel like we are betraying God somehow to admit the dry spells, as if our tiny force of human belief could somehow confirm his existence. Remember how the glory of God faded from Moses’ face after he came down from the mountain? He took to hiding the change with a veil, and I think a lot of Christians tend to do this too. We get afraid to admit the fade — those long, sad months when God seems to be hiding from us for some reason. We start to feel like our faith is messed up when there isn’t a constant endorphin high every minute that we choose to believe. We feel ashamed of the quiet. We expect the presence of the Holy Spirit to feel only like falling in love, or like being held by a mother, or like being blessed by a father. And sometimes it is like all of those things, and sometimes it is different. When he has come to me in a way that I haven’t expected, I have wondered if I was just too sinful to hear God, or a bad listener, or out of tune. I’ve wondered if he just didn’t like me, then my shame has turned to fear. I’ve felt rejected, wondering what sort of God would veil himself from me while apparently revealing himself so freely to others. In my darkest moments, when I have been hurting, begging for a tactile confirmation of His presence, I have even wondered if He exists at all. Because I have expected him to conform to my understanding of love, I have wondered how he could care about me while keeping quiet while watching his daughter in pain. The Psalms tend to be more honest than we are. In fact the Old Testament is packed with laments that show God’s children asking where he is and why he doesn’t show up more clearly. Why do we put pressure on ourselves when God’s own book gives us a model for crying out? He seems to welcome our honesty about his silence, while I have made the mistake of trying to win people to Jesus out of only my certainty and my confidence. I have tried to heal souls by talking about what is logical obvious (because some parts of faith are logical and obvious). But it would have been more honest for me to admit that I have pledged myself to a God who appears in razor sharp detail in some moments, and who obscures himself in others. Why haven’t I just said, like the Psalmist, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” I haven’t done that because I’ve been afraid the atheists would attribute that flux to some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve been afraid they would accuse me of being scared and needing a Divine Santa, that my fear drives me to imagine that he exists. I hate being misunderstood more than almost anything, but I have told a lesser truth at times because I was trying to avoid it. Isn’t it possible that God could love a person too much to dazzle her with constant wizardry? Doesn’t every parent let go of his toddler’s fingers at times while she is learning to walk? When God teaches faith through fog and allows for gaps, it strengthens us. Our balance improves. We learn a freer dependence. So many giants in the faith spent their young adult years walking through disappointment with God’s silence, devastated that He wouldn’t wow them in a grand and certain display. They reached up to heaven with sincere appeals that if God would just _________. But he would not, and the quiet felt cruel. They felt abandoned, of course, just like I have. Yet after years of struggle, even after years of abandoning the faith altogether, these men and women learned to release their own demands upon “how God should be” and accept him as he is. While running away from him, they found him in the very places they tried to hide . . . in physics, in music, in mathematical proofs, in mythology. They realized that some of the barriers they had fallen over were only their own edges. I tend to find God outside, where waves smack against the sides of a metal fishing boat, and when those moments of precision come, I am sad to come indoors again, where silence falls like a empty concert hall after a symphony. I don’t have any way to prove what I am seeing is anything more than a woman’s fantastic daydream, but it’s also possible that when Love chases me, it whispers in my native tongue to pull me onward, to realign me, to show me what is coming in the end. Dad used the trolling motor to turn a bend, and in a crook of a wooded island we found dozens of slender columns of steam rising like a choir of fog angels. The ancient Greeks wrote stories about naiads, river nymphs who bathed in waters while wooing men into trouble. But this morning I saw the river rinsing her long, pretty arms in a morning bath. How eagerly she yielded to the sun. I was almost jealous of her trust. Clouds ran the length of the sky like the pink, soft tissue of a womb. Just as we turned into the open river, morning kicked his feet through their cover and the day was born. My spirit shifted and rolled like a belly full of life. I saw that the sun had come, and something inside me instinctively whispered, “The Son has come! Emmanuel, the Light of the World. God with us. He was, and He is, and He will return.” You have known me at my weakest, Ben. You have seen me break, doubt, rage, and violate almost every commandment. You remember times when I have let fear guide me. As strong as my public declarations of praise have been, I have also lived betraying what I claim to love. It’s been difficult for me to forgive myself for the things I did while coming to learn the limits of my own strength. It’s also been difficult for me to forgive other Christians who are finding the ends of their own determination. I have seen so many leaders that I once admired fall that now I flinch when a new hero rises. “What are you hiding?” I wonder. “How will you betray us, too?” I have seen Christians grow frightened and rage. I have seen them distort science and logic because of fear. I have seen them create lesser gods and name them all Jesus. I know there were glory days for the Christian faith, but those of us who still cling to orthodoxy have very few delusions about what can be accomplished by human intellect or will. We know that no matter what we achieve, we will always fail in another area that hurts us and that hurts other people. But as I have failed alongside others, my compassion has grown. I have come to see how we are all in process, even the strongest among us. I have seen failures recycled and maximized, and I have seen the broken healed. Jesus said we must come to him as a child, and I wonder if one of the things He meant by this was that children tend to be humble. They are open to discovery and to being reformed by what they find. I’ve seen a similar humility in you, Ben, which is admirable after all you’ve been through. You are so bright, it would have been easy for you to become arrogant. Instead you have remained a seeker. This is one of my favorite things about you. I know an educated man who laughs at those Hebrew fools who believed the sun actually stood still for Joshua. He laughs because he knows the basics of physics, and biology, and math. But there he is, 206 of his bones stuck together with ligaments, a lymphatic system pumping protection like clockwork into his heart, the synapses in his brain firing while his pituitary gland runs military drills from the base of his skull. He commands himself from feet planted on grass, grass stuck to rock, rock flung round a tiny fireball on a thin string of space time, a string measured in just enough miles to keep his guts from boiling. Science says life grows where life can grow (“ta-da!”), but whenever I have taken time to unpack that in detail, I have found mysteries as bizarre as the crudest tales told around the crudest fires. Today’s alchemists tell me that I can turn my flesh into god, that I can become the master of my own destiny. But I live in a culture full of people who can’t seem to lose twenty extra pounds, who marry the wrong people, who vote for charlatans and narcissists. We don’t remember our turn signals, and we tailgate, and we can’t parallel park. Divinity seems a little ambitious. Казино Украины на гривны бонусы предоставляют также часто, как и игровые заведения других стран. Сегодня слоты просто удивляют своим разнообразием и высокотехнологичностью. Не нужно считать онлайн казино разводом, вот к примеру онлайн казино Пин Ап предоставил отчёт о призовых своих лучших клиентов. Онлайн казино на русском языке – это, как правило, западные онлайн казино, сайт которых имеет русскоязычную версию и которые позволяют пополнять счет в рублях. После этого вы не сможете не только вывести выигрыш, но и те, что вы сюда ввели. The name of Jesus has been abused in the past, so it’s probably healthy to have a little skepticism before making a big decision about who he is. “Be shrewd as serpents” the Bible says. Still, most of the definite atheism that I have seen hasn’t been any more reliable than the most superstitious of religions. It’s been reactive and premature. It’s been blind angry at the very idea of any sort of authority that might outrank humans. Even Einstein said that “fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ — cannot hear the music of the spheres.” Scientists have now determined the ideal waist-to-hip ratio for a woman. (I need to get my measuring tape out to see how close I am. Ha!) We live in the era of knowing the exact evolutionary worth of a wide pair of birthing hips, and an atheist will take this information and trace it through the history of natural selection. But a little old couple in central Ohio shares a hospital bed during visitation hours. The wife has cancer; the husband can hardly see through his cataracts; and yet, they are whispering plans for a summer vacation that both of them know will never come. Her breasts have fallen, and his hair is all worn off. Still he leans over to tell her that she is as beautiful as the day they met, and she blushes. Nothing is gained for the species in this. Nothing at all. Yet I believe the deep romance of their exchange points to something beyond the material. You can talk to me about eagles mating for life or the communal benefits of monogamy, but none of that catches what is happening here. There is something more to it. I can tell there is. Last night I walked my daughter down a driveway after dark, and she pointed up and said, “There¹s Cassiopeia.” Either I had forgotten that story or I never knew it — how the wife of Cepheus was beautiful but vain, and how she now floats through the heavens tied to her chair, sometimes holding a mirror, always reminding us of the dangers of pride. I don’t think about those stories much because I have studied enough astronomy to walk outside at night and think small thoughts about light years, and black holes, and helium gas. I have forgotten how to stand unguarded in the dark and let infinity tell humanity’s stories back to me. Why did we have to shake all the stories out of the stars when we cracked them open? As much as we have gained (and we have gained so much), haven’t we also lost something important by reducing infinity to only rock and flaming gas? When we shattered the prime story, we sacrificed ourselves on that altar. While Nietzsche declared God dead, the eulogy he was truly writing was that of the human soul. Humanism has not glorified us; it has lobotomized us. T.S. Elliot once wrote: This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Maybe he was right. Or maybe the world ends before the blue flicker of television on a Thursday night. A thirty-year-old man is watching Family Guy reruns while his wife scrolls through Facebook. I am tired of listening to people argue about the origin of humanity because most of them are only trying to prove what they want to be true. Whether we started with a divinely-planted seed of RNA or a clay baby matters very little to me, because the poetry of Genesis allows for either. What concerns me is what strict materialism does with our capacity for human creativity going forward. If we are really made in the image of a Creative being, what might we miss about our own creative capacity if we don’t live with our model in mind? How will our potential to innovate be distorted if it is disconnected from the prime source? If truth really is personified in the God who said “I am the Truth,” will the trajectory of beauty eventually fly far off track if we attempt to live apart from him? Philosophers have asked questions about the connection between beauty and truth for centuries, but empirical scientists are starting to notice it, too. They are finding a single thread that runs through chemistry, biology, physics, music, math, and art. Nobel Prize winners have found that symmetry and loveliness are predictive. Christians jump on this like they used to use that old argument about finding a watch on a beach. “If we find a watch, that proves there is a watchmaker,” they say, then they stand back and dust off their hands as if nature’s order has validated God to a doubting world. But natural order doesn’t prove God, because infinity is bigger than we imagine. You’re the one who showed me that in a real infinity, the chances of finding a single watch at some point in time and space go up exponentially. Still, we live in a world that begs to be read like a book. We don’t just have a watch. We have millions of species clicking along in biological harmony, dozens of separate disciplines operating with correlating truths; entire ecosystems that chug forward, mathematical proofs that just so happen to sync. We have hundreds of tribes of Homo sapiens who are drawn to some similar ideas on order, and justice, and art. But mostly there is something about humans, something uniquely generative, responsive, and awake. Even when we ask, “Why would a loving God allow ugliness?” we don’t realize that the only reason the question even comes to our lips is because the universe has trained us that beauty is normal. I don’t consider this a proof for God, of course; but I do know that I would feel dishonest somehow, or at least strained, to deny that the epic story read aloud to me by this world is only a random occurrence of words typed out by one lucky monkey among infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else,” and the older I get, the more I think I see what he meant. Ben, you and I are so similar in some ways and so different in others. I pray for you day and night lately, fasting for you, refusing to take fullness and sweetness into myself until you find a hunger in your own heart that cannot be answered by a flattened world. That might sound condescending, but as I have prayed for you like this, I have found that we share more doubts than I realized. You have helped me see where I have lied to myself about what I thought I believed. You have shown me hidden corners of my soul where I have been an agnostic, and a materialist, and even an atheist. While I was appealing to God for your faith, he has shown me where my own faith did not exist. While I have asked God to appear to you, I have found myself asking for that same mercy. You deserve a better evangelist than the one I make. How I wish you had someone different than I am to tell you about him, someone stronger, someone further down the road who speaks your language better than I do. But the best I can give you is this ceaseless desire for us to find him together. I want to see God through your eyes. I want to hear what you notice when you discover him beside me. Maybe he will appear to you in an upper chamber of Calculus that I could never understand. Maybe that is where he will let you touch his wounds and put your hand in his side. I dream about when you will tell me that story someday, drawing diagrams all in a flurry, saying, “See? See how this works?” and all on fire about the gears of the mechanics of the heavens. I believe that day will come, but writing these words makes me cry in the now. I’m lonely for you to walk with me toward him. It’s the most I have ever wanted anything. I have been honest with you about my doubts. Will you believe me, then, when I tell you that the glimpses I have seen of the Living God have been worth risking everything for? Everything. Remember how when we were looking at models scientists created of 4-D space, there was that split second of “I get it!” It was beyond comprehension, and yet we could almost comprehend. I’ve had those moments with God, and in the quiet that falls after they pass, I am run through with want for more. A character from my favorite book falls in love with a mountain God that she has heard described in old tales. She says, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home?” That is what this ache is like in me, this loneliness for my Creator that promises infinite joy. There are parts of him I can only see through a glass darkly. Still those flashes of a different dimension pull me onward and upward. I cannot forget that I have once seen them. Nor can I forget these impressions of Him that are left woven into in the beauty of earth, his invisible attributes scattered through the fabric of all disciplines. I listen to good music then ask for an encore. I watch a sunset on a Tuesday night, then stand out on the porch Wednesday waiting for another. I plant one more peony. I grieve honestly, then find a pull of hope following my lament. I drink and then find myself thirsty for something I can’t quite catch. I feel an urge to climb the ladder of moonlight that a water strider has left, to ride the back of the barred owl, to follow the snapping turtle down into her black deeps, to resign like a choir of fog angels to the morning sun. I am homesick listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams and Tomás Luis de Victoria. I am homesick when I walk past my husband in the kitchen on a chilly, rainy Sunday afternoon, and he pulls me into his warmth. I was homesick holding my firstborn to my chest. He was milk drunk and heavy with sleep, and his little hands unfolding in the moonlight. “There is a Redeemer, Jesus, God’s own Son,” I sang to him over, and over, and over again. Whatever I love here feels like a beginning. Whoever I love here seems to open into a thousand dimensions. In every delight is hidden not only a present thrill, but also a foreshadowing. In every beauty I catch a glimmer of what purpose pain might serve, of how it will end, and of what good is yet to come.

A good friend once asked me, “Heidi, who is God to you?” At the time, the question was born out of a growing realisation that, as someone who worked for a Christian organization, God was in danger of becoming her “boss.” He was the person who issued the next list of targets. The name that was stamped on each project and signed at the bottom of each evaluation sheet. Over the past few months I have been studying the letters to the churches in Revelation with some friends. In this season of my life God’s words to Ephesus, Sardis and Laodicea, in particular, have made for uncomfortable reading. With razor sharp accuracy, God pierces through every façade and lays bear the carefully concealed truth, in essence forcing each church to answer the question, “Who is God to you?” As I have tripped and stumbled through the letters, that question has been a constant and often unwelcome presence, gently nudging at my soul and stubbornly demanding that I search my heart for a response. Afraid of the answer, I have been trying in vain to avoid God’s gaze as He whispers again and again, “Who am I to you?” The church in Ephesus had an impressive spiritual pedigree. Having lived amongst them for some time, the apostle Paul had become a father figure: loving them, mentoring them and spurring them on with his unique blend of contagious excitement and unapologetic frankness. The believers in Ephesus had experienced God’s presence in remarkable ways. They understood the power of community within the Kingdom and they had watched as lives were dramatically changed. Their theology was in order. They were working hard, persevering in the face of difficulty and testing those who sought to teach them. Yet, cloaked behind this veil of virtuous activity, there was a spreading darkness that threatened to swallow them up. Somehow, in the midst of all the good activity, the doing had become divorced from the being. They had forgotten their first love. Despite their rich experience of God’s grace, the church in Ephesus had lost sight of the fact that God was more interested in their hearts than their credentials. As frantic service took the place of intimacy and rest they drifted further and further from the life of communion that God had called them to. It wasn’t that God wanted them to stop serving Him. In his own letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminded the church that God had great plans for them. They were, “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we could walk in them.” (Eph 2 v 10) A large chunk of the same letter is dedicated to unpacking the details of the Kingdom work that God not only calls his people to but also equips them for. The problem, a few decades later, was that their motivation had changed. When flawed and broken people are involved there is always a danger that God’s gracious invitation to be part of the building and extending of his kingdom will become an opportunity to try and prove our worth. It appears that, when it comes to my relationship with God, I am a slow learner. No sooner does a truth threaten to take root than I have forgotten it again. Thankfully God is patient. If the challenge of the letter to the Ephesians didn’t sink in, it came again through Sardis. Wealthy and comfortable, the Christians in Sardis were confident in their reputation as a thriving church. Once again, God sees beyond the impressive resume. His judgement is crushing, “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” They knew how to play the part but they were running on empty. When everyone else saw a church at their peak, God saw that they were clinging to the dying embers of faith. To my shame, I have spent much more of my life agonizing over what God wants me to do than I have over who he wants me to be. Worn down by God’s judgement on these apparently thriving churches, I finally surrendered to the question as it came again. “Who is God to you?” Through my weakened defenses came a new and unwelcome answer. “He is the thing you are good at.” I did not see that coming. There are no words to shield me from the arrogance of it. No way to spin it into something beautiful. Faced with a lie that had slipped unnoticed into the secret places of my soul, the final letter to the church in Laodicea pressed in to find its mark. “So, you think you are wealthy and have need of nothing? The truth is, without me you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” When God shines a light on things we would rather not know about ourselves it is uncomfortable and humbling and often deeply painful but it is also good. It is good because it is proof of His love. Even as He rebukes the church in Laodicea, He reminds them of the reason. “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.” (Rev 3 v 19). This is not a final condemnation but a call to recognize the seriousness of their sin and return to the God who continues to pursue them in their wandering. Confronted by the coldness of their hearts, the challenge for the Ephesians was to turn back and remember the things they had once known. To go back over old ground, allowing God to rekindle the fire that once fuelled all they did for him. Even as the light within the church at Sardis flickered and threatened to die, it was not too late. There was still time to wake up. The God whose heart had always been for them was longing to welcome them back into the intimacy that would give them life. Spiritually bankrupt, the Laodiceans were invited to come to God for all that they lacked. Salve for their blindness, clothes to cover their nakedness and riches beyond their wildest imagination. If they chose to listen and obey, God’s promise to them was as beautiful as it was underserved. “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with me.” (Rev 3 v 20) That kind of extravagant grace has a way of changing your perspective. Who is God to me? He is the one who sees my misplaced pride in all its ugliness and then, with gentleness, welcomes me back to His table. Intimacy restored, pride forgiven and hope reborn, I am reminded once again that my value is not in what I bring to the Kingdom but in my relationship with Him.

The other day I was performing the adultiest of adult tasks—paying the bills. Does anyone actually enjoy doing this? Probably not. If anything, I enjoy the satisfaction of having paid my bills, of being a responsible human being, and knowing that, for at least the next month, nobody is going to come knocking on my door to bust my kneecaps. So there I was, having just filled out a check to the gas company. I stuffed it neatly into the provided envelope and sealed and addressed it. My wife keeps the postage stamps in her desk drawer, so I opened it to find that we had two sets. One was a collection of regular old American flag stamps, the kind you can get year round. The other was a set of Charlie Brown themed stamps, depicting nostalgic scenes from that classic holiday film, A Charlie Brown Christmas. My wife had purchased them back in December to put on Christmas card envelopes, but hadn’t used them all. I instinctively reached for these and prepared to put one on the envelope, looking for a scene that was still wintery but not too Christmasy. It was then I felt a check—why was I wasting this beautiful little stamp on a gas bill? It’s not like I was sending a special note, in a fancy envelope, to a friend or loved one as a demonstration of thoughtfulness. This plain, white square pocket was a mere delivery mechanism for my cold, financial transaction with the cogs and gears of the gas company. But then I checked myself again—why shouldn’t I add a little beauty to this bare square of paper? After all, the gas company isn’t some mindless, impersonal bureaucracy. At the other end of its postal service adventure, my envelope would no doubt find its way into the hands of another person, perhaps stuck in a dreary cubicle, sifting through check after check, day after day. Perhaps my little Charlie Brown stamp would add a bit of color or memory into a long work day. And after all, hasn’t the gas company provided me with beauty in their own way? They, without fail, send along the fuel that keeps my heater burning, warming our home on cold winter nights when the wind shrieks and moans outside our third story apartment. I’ve never had to worry about freezing to death, and that’s something to be thankful for. When I think about it that way, a pretty postage stamp (and my money) is small thanks for such provision. So yes, I picked out a Charlie Brown postage stamp, fixed it to the upper right corner of that plain white envelope, and sent it on its merry way. Maybe such a gesture doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Or maybe it’s one of many small, daily, but important acts of adding beauty to the world. [Editor’s note: Three days later, the envelope was delivered to the gas company where its check was extracted by the cold, lifeless mandibles of a money-eating robot and Charlie Brown was dispassionately flushed through the robot’s refuse chute without comment—probably.]