Jeremiah 48:29
There’s a certain feeling that comes when you finish something hard. The project that fought you for weeks is finally done. The repair holds. The goal you set back in January is checked off. You step back, look at the work, and something in you says, that’s good. Most of us know that feeling, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Continue reading “The Sin Hiding in a Job Well Done”
Jeremiah 26:1-3
There is something uncomfortable about a man who keeps saying the same thing no matter how you respond to him. You can ignore him, argue with him, threaten him, and he just keeps saying it. Jeremiah was that kind of man. Not because he was stubborn, but because the word he carried wasn’t his own.
Continue reading “What Voice Are You Listening To?”
Jeremiah 5:28, ESV
We are pretty good at keeping up appearances. Most of us have learned how to look put-together even when things are falling apart inside. We smile at the right moments, say the right things, show up when we’re supposed to. And the world rewards that. A polished image opens doors that a messy, honest one sometimes doesn’t.
Continue reading “The Danger of Looking Good”
John 20:19–29
Every scar has a story. The one on my finger is from a knife I was told to leave alone. I didn’t listen. The one on my leg is from a bicycle crash I’d rather forget. And the one on my stomach is from a piece of metal that chipped off a steel chisel at exactly the wrong moment.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 10”
John 20:11–18
A man I read about was adopted at birth and grew up with no knowledge of his biological family. In his forties, a DNA service connected him with a half-sister he had never known. They exchanged careful, tentative messages for weeks. Then one afternoon she called him, and the moment he heard her voice, something unexpected happened. She said his name, and he wept.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 9”
Exodus 2:23–25
For eighteen months, a woman I know wrote weekly letters to her estranged adult daughter who refused all contact. She never knew if the letters were read, returned, or thrown away. The silence was total. She kept writing anyway, because the love didn’t stop just because the replies did.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 6”
John 14:1–10
Maybe you’ve been there. You’re hiking a trail, the fog rolls in thick, and suddenly you can barely see five feet ahead. Your map is useless, all the landmarks you’d been following have disappeared. You’re standing at a fork in the trail, genuinely unsure which way leads back to the trailhead and which leads deeper into the backcountry.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 5”
John 13:6–20
A master woodworker once described the most discouraging phase of any project: the middle. “The beginning is exciting,” he said. “You have vision, you have energy. The end is satisfying, you can see the finished piece. But the middle? The middle just looks like a mess of sawdust and mistakes. That’s when most people quit.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 4”
Romans 8:18–27
A cellist I once heard interviewed said something that has stayed with me for years. She was asked which pieces she found most moving to perform. Without hesitation, she said the slow, mournful ones, the adagios, the elegies, the laments. “There’s something in sadness,” she explained, “that reaches for what beauty is supposed to be. Joy tells you it exists. Longing tells you where to look.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 3”