Parade of Faith by Wil Triggs

After the raising of Lazarus, imagine how word must have spread. Jesus was no huckster, no magician. Lazarus was really dead—dead and buried for four days. Then Jesus came and called Lazarus out of the grave. He obeyed.
 
Communication networks in the time of Jesus were not as sophisticated as our media, social platforms and digital outlets. Yet word got around. Quickly.
 
Jesus, the man who raised Lazarus from the dead, the one who fed thousands multiple times, he’s coming here, to Jerusalem.
 
Who doesn’t want to come and see his arrival.
 
And so, the crowd unfolded and grew. Palm branches waving. Coats thrown on the ground in a frenzied worship. And yet it was not as we might have imagined, a humble man, riding on a donkey.
 
Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hear all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue Your road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.
 
Perpetua, a pregnant slave in second-century Rome, had come to faith in Jesus and was sentenced to death. but the spectacle of her execution was delayed due to her pregnancy. After she gave birth to her child, she was paraded into the Coliseum with two other women of faith also condemned to death. She was the first of the three women to be wounded. The crowd cheered. A bull released to finish the job of her death mysteriously would not attack, so gladiators had to do the killing. Before her execution, guards asked her about being killed so soon after the birth of her only child. She answered: “When I face the beasts there will be another who lives in me, and will suffer for me since I will be suffering for him.” A Christian family adopted her infant.
 
Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, Your triumphs now begin
o’er captive death and conquered sin.
 
In 1555, John Rogers was paraded to his place of execution in London. Though he petitioned for chances to visit with family members during this incarceration, such requests were rejected. His children were among the crowd as they followed him to the place of death. Here is part of the exchange he had with his executioner:
“Will you revoke your evil opinions of the Sacrament?”
“That which I have preached I will seal with my blood.”
“You are a heretic then.”
“That shall be known at the day of judgment.”
“I will never pray for you.”
“But I will pray for you,” Rogers answered, just moments before he was engulfed by flames.
 
Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The host of angels in the sky
look down with sad and wond’ring eyes
to see th’approaching Sacrifice.
 
When Ahmed decided to follow Christ in the 1990s, his Hindu family rejected him. But he devoted himself to the church and to sharing the gospel with his Hindu neighbors. During Ramadan he gave away the gospel on audiocassette and then began to leave the media in public places for people to take. As his ministry has grown, Ahmed has become a target, so he moved his family around often for protection. His family moved 185 times from 2000 to 2019. Things have calmed down, but he says “In the Bible, when persecution comes, the ministry grows. …If there is persecution, I can face it. …I wish to see great transformation among the Kashmiri people. If I am killed, I will have fought a good fight. I will have run a good race.”
 
Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Your last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on His sapphire throne
awaits His own anointed Son.
 
This report from this week’s Prayer for the Persecuted Church prayer sheet:
Anisha and Ashish, who married early in 2023, went to a local church in search of healing from demonic spirits that harassed Ashish. Church members prayed for them, and Ashish was healed. The newlyweds began to read the Bible they had received at the church and soon wanted to place their trust in Jesus Christ. When Ashish’s parents found the Bible, they insisted that the young couple renounce Christ and stop going to church. Ashish agreed, but Anisha did not. She was forced to leave the home without money for food or shelter, so the local church helped her with basic needs. Soon, Ashish decided to join her again. Now Anisha asks for prayer for the strengthening of her husband’s faith and that they would together stand firm and be witnesses for Christ in their families. They are currently considering attending a training program to grow in their knowledge of the Bible.
 
Let's ride on, ride on in majesty in this parade of palms, casting down our cloaks onto the ground where the humble King rides. Let us live in sacrifice and service in our parade of faith.

Out of Focus by Wil Triggs

I’m curious about people. Maybe sometimes nosy. I want to know what others think. I’m not always sure what I think about a particular issue, but even at that, I like to see what polls say other people think. I don't mean all those political polls. I mean regular life stuff and church stuff. What do other people think? So, I recently visited the Barna website, which I often do in the beginning months of the year to see what they have to say about the year just ended. Sure enough, they had a summary of their top releases of 2023.

Here are a few bits from my study of their site.

On the negative side, Barna reports, “The share of practicing Christians has nearly dropped in half since 2000.” That sounds pretty bad. But they go on to suggest, “Though the trajectory of Christian commitment in the U.S. has been on a downward slide and is in need of urgent interventions, our new data give Christian leaders cause for hope.”

• Curiosity about Jesus among teens is high.

• A desire to grow spiritually is high across all generations.

• Jesus also does well, with a high percentage of people saying they have a high opinion of both Jesus and the Bible.

So far so good. Until I come to this:

Our data on the rising spiritual openness in America reveals a tremendous opportunity for faith leaders. The challenge facing the Church is whether they are ready and able to meet the spiritually open—where they are, as they are. “The work of Christians is to embody Jesus—full of truth and grace—and reflect his image in all they say and do,” says David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna Group. “The data shows they too often fall short.”

The website reports that the church is viewed much less favorably than either Jesus, the Bible or the hunger for spiritual growth. In some ways, there’s no surprise there. I love the church, but even I might rank the church at large in a less positive light than the Savior and his Word.

Still, we could do better, and I like to tell myself that College Church is doing better than churches who make their way into the news media. Our biggest press coverage ever was when that tornadic storm bent one of our steeples like it was a toothpick. May that be the only time College Church ends up on the front page of a newspaper.

God uses people to accomplish things on earth, so I’d like to think the polling about church could go a little higher. Or at least that a survey in our community would see our churches in a more positive light.

These kinds of questions and answers have been around for a lot longer than most people realize.  In an attempt to better understand the trends of the times and shared felt needs, imagine a recent archeological effort uncovered an ancient artifact. Here are some translated highlights.

Congratulations on crossing the threshold into the knowledge of good and evil. Please take just a few quick minutes to answer our three-question survey so we can better understand what you have just experienced.

1. Describe how you felt after biting into the fruit:

A. Relief that I’m not dead. I guess the serpent was right after all.

B. Don’t look at me; it’s his/her fault.

C. I’m in a mood and it’s not good. That’s new at least.

2. What did you think when you became aware of good and evil?

A. Evil is a concept that I can overcome, but good is everywhere.

B. Now it’s up to me and a healthy dose of self-care.

C. I wondered where all the dandelions came from overnight.

3. What about, you know, the naked thing?

A. I’m comfortable in my designer fig leaves, no problem.

B. I said to myself, “Does this come in black?”

C. I do my best not to think about it. We have a world to run. So, let’s get on with it.

Surveys are valid and helpful, but I can’t help thinking that when we look at ourselves and each other, we’re missing out. We're looking at the wrong place. There are other things to survey.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.

    From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

    who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1, 2)

So much time and energy spent on analyzing ourselves and one another, not just in surveys, but in the media—print, blogs, podcasts, our Christian media. Real help comes when we lift our eyes up and survey the hills.

Survey the hill Isaac walked up with the dry wood strapped to his back.
Survey the holy-ground hill where Moses removed his shoes.
Survey the hill where the cross stood. Survey the hill where the tomb was empty.
Survey the hill where Jesus ascended into heaven, and the people stood looking up at the sky until an angel told them to snap out of it.

How can we turn our eyes from the manifold expressions and study of humanity to the wonders of God himself, our beautiful Maker, Savior, Shepherd, Rescuer, Friend?

We don’t deserve his love, yet here it is, ever present, deeper, richer, fuller complete. How can we devote ourselves and our time more fully to him? Consider God’s love. Just take the time, even if just a few moments, to stop and think, not about self or nation or world. Where do our hearts focus? Consider today this suggestion from John Owen.

“…if your heart is taken up with the Father’s love as the chief property of his nature, it cannot help but choose to be overpowered, conquered, embraced by him. This, if anything, will arouse our desire to make our eternal home with God. If the love of a father will not make a child delight in him, what will? So do this: set your thoughts on the eternal love of the Father and see if your heart is not aroused to delight in him. Sit down for a while at this delightful spring of living water and you will soon find its streams sweet and delightful. You who used to run from God will not now be able, even for a second, to keep at any distance from him.”

It's Lonely at the Bottom by Lorraine Triggs

I had convinced myself that I was the only mother at church whose adult child wasn’t working, following the Lord, dating a wonderful Christian, or moving into his first home. At Good Friday services, forget contemplating the cross shrouded in black cloth, all I contemplated were happy parents surrounded by equally happy adult children, accentuating my aloneness. It was lonely at the bottom.

According to a guest essay in the New York Times, it turns out that I wasn’t special in my loneliness. The essay, titled, “If Loneliness Is an Epidemic, How Do We Treat It?” (Eleanor Cummins and Andrew Zaleski, July 14, 2023) stated that one-fifth of Americans over 18 always feel lonely or socially isolated.

If loneliness is an epidemic, then it can be treated as a clinical problem. Behavioral neuroscientist Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo (no stranger to loneliness herself), has been moving away from investigating a “pharmaceutical solution” to loneliness and, according to the essay, is “now promoting the acronym [are you ready for this?] GRACE, which stands for ‘gratitude, reciprocity, altruism, choice and enjoyment.’”

As Christ followers, GRACE spells out a different solution to loneliness which is long past the epidemic stage. I suspect it began in the beginning in the garden when our first parents experienced dissonance in their communication with the Creator. And Grace shows up with promises and fig leaves.

Ruth was a swirl of emotions—loneliness probably in the mix—when she threw in her lot with her bitter and lonely mother-in-law. There, Grace shows up in worthy Boaz, turns bitterness to blessing and then enters the kingly line of David.

Even King David wasn’t immune to loneliness and despair. In Psalm 6, he languishes, his bones and soul are not just troubled but greatly troubled. He starts to see Grace but is overwhelmed and exhausted with his moaning, tears and weeping. Ah, a perfect backdrop for Grace who shows up in the darkness and night as if they were bright as day and hears David’s cries and prayers.

After David and after 400 years of silence, Grace shows up again, this time in bodily form, as the only Son from the Father. I don’t know if this is what Dr. Cacioppo had in mind when she suggested that a lonely mind might be healed with help from the body, but we are healed because the Son’s body was broken for us, because his wounds brought healing to our souls, because his body was raised.

God’s redemptive, healing Grace also shows up in body that breaks bread together, that thanks God together, that does “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility counts others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3) and looks to the interests of others.

A funny thing happened to me at the bottom of my loneliness. When my husband told our small group about some of the issues with our adult child, it turned out that everyone in our group had someone they loved with the same issues. Suddenly it was very crowded at the bottom as we cried together, prayed together and made room for Grace, make that more grace, ever even more and more grace as we lifted up each other and found rest in the One who was lifted up for us.

Get Better by Wil Triggs

A couple weeks back we taught the Kindergarteners from Acts 5, Annanias and Sapphira. The curriculum went off in the direction of generosity, but we couldn’t really do that. The two of them had lied.
 
I don’t remember the specific incident that took place in my grade school class, but to my mind, it was so horrible that I absolutely could not go to school the next day. Was it a threat from a schoolmate? A test I wasn’t ready for? I don’t remember, but I was convinced that It must not happen. I prayed that I would wake up sick.
 
In the morning, I convinced myself that my prayer was answered.
 
“I feel sick,” I said to my mom.
 
She had a full-time job. My older brother was the only other sibling in the house, but he was a letter carrier and had left for work hours before. My dad was gone. It was just me and her. I had no idea the stress my being sick caused my mom. I didn’t care. I was focused on not going to school.
 
My mom put her hand on my forehead. She held it there. “You don’t feel like you have a fever,” she said. I remember thinking she didn't sound too sure about that.
 
She paused, touched my forehead again, left the room and returned with the thermometer. She shook it and checked the mercury to be sure it was down where it needed to be, then put it in my mouth, under my tongue. Mom left me there on the couch and went into the other room to continue getting ready for work.
 
As soon as she left the room, I took the thermometer out of my mouth and peered at it. You had to turn it just right to read and I couldn’t do it, but I knew that thermometer had to go higher than normal.
 
I glanced at the lamp by the couch. Well, was I going to try it or not? No, I shouldn’t, but soon it would be time to go. Quickly, the thermometer touched the lightbulb. I wasn’t sure how long to hold it there. I took it off and tried again to read it. No luck. I put it back on the light snd heard her coming. I didn't want to burn my tongue, but hearing her footsteps, the thermometer jumped back in my mouth.
 
Mom took the thermometer out of my mouth. She looked at it, looked at me, felt my forehead, then said, “You can’t go to school today. You need to stay home and get better.”
 
Phew. What a relief.

She figured out my lunch and made sure I was comfortable on the couch in the living room in front of the television. I lied there, my head on the pillow she brought and allowed her to drape a blanket over me.
 
 “Don’t answer the door if anyone comes. Call me on the phone if you need anything. Your brother will be home first.”
 
“I know,” I answered, convincing myself that I must really be sick, my voice slightly trembling.
 
She kissed me goodbye and headed off to work.
 
The morning went well. I watched TV shows I usually only saw on holidays. Lunch was canned chicken soup with saltines and an orange. Even at that age, I could boil water, so there was tea with sugar, which was what I always drank when I felt sick or cold or sometimes just because.
 
But as the afternoon came, gameshows were replaced by soap operas. I wasn’t interested, so I turned off the television. I started to think about what I had done.
 
My brother came home. He had things he wanted to watch on television, so I went to my room. I had a book to read, but it wasn’t any good trying to read my way into someplace else.
 
Whatever it was that I avoided at school that day was still going to be there the day after, and now I had to face it with the added layer that I lied to my mom and would have schoolwork to make up. It would have been over if I had gone to school, but I did feel sick. I kept trying to convince myself, but it was not the kind of sick that had anything to do with staying home from school to get better. The kind of sick that couldn’t be healed with soup and rest. I had lied to my mom. Lying was wrong. I was wrong.

This was worse than whatever I was trying to avoid at school. The bad thing wasn’t at school. It stayed home with me. There was no escape. When you pretend to be sick and aren’t really, there’s no way to get better on your own.
 
I prayed. I asked Jesus to forgive me.
 
My bedroom was in the back of the house right by the driveway, so I could hear the car pull in and mom open the car door. A few seconds later I heard her unlock the back door and step into the back entry, then into the kitchen.
 
She came to my room. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
 
“Better,” I said, lying again. “Mom…”
 
“What?”
 
“I didn’t really have a fever.”
 
“I know.”
 
“You did?”
 
“That thermometer was so hot you would have been dead or in the hospital, and I certainly would have been able to feel a fever that high.”
 
“But you let me stay home.”
 
“I figured if you wanted to stay home that bad, you shouldn’t go to school.” She hugged me. “But don’t ever do that again.”
 
I hugged her back. “I won’t,” I said. She asked me what I had done to get the thermometer so hot. I told her. Someone had told me about the light bulb trick at school.
 
I never did that again.
 
Would she have let me stay home if I had told her why I didn’t want to go? Possibly. And I would have had a much better afternoon. Long forgotten was the potential incident that made me want to stay home—but, here I am now all these decades later remembering the bad choice I made.
 
Whatever I feared at school was not as bad as what I did at home to avoid it. There is no pulling the wool over the eyes of God. Like my mother on that day, the Lord Jesus already knows.
 
Annanias and Saphirra lied to Peter to make them look better than they really were. I lied to my mom to make myself look worse than I was. God is not fooled either way. Lies are childish things. Grace and truth are the medicines that makes us get better.

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:16, 17

Ashes to Ashes by Lorraine Triggs

Ash Wednesday collided with Valentine’s Day this week. It has probably happened before, but as a junior higher, I was too busy exchanging Valentines and conversational candy hearts to notice. If I did notice anything on Ash Wednesday it was my friend’s excused tardiness to school and the smudge on her forehead.

“Why do you have a smudge on your forehead?” I asked.

“It’s not a smudge. It’s a cross from the priest,” she explained. “It’s Ash Wednesday.”

This was not a day on my Baptist church’s calendar. “Ash what?”

“Ash Wednesday. You know, the beginning of Lent.” Not on the calendar either nor did my friend elaborate much. “For 40 days before Easter, you eat fish, not meat, and give up candy.”

When I asked my mom about this apparent gap in my Christian upbringing, she replied, “We’re Baptists. We don’t do that.”  Since I liked candy and didn’t like fish, I was relieved that we Baptists didn’t do Ash Wednesday or Lent.

On Thursday, my friend would come to school smudge-free, and life went on as usual at Helen Keller Junior High.

In college, when Ash Wednesday became a thing among evangelicals, I had friends who pulled back their hair to make sure everyone noticed the ashes on their foreheads. Another apparent gap in my Christian upbringing that Lent was a season of show and tell. Or maybe my friends simply forgot what the priest said when placing the ashes on their foreheads; “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I know better now that neither my junior high friend nor I—and not even my ash-proud friends—could ever make ourselves smudge-free. Sin leaves its smudges and prints on our hearts, turning lives into ashes, and returning us to dust, to death.

Perhaps the practice of giving up something for Lent (and I hope more than candy or meat by now) is to make Jesus’ death on the Cross more relatable or to satisfy that impulse of ours to do something for our salvation. But how can we relate to the Cross, when it was Jesus, who knew no sin, was made sin for us? What Lenten sacrifice of mine will add to the lavish grace and mercy God showed us in Christ?

English Nonconformist Isaac Watts may or may not have shared my inclination of answering rhetorical questions, but he did, however unintentionally, this once when he wrote “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

It’s not only the 40 days leading up to Easter that we should survey the wondrous cross but also the other 325 days of the year, overwhelmed with thankfulness that we who were dead, left in the dust, were made alive in Christ.

Audible Gasp by Will Triggs

I’m telling the children in Kindergarten class the story of Hudson Taylor over the course of several weeks. I started a couple weeks back asking the kids what they do after dinner if they’re having family time.
 
A lot of them said that they would watch a movie and eat popcorn.
 
I explained to them that when Hudson Taylor was a little boy, there was no such thing as a movie. The room responded with an audible gasp.
 
Not only did they have no movies, they had no screens to watch movies on. Blank looks of shock.
 
Not only that. They didn’t have electric lights. Their home was lit only by candles. The thing we do when we lose power, light candles.
 
But it was that first revelation that seemed to shock them the most: a world with no movies.
 
A key part of my growing up years involved going to the movies. My wife attended a church that didn’t allow its members to go to the movies. She could watch them when they moved to television, so it must have been something to do with the act of going to a movie theater.
 
But for me, movies held a special place in my childhood and student years.
 
In college, I discovered the arthouse theaters, smaller and more rundown than the big movie palaces downtown or the up-and-coming multiplexes with multiple screens. Going to the movies in the arthouse was like watching a graphic novel—watching and reading at the same time, seeing another part of the world.
 
I remember watching a black and white subtitled movie that ended with the protagonist’s revelation of his own failures and a sense of peace. The silence of us viewers, stunned as we sat collectively, and thought of a life not lived well and about to end. When the movie faded to black, ours was not a gasp but just a sort of sad sigh, yet we all did it together.
 
Just like the Kindergarteners did together, with their audible gasp of shock when they thought of a world with no movies.
 
Or the shared experience of laughing out loud at a joke at the same time as a hundred other people you don’t know.
 
The dark room of flickering lights. Opening nights in a theater with fans can bring cheers, screams and much applause as the long-awaited premiere begins or when strangers in a dark room discover for the first time the unthinkable—Darth Vader reaching out to Luke and saying “Son.” Audible gasp!
 
A shared experience with those around you in a theater makes it different than a streaming service you watch alone, different from watching alone but more like, going to church every Sunday.
 
Journeying through the Bible with others in church is like the shared religious experience of moviegoing, only better. A genre-bending epic love story with sci-fi horror elements featuring the living and the dead, a small personal film where I sometimes need to read subtitles to get it.
 
Sunday comes and there I always go to gather with my friends and the people I don’t yet know. We sing together. Where else can you do that? A man will get up and talk, yet not his words but the very thoughts of Christ. There will be a nugget of gold, hidden in pages of solid rock, soaring out across the room, penetrating my soul. Prayers will go out and up to places I could never reach alone. We will sing together again. It can get personal fast. A man who knows me well might ask about my son. Another is just back from a hospital stay, and he looks remarkably well. We meet new people. We greet old friends we haven’t seen in a while. On the way out, I stop and pray with a friend. There we were in the parking lot, together, reaching the hand of God for help. Sometimes we just need help, right then and there. Prayer is prayer, but praying together is different than praying alone.
 
Back to movies, I remember hearing someone once ask, “What if Jesus comes back and he finds you in the movie theater?”
 
I know now that I was supposed to feel shame, but at the time, I didn’t understand the question. Maybe I still don't. If Jesus came back, when he comes back, who cares about the movies or anything else? Wherever we are, Jesus finds us snd will find us.
 
No matter the kind of week I’ve had, I am welcome in church. Last week I took off my shoes and shirt and put on a sort of turban and robe. Pretending to be Peter just released from jail, I asked the children if I should still tell people about Jesus even if it might mean going back to jail. Yes, they said. It was a hard answer, yet they knew it was right. I was touched these little ones hesitantly answered yes.

We call out to the Father, the Son stretches out his arms on the cross and then to the sky and finally reaches out to us in love, the Spirit there, ever-present guide and friend. At church, I’m reminded he is already here with me, with us, in church or cinema or work or home. Wherever we go, he goes. Yes.
 
Anywhere else, with me and us, church and Jesus with us, every day, all night, closer than I dare dream, dear church, Jesus appearing in our midst. In the tempest on the sea he walks on the ocean ground to us, Is it a ghost? At moments we realize and see through the glass and we can’t help it—gasp—for what he is and the who and what is to come, the best place to be, he stays with us. We stay with each other, this boat against the roiling waves, an ark in the roiling storm, a ship in which Christ calls out “Peace. Be still.” And we catch our breath in the wonder and awe and breathe the audible gasp of the great peace of all he brings.

Still.

The Race to the Heat Registers by Lorraine Triggs

Cold Michigan winter mornings, two living room wall heat registers and three girls. You probably can guess this isn’t going to end well.

On these cold mornings, my two sisters and I would race to claim one of the registers, but as the youngest, I found the odds were stacked against me, and I would be left out in the cold. This would lead to accusations: That’s unfair. I got here first. You shoved me. You had it yesterday. Mo-m-m.

Ironically, we were racing to the heat registers so we could have a cozy spot in which to have our quiet times, our daily devotions.

The great race to the heat registers reminds me that I wake up selfish most mornings. My first thought now, as it was then, is of me—my comforts, my priorities, my way. I certainly don’t need any blogs or Wirecutter tips on self-care, which I manage to do quite well on my own, thank you very much.

Selfishness and its close cousin, pride, ought to be daily reminders that we’re “frail children of dust and feeble as frail;” instead, they remind us of our achievements, our greatness, ourselves. Each of us has something in which to take pride. The out-of-fashion word “vainglory” came to mind, so I looked up Philippians 2:3 in the King James Version: “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves.”

Merriam-Webster defines vainglory as “excessive or ostentatious pride especially in one’s achievements.” No wonder the word has fallen out of linguistic favor. Though not an attractive word, it is an accurate description of the human condition—much like what the psalmist David wrote, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5) And in sin, we wake up vaingloriously. We don’t wake up planning to sin, we just do as the day goes on.

Seriously? Vainglorious? We’re involved at church, we give our resources—time and money—to God’s work, we follow the right people and podcasts. Sure, there’s the occasional sin, but we’re good people compared to the truly evil people out there.

I pray that I never become such a good person that I forget my frail, dusty origins, that I forget the Lord’s benefits of forgiveness, healing and redemption. May I never become confident in my own righteousness that I no longer see a need for his mercy, his grace, his abounding steadfast love and compassion. May I never outgrow a humble dependency on Jesus who redeems, renews and one day, will restore all things to himself, including frail humanity.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.  Psalm 103:8-14

Reverie 121 by Wil Triggs

I first heard about you when I was five. My sister told me of you in such a natural way. You made such sense that I couldn’t believe I had not already figured out the wonder and truth of your love. It seemed so right but I could not have found you without someone else telling me.
 
At the same time, the playgrounds of childhood were calling. There were four square, football games on the blacktop, imaginary games based on television. Fistfights with good friends—on the grass, never in the street. You were with me, but I can’t say that I was always with you. Life marched on. There were board games that I rarely won. I sold stuff, real or imagined, to people, real or imagined, to benefit myself or my Cub Scout pack or school or the Red Cross or UNICEF or some imaginary world-changing charity.
 
I didn’t exactly forget about you. But there were other things.
 
There was my seventh-grade best friend’s mother, who always had a rice cooker on when I would go over after school to shoot hoops. She never failed to offer us a sample of the evening meal. I remember lumpia, a food I had never tasted before, but tasted like food from home, a home that was mine, but one I had never lived in. Sometimes I stayed for the whole meal. This was the beginning of my interest in other people and cultures and foods that seemed unusual for a picky eater like me.
 
The rice from the cooker and the lumpia and me and the family I didn’t know well—and you were there, the other guest at that table.
 
Sometimes I played records on the stereo, a box version with a lid on which to play the 45s. Everything that poured out of those speakers seemed real and magical at the same time. I never wanted just the single 45. It seemed like a waste of money to get only one track when you could buy an LP and get so much more.
 
You were listening to the music with me back then..
 
And then I learned to play music myself, and it was the same thing—real and magical. Scales and drills, over and over, big bands and pit orchestras. To play the music I had once only listened to was revelation. Often, I thought that this music going into me and coming out of me was somehow truth flowing from you in a way that made me feel closer to heaven than hell.
 
Were you enjoying the music back then?
 
I was growing up. Things were getting hard. There were demonstrations. Teargas and gas lines. Teachers in my public school offered condolences when my grandfather died. Adults outside my family showed me they cared—which was a shock sometimes. When pretense was dropped in favor of care, a teacher became a multi-dimensional human, more than an authority, another human being. It was better to learn from them afterwards.
 
You watched me filing the music after school, looked after me when I ran sprints after class with Motown going through my mind. Band teacher. Track coach. You were there.
 
It wasn’t only people who helped me. Words became friends. In writing I found a path where I could know what I was thinking and feeling. Words helped me to try and make sense of what was going on in me and my friends, in the world, underneath me, all around me, words to sort things out. I rose to the top and sank to the bottom at the same time. Words became what people could not—ever present and able to tell me where I was. Friends along the way.
 
Those notebooks I selectively showed only a few pages to a friend here or there—you read them all.
 
I became aware of my own imprisonment, the sins and limitations that increasingly seemed to define me in ways that I didn’t understand. The world seemed slanted to make me want things that you would not want. Voices were saying that if I did a certain thing, you would bless me, belittling the truth that when I was not blessing you, you came.
 
Sometimes I ran to solitude with my beloved words, and I wrote. You saw all of them, surely. But they weren’t enough. These friends did not leave me, but they could not atone or transcend or forgive.
 
I lifted my eyes, realizing the insurmountable, inescapable place with little gods and distractions everywhere. Hell stood before me on that path I didn’t know.
 
No people or words could provide what I needed.
 
From where does help come when I am in this prison of fallen failure and falsehood?
 
There is only one answer.
 
When you came to me in prison, it was confusing at first. How could you be there alongside me. In this isolated place, a prison for the lost, where you for sure did not belong, you came.
 
The prison door opened. You told me to walk out. You had to tell me to walk out the door you had just opened otherwise I never would have walked out.
 
But you could—the Word could, the one Word, before and above all others. The spoken word-maker of heaven and earth came to my lone cell. There was blood and pain that I could not comprehend. You spared me that and yet it was there. Nothing is more immediate than the pain of broken flesh and blood. There we were. Creator and created being. You the Word and the person, lifting me, guiding me.  At your table I never deserved a space, yet you pulled out the chair and bid me to sit. So, sit I did and do still.
 
How can you be so close, so now, so much more the teacher and friend, the balm I need right now.
 
When my foot was stuck in a crag, you freed me to walk. You set things right.
 
Living in the darkness of the sun and the lightness of the moon, I found rescue. You put things right.
 
When I had breakfast week after week with my friend after his mother died and before my father did, you were there with us.
 
You are the lifeguard that never sleeps, ever watching, day and night, the waters and tides we swim.
 
Always coming, going, these characters, words, tunes, going in and out so much of day and night. But in it you are always constant, the unwavering word that never flees, never forces, ever loves.
 
I am a fish you caught. You keep me. I’m a keeper. You never cast off.  You are the keeper of everything. Artist. Singer. Chef. Lawyer. Savior. Companion. Doctor. Neighbor. Nurse. Patient. The one who builds the fire on the beach and invites me to come, eat.
 
From this time forth and forevermore.