I want to, need to, live each moment with death pressing so close. I want to live undeluded, wide awake to sharp reality. I think this is the most honest way to live.
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How Sweet!
We mean something more than mere statement of fact when we deem something “sweet.”
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With Each Passing Moment
“Already the past,” and still we cling to the last dregs of the moment, grasping, bargaining. But the present always invariably slides into the past, and the past does not belong to us. It becomes memory; it fades and creases.
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My 2023 in Books
So because I have spent so many hours of 2023 reading, my way of recapping the year is to map out a timeline of months with a book for each. These are the books that articulated my unwritten feelings, that made my heart beat faster, that have taken up long-term residence in my brain. These are the books that opened my eyes to the weight of reality.
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A Two-Year Bible Reading Plan
Last year, I wanted a slightly slower pace than a one-year plan. I couldn’t find an existing one that fit all my preferences, so I sat down and made my own pseudo-two-year plan with readings for five days a week. After using the plan for a year, I’m making it available to anyone who wishes to use it.
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Would You Stay?
I’ve written more than once about place in the last year―the difficulty of saying goodbye to friends who live far away, the ache of homesickness, the comfort of God’s plan for the church. In each of these, the common thread is the presence or absence of people. Place is important because people exist in only one place at a time. But place is also ultimately unimportant because it is not the space itself, but the people who occupy that space, that I miss.
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Confessions from My Past Self
I’ve been reflecting a lot on my testimony these days. There is, of course, a danger in hyperfixating on the sinful past and neglecting to tell of the Lord’s gracious, redemptive work. But it has been good for me to remember how hopeless I would be if not for him.
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A Return Trip
When the plane took off from LAX, careening over the Pacific and then swiveling to face the coast, I peered out the window and tried to figure out which pier sticking out over the water was the one my friends and I had stood on to watch the sunset. There were too many to tell, toothpicks against an opaque, wrinkled blue sheet. Roads faded into grids, houses into thumbnails. Everything looked so small. I thought about how all my friends and much of my family was contained in that tiny swath of land. Most of the people I interacted with over the summer―all enclosed by a plane window.
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Even Now
And so, on the cusp of summer’s end, I am confronted with these two truths: that time is fleeting, and that I am bound to the present. Summer is quickly drawing to a close, but for me, even now, it is still summer. How I wish that time was forever and that I could change the future! But this is not so. The present moment is the lot the Lord has given to me now.
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Grace and Writer’s Block
When the article is published, only my name will be in the byline. Yet that is far from the whole story, for I have learned that I am dependent. I need others when I write.
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Reading Books and People
Perhaps, for those of us who are less awkward with books than we are with people, there is something to be said about the way we approach books―and people.
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Leaving Instagram
Over the last month, I have become increasingly convinced that, at least for me, there is very little reason to continue being at all active on Instagram.
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Here and/or There
And as I sat by the window on my flight from D.C., the sun just sinking below the horizon, the sky slipping from amber and blue into dusk, I thought about goodbyes and airports and parting hugs and last looks. I have had many of these in the past year.
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Infinitesimal
I’m small compared to God.
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From a Moving Train
I feel a little as if I am on a moving train, one that stops at each station but not long enough.
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Three Facets of Hope in Romans
Advent is both a season of waiting and one of joyful celebration: it gives us a picture of hope. Romans also gives us a picture of biblical hope. Here are three short observations.
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A Fearful Faith
I have heard before that the strength of our individual faith does not matter so much as the strength of Him whom we put our faith in. It is not faith itself that saves, but faith in a God who saves. Yet I didn’t realize the sweetness of this truth until wrestling with my own doubts and the weakness of my faith.
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After the Last Battle
I thought the Golden Age of Narnia was the brightest, most joyful era of The Chronicles of Narnia. But at the end of The Last Battle, I find that I have clearly been wrong. That age was only a shadow of the brighter still, only good, glorious land remade by Aslan.
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The Dawn Treader and Narnia
At the start of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis writes, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” This is quite true for me as I make my way through the Chronicles of Narnia. By the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I found myself wishing, with Lucy, that my time in Narnia would not come to an end.
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A Silence
Picture the prophet Elijah, just after calling fire down from heaven in a magnificent display of Yahweh’s supremacy, a great and terrifying show of power that prompts the people to worship the Lord as God and seize the prophets of Baal to slaughter. Picture a man of God whose faith seems to move mountains. Triumphant? Hopeful? Courageous? Possibly. But after hearing Jezebel’s threat to kill him, Elijah’s faith seems to vanish. 1 Kings 19:3 records, “Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life.”
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