This Is Good News

There are many things we could say about the “good news” of Jesus. There are layers and layers of this good news that bring us into a life we’ve never imagined for ourselves or even realized we needed like our own next breath. 

But today I want to focus on just one aspect of that good news. 

John the Baptist, when telling the people to prepare themselves for God-in-the-flesh who was coming to earth among them, said: 

Every ditch will be filled in,

Every bump smoothed out,

The detours straightened out,

All the ruts paved over.

— Luke 3:5

I have experienced this good news of Jesus. 

When I began to know Jesus in a real and intimate way, I could look back on the terrain of my life and see ruts and jagged edges and huge ditches and potholes littered throughout the whole of it. My life’s history was pockmarked with brokenness. 

I was broken, and so was my history.

In my life with Jesus, he has been about the work of filling in those ditches, of smoothing those sharp edges, of filling in all of those potholes. He has been smoothing and filling the back road of my life. 

And do you know what he’s been filling it with? Himself. 

Do you have ditches and potholes and detours and drop-off edges in your own life’s history? Do you want to experience the good news that Jesus brings to you and those places? 

He Wants to Be Chosen by You

In the Look at Jesus course currently underway, we’ve been noticing Jesus as someone who continually puts himself out in front, vulnerable to acceptance and rejection. 

There’s a strength in Jesus — he knows who he is, he knows what he is here to do, he knows who his Father is. But even in that strength and confidence, he is choosing to make himself vulnerable. He offers himself again and again to a small group of friends who don’t fully grasp who he is. He offers himself again and again to crowds of people who ask him to touch them, heal them, restore their lives, and teach them about God — but then often leave him as quickly as they came to him.

He sees the need of people and, moved with compassion, keeps moving toward them. 

But it implies risk.

His friends misunderstand his intent. They want to get bigger, not become servants. They don’t want life with Jesus to include crosses and death. They don’t want to believe they will reject, deny, and leave him all alone. 

He keeps moving toward them anyway. 

Always with Jesus, there is his vulnerability to be received by you. He wants you to draw near. He wants you to know him — really know him — just as he knows and wants to keep knowing you. 

Do you want to draw near to Jesus?

After Easter

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:18-20

Yesterday we noticed that, in his resurrection and ascension, Jesus is with us even now, here, today. (I am so thankful for that, aren’t you?)

Today, I want to notice what was next — for the disciples and for us.

We talked about this a little bit already last week when we noticed the way Jesus prepared the disciples for life after life with him on earth. But in these last words he spoke to them before ascending into heaven, we learn a little bit more. 

Simply put, he asks them to make disciples. 

When reading through Matthew this time through, I really felt the fullness of what that charge meant.

Jesus spent three years with his disciples. He was with them day in and day out. He taught them about himself and about the nature of the kingdom of God. He answered their questions. He corrected their misunderstandings. He helped them practice the same things they saw him doing. 

He wasn’t asking them to evangelize with a few quick sentences or a few quick questions. 

He was asking them to be with people as he was with them.

Teaching them. Orienting them to a truer reality than the one they see around them. Showing them the nature of Jesus by their own lives. Answering their questions. Being present to them.

Life after Easter is about having Jesus with us here and sharing him — the fullness of him — with others. I so love that. It’s become what I most want to do.

He Is Risen, and He Is With Us

They called him Immanuel, which means “God With Us.”

For me, that has always meant the wonder of the incarnation — of God humbling himself into human form in Jesus in order to draw near, to be with us in our human experience of life, and to then die in order to draw us even nearer to himself. 

But this year, I’m thinking about the way Jesus is still, right now, with us. 

He is always Immanuel. 

Matthew records these last words of Jesus to his followers after the resurrection, just as he ascended into heaven: 

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:20

He is with us always. Even to the end of the age. 

Just as he was ascending into heaven, he tells his disciples he is with them always. It’s a physical impossibility for someone to be in heaven but also here on earth.

Unless you are God. Unless you have a Spirit by whom you come and dwell inside of man. Unless you have a Spirit whose role it is to remind humanity of all your words and teachings and to teach them even more truth — all things — than you taught while walking the earth. This is what Jesus says is true of the Holy Spirit: 

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. … But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

— John 14:23, 26

We have Jesus now, here. He comes and dwells with us. And we learn, through the agency of His Holy Spirit, all that is true and real in this life that God created. 

He is risen from the dead, and he is here with us now. Praise be to God!

The Women Who Never Left Him

Reading through the passion account in Matthew this year, I noticed the women. They’re faithfully there. 

On Friday, when Jesus was abandoned and ridiculed and scorned from every possible direction, hanging there on the cross, we read this: 

And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons. 

— Matthew 27:55

I think about them standing there, from afar, looking on. What were they thinking and feeling? What might they have said to one another, standing there, watching it all unfold? 

They must have felt so helpless, so astounded and incredulous, so grieved. 

And then we read that they were there when Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it in clean linen cloths, and laid it inside the brand-new tomb he’d recently hewn out of rock. It says: 

And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb.

— Matthew 27:61

In his death, they remained as close to him as they could get. They sat at his tomb. They watched. They wondered. They remained.

And on Sunday morning, as soon as the Sabbath has passed, they were there at the dawn of morning. They “came to see the tomb,” Matthew tells us. Mark’s gospel says they brought spices with them there, so they could anoint his dead body. 

The women take such care for him, I noticed. So attentive. So faithful and present, even after he died. 

It’s how they remained with him in his life, too.

Mary of Bethany (believed to be Mary Magdalene by the Catholic tradition) sat at his feet when he visited her home one time. Even as her sister Martha prepared the meal in the kitchen and got things ready to eat, Mary sat at his feet looking up at him, listening, learning, just being with him. 

On another occasion, that same Mary anointed his feet with expensive perfume as well as her very own tears, in anticipation and preparation of his death. Jesus remarks on every occasion that story is recorded in the gospels that it meant an incredible deal to him that she would demonstrate such love and care and sacrifice for him in his sorrows.

The women in Jesus’ life were so faithful and loving toward him. 

And it so moves me that, on the Sunday after his death, when they came to the tomb with the intent to anoint his body with their spices, our risen Lord chose to appear to them first. What grace.

He Hung There All Alone

As I was reading through the narrative of Christ’s passion in Matthew’s gospel last weekend, I was struck by the utter aloneness of Jesus. 

After spending three full years of eating meals, taking walks, listening to teachings, witnessing and performing miracles, enjoying friendship, and just doing everyday life with Jesus, his closest friends left him in an instant. Once the guards and multitudes arrived to take Jesus away in the garden, we read: 

Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled. 

— Matthew 26:56

Except Matthew includes a little postnote about Peter two verses later: 

But Peter followed Him at a distance to the high priest’s courtyard. And he went in and sat with the servants to see the end.

— Matthew 26:58

Really, Peter? You followed at a distance, snuck into a courtyard, hid among a cluster of servants — in order to see how it would turn out? 

It feels so sneaky. And that note about Peter really heightened my sense of Jesus’ aloneness in all of this. Even his closest friend could do no more than sneak around in the background on him, staying on the periphery. He wasn’t willing to come near. He wasn’t willing to be with Jesus. 

But then the aloneness just gets worse. 

Everyone in the high priest’s court testifies against him. There he stood, in the middle of all assembled there, while person after person brought their case against him. Then they took turns abusing him — they spat in his face, beat him, and taunted him, hitting him from behind and then goading him to prophecy who had done the hitting each time. 

The next day, on the day we observe today as Good Friday, the receding continued.

Against his better judgment, Pilate delivered the death sentence and then scourged him. His soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and crushed it into the brow of Jesus, then dressed him up in royal robes and mocked him. They, too, spat in his face and hit him on the head from behind with objects. 

Once Jesus hung on the cross, the soldiers hung out at his feet on the ground below the cross and gambled with each other for his clothes. People walking by the cross wagged their heads at him and sneered: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. Save yourself!” 

Even the two thieves, the ones hanging on his right and left, abandoned him. The scriptures say they reviled him as they hung there next to him (Matt. 26:44). 

He hung there all alone. Everyone left him. No one could stand to be with him in his final hours. 

And then the world turned black.

"Will You Watch With Me One Hour?"

Today is Maundy Thursday. It’s the day in the church calendar that signifies the final night of Christ’s freedom.

On this night of his life, Jesus celebrated the Passover feast with his disciples in the Upper Room. During that meal, he gave thanks for the bread and wine and offered it to them, saying that it represented his own body and blood that were being given and shed for his followers. He also, as recorded in John 13, washed the feet of his disciples (the act that gives Maundy Thursday its name). 

And then he walked with them to Mount of Olives.

This is the place that holds the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus struggled in prayer on that last night of his freedom, asking God if he really did need to die. 

When going apart to pray, we see Jesus ask his closest disciples to sit and wait for him. When he comes back to them three different times, each time he finds them asleep. Grieved, he asks them:

“Could you not watch with Me one hour?”

Tonight at my church, we’ve been invited to participate in a prayer vigil that is being kept through the night. Kirk and I signed up for a slot at 3 a.m., and I’m just full of anticipation at the opportunity to arrive at my church in the dead of night and kneel on the ground before an altar of candles, sitting with Jesus in the silence.

Will I be able to stay awake with him one hour? I hope so. 

And I want to encourage you, if you are so inclined, to carve out an hour of time this evening to do the same. Create a space in a corner of your home for this. It doesn’t have to be a very large or particularly holy kind of corner. Just a space for you and Jesus to sit together for an hour. Maybe light a candle. Maybe sit with your journal to record the things you think about or pray during that time. Spend time sitting with Jesus in the silence and the darkness of night, waiting with him for the hour of his death that soon approaches.

If you do this, I’d love to hear what it’s like for you. 

Oh, Judas

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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For some reason, I’ve spent more time thinking about Judas this Easter than ever before. He keeps cropping up everywhere.

I wonder about him. 

Did he know the religious leaders intended to kill Jesus when he agreed to hand him over to them? In Mark’s gospel account of the betrayal in the garden, we read that Judas told the multitude who came to seize Jesus, “Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him and lead Him away safely” (Mark 14:43). 

Lead him away safely? That doesn’t sound like the directive of someone who knows he’s leading a band of marauders who have blood and death set in their hearts. 

I wonder about Jesus, too. 

When Judas approaches Jesus in that moment of betrayal and greets him with that traitorous kiss, Jesus calls him friend: 

“Friend, why have you come?” 

— Matthew 26:50

Friend? 

Jesus knows why Judas came. Just 30 verses earlier in the same chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him and identifies Judas explicitly as the one. “Rabbi, is it I?” he asks Jesus. “You have said it,” Jesus replies. 

And yet he calls his betrayer friend and asks him why he’s come. 

I can’t help but wonder if Jesus is inviting Judas to face the truth of himself — that perhaps he knew Judas was detached from the reality of his actions. Even though Judas went directly to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus for a fee of silver, he then asked Jesus if he was the one who would do it. Did he not know — really — what he had set himself to do? 

Did Judas not have the strength to see and own the truth of himself? 

I’m not sure he did. We know what happened after Jesus was condemned by the religious leaders to death. Judas feels remorseful, goes back to the religious leaders to try and make things right, is denied, and then goes and hangs himself. 

Oh, Judas. My heart breaks for you.

Last year in an Ash Wednesday service, I was led to consider for the first time what happened during those three days Jesus spent in Hades after he died. What did he say or do in his time down there? Did he preach the truth of his own good news to those already dead?

I hope so.

And then recently, my rector posed a new question: Did he encounter Judas there? 

If so, I wonder what their encounter was like. I can’t help but hope Judas bowed at the feet of Jesus and repented of what he’d done, then received the open, forgiving arms of Jesus welcoming him back into love.

Preparing the Disciples for What Comes Next

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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After Jesus engaged in a truth-telling series of teaching with the religious leaders in Jerusalem, he spent time with his disciples. 

And what he did was prepare them for life after life on earth with Jesus. 

If you have a red-letter Bible and look at Matthew 24-25, you will see solid red letters all the way through. All of these red letters — the very words of Christ — are the words Jesus spoke to his disciples about what to expect about the end of time and how to live in the meantime, while waiting for it to come to pass. 

He’s teaching them how to live after he’s left them.

He begins by answering their question about the end of days, telling them how they will know those days are near. He prepares them for the inevitability of false prophets who will call themselves the savior in his stead. He tells them life will be hard. 

And he asks them, in all of this, to be faithful and trustworthy: 

“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.”

— Matthew 24:45-47

This teaching to be faithful continues through chapter 25.

He tells the parable of the ten virgins — five wise and five foolish — who awaited the coming of their groom. What made five of them wise? Being prepared with enough oil to light their lamps through the night, no matter how long they were made to wait for the groom’s arrival. 

He tells the parable of the talents — a master who goes away for a long spell but leaves his servants with some resources with which to be creative and useful and fruitful while he’s gone. Those who were blessed upon his return were those who did just that: used what the master had given them to some good and fruitful end.

He talks about a division of sheep and goats — those who enter into glory (sheep) and those who don’t (goats). What marks the difference? Those who choose to love and care for others on earth, no matter their circumstance.

In all this, Jesus is teaching his disciples — and all of us who follow him — how to live until the end of time. 

Be faithful. Be useful for good with what you have and who you are. Be full of love and care and kindness and mercy. Until he returns to set all things right.

Enter Jerusalem, Enter Conflict and Strife

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week that began yesterday. 

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It struck me this time more than any other time I’ve read through the gospel of Matthew that confrontation and strife first greeted Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. 

The first thing he did was cleanse the temple. Yes. I’d noticed that before. 

But this was the first time I’d thought about this being the temple. As in, the huge, monolithic structure that the people of Israel took years and years to build in the time of Solomon. As in, the place of intent and holy pilgrimage for all the Jews every year when they observed the Passover. As in, regarded with way more reverence than any local synagogue that stood in for the temple on behalf of the people throughout the rest of the year’s duration. 

Jesus came and cleansed that temple. 

I’m pretty sure that made no little mark on the city that week. 

He then proceeded to have it out with the religious leaders — the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Herodians. Every single one of them wanted a piece of Jesus once he got to Jerusalem.

And here’s what I noticed.

Even though Jesus had been confronted by the religious leaders throughout his three years of ministry elsewhere, this time it came on him like an onslaught. He’d no sooner finish answering one question than another group of leaders would approach him with another. 

I share in the Look at Jesus course that the gospel of Matthew is known as a teaching gospel. This is a gospel where we find long sections of scripture where Jesus teaches and teaches and teaches in long, continuous strands. Sometimes the people listening to that teaching are his disciples. Sometimes it is the multitude of people following him around everywhere

In this case, Jesus launches into a teaching discourse with his enemies. 

For three straight chapters, we see him very pointedly telling stories that liken those religious leaders to people who completely mess up — a son who tells his father that he’ll work the family vineyard but then doesn’t; vinedressers who are hired to work a landowner’s vineyard but beat, stone, and murder everyone in authority who comes on the owner’s behalf to check on the land, even up to the landowner’s son; the original guest list for a king’s lavish wedding feast who decide their own affairs are more important than the wedding feast and even go so far as to kill those who come to invite them to attend.

Matthew makes very clear that the religious leaders know what Jesus is doing in these stories — that he’s talking about them. They can read between the lines of the stories, and they’re furious. 

The conflict doesn’t stop there, though. 

Jesus then begins his long and famous diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees. Not only does he first warn the people against them in no uncertain terms, but he then starts in on them directly with numerous “Woe to you!” vindictives. 

The confrontations Jesus has with the religious leaders earlier in his ministry are tame compared to those he engaged in Jerusalem the very last week of his life.

It’s as though the fire has been turned up — way up. And it’s about to boil over.

Palm Sunday, and Entering Holy Week

Hello, loves. 

When I shared the 2012 dates for the Look at Jesus course earlier this year, someone asked if I intended the first offering of the course to start with Holy Week. Truthfully, no. It hadn’t crossed into my awareness at all that the first week of the course would coincide with the week leading up to Easter. 

I consider it a serendipitous oversight now.

And that’s because this weekend, as I’ve been reading the Gospel of Matthew in preparation for the start of the course this week, I have found it very special to be reading the details of the last week of Jesus’ life at the same exact time the worldwide church is observing that same event.

It was rather surreal, for example, to be reading along in the pages of Scripture earlier today and to suddenly find myself in Matthew 21, which depicts the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem — otherwise known as Palm Sunday.

Which is today. 

I’ve decided, in observance of Holy Week, to post consecutively here from today through Easter, using the posts this week to share things that have struck me about the passion week of Jesus as I’ve read through the pages of Matthew, in particular, this weekend. 

Like, for instance, that it wasn’t until Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ — the anointed one all Israel had been waiting to arrive — that Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and his impending death.

Matthew records these words just after Peter confesses the truth of Jesus’ identity: 

“From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” 

— Matthew 16:21

In this, we see that Jesus knew his fate. He knew what awaited him in Jerusalem. He knew what had to happen. He knew what lay ahead.

But his disciples didn’t. Not until they’d professed him as the Christ, that is. Only then were they ready to learn what lay ahead. Even if they still didn’t fully understand it. Even if they weren’t really ready for it. Even if they would leave him once the persecution began.

This Is Spiritual Formation

God rewrote the text of my life

   when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

— Psalm 18:24

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about the way our lives de-form us.

I was reflecting on many of the pieces of my heart — large, sweeping sections of it down to the tiny nooks and crannies — that Jesus has come in and healed. These pieces and places that he’s healed and the way he’s then reconnected me to the true self he created in conceiving me — this is spiritual formation. This is the work of God (and us) in our life with him.

This is his intent. Healing. Wholeness. Freedom. Life. The extension of the kingdom into the places where we live.

How might God intend to rewrite the text of your life? What is it like for you to consider opening the book of your heart to his eyes?

Free and Made Alive

I have the incredible privilege of having been asked to proofread the entire biblical text of the New King James Version of the Bible for one of my freelance clients, a publisher, who is putting out a new study Bible this year. 

I know — pretty stinking incredible, right?

It’s a project I feel so humbled and excited to be part of. I am so loving it.

But one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve worked my way through the Old Testament is how heavy it makes my heart. Everywhere you turn in the pages of the Old Testament, all kinds of wickedness happens left and right. Brothers kill and betray and turn on each other. Daughters trick their fathers into sexual sin. Husbands lie about their wives. Not to mention the way nations war at the drop of a hat. 

The violence, deception, and general brokenness of humanity, written so plainly all over the pages of the Old Testament, hurts my heart. 

But something else about the Old Testament has been hurting my heart, too, and that’s the onerous burden of the law. Read through the Pentateuch — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — at a single, continuous stretch, and you’ll find law upon law, statute upon statute, written and repeated over and over, again and again. 

And these aren’t simple laws, either. The law of God as given to the people of Israel is rich and complex, with layer upon layer and contingency upon contingency. I can’t help wondering how Israel possibly remembered it all. It makes my head spin.

It also makes me feel like I’m sinking in a very thick lake of molasses. 

It’s just impossible. It’s so nuanced — it almost feels like you can barely lift your feet or turn from left to right without worrying whether you’re up the law correctly or breaking it.

And then the other night, as I was reading through those pages and sinking ever so slowly into that murky mire of despair with all its tentacles gripping me, my thoughts (thankfully) turned to Jesus. And it struck me for perhaps the very first time in a truly gutteral, known-in-the-depths-of-my-heart kind of way what the precepts of Christianity have been teaching me all along: 

We could not fulfill the law, and so Jesus fulfilled it for us. 

The coming of Jesus fundamentally changes everything. God hasn’t changed, nor was Jesus a different representation of who God really is. But our relationship with God has changed now because of Jesus. The way we relate to him and the way he relates to us has changed — all because of Jesus. 

And I am just so thankful. 

Along similar lines, this morning I was sitting by the pool outside our Captiva condo listening to a Phil Wickham album called “Singalong” and was struck by these words in the final song on the album:

The earth was shaking in the dark,

All creation felt the Father’s broken heart,

Tears were filling heaven’s eyes,

The day that true love died.

When blood and water hit the ground,

Walls we couldn’t move came crashing down,

And we were free and made alive,

The day that true love died.

The walls we couldn’t move came crashing down, and we were free and made alive. 

That’s what has happened because of Jesus. On this side of the Old Testament, where we now live, we have been given freedom and life.

I am so, so thankful for this. I’m thankful for the grace-filled, tender, always-full-of-growth relationship with God that is now possible for us to experience because of Jesus. 

What about you? What is it like to hold the gift of that fundamental shift in the way you can relate to God because of Jesus?

Discerning Our Way to Trust

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m given an opportunity for discernment, my knee-jerk reaction is frustration and fear. I have an initial preference for how I want the situation to work out, and my gut tells me I won’t get my own way. So I feel defensive — and just a little bit mad. 

It occurs to me this is really an issue of trust. 

Do I trust that Jesus is attentive to me? That he knows what I want and also knows the best solution? That he has a greater scope in his viewfinder than I do in mine? That he knows what he is doing? 

Once I realize this is an issue of trust, I can slow down, breathe, and answer these questions. And that’s when I realize — thankfully — that my relationship with him has built a foundation of trust in me toward him. I do trust him, and I want to keep trusting him.

Sometimes it just takes slowing down, stepping back, and really evaluating my level of trust in Jesus. And that makes going into discernment quite a lot easier than it was before. 

How do you feel about your own level of trust in Jesus? What are the ways you’ve learned to trust him? What are the reasons you struggle to trust him still? 

Meeting Jesus on the Beach

Hello there, lovelies.

Today is the first day since being down in Captiva that I left the condo with the express intent to meet Jesus on the beach. 

As I was walking there, I had the feeling of walking to meet him for a date. He was already there on the shoreline, just waiting for me to arrive, and I was on my way. 

It made me smile as I walked to meet him. 

The photo above is one I took once I reached the shoreline to meet him and start walking. The thought I had upon seeing this view was, “The beach is ours.” Such a long stretch without any other people on it. Just a place for me and Jesus to walk and talk and then turn around and do it all over again. 

He met me in a beautifully powerful way there on that shoreline walk today. It’s a conversation I don’t feel free to share out loud here, but it’s enough for now to say that it was one in which I voiced fears and insecurities and then received gifts beyond measure in return. 

It was one that grew my faith. One that asked for my faith to stretch and trust he would be there to meet such a stretch. One that invited me to attach my faith to visible, tangible markers of what Jesus is doing, wants to do, and will do. 

One in which I received the hearts of others and ended up carrying the heart of Jesus in my hand.

Do you want to meet Jesus?

There’s room for you to join us in looking at Jesus together here. You would be more than welcome to join us. I know that he, for sure, would love to spend that time with you too.

*Pinch, Pinch* Is This Really Happening?

On Friday night, I got an e-mail from a friend offering me a totally unexpected and almost-too-good-to-be-true opportunity. Her husband’s parents had rented a condo on Captiva Island for the week and were unable to use it at the last minute due to illness. Did Kirk and I want to come and make use of it instead, free of charge? 

Did we? Um, let me check my calendar for a moment. *Clears calendar* 

So here we are, still pinching ourselves two days later. 

It is not lost on me that I’m spending a week on the beach — the same place I walk and talk with Jesus on a daily basis these days. And for the next slate of days, I get to walk on the actual beach with him. Actual sand on my feet, actual water on my calves, an actual shoreline on which to walk back and forth, an actual beach upon which to sit and talk with him. 

I wonder how he will meet me here this week? You can bet that I will share it here with you. 

And in the meantime …  

Registration for the Look at Jesus course is now officially open!

I can’t tell you how excited and blessed I feel to be offering this course for a second time. To register, go to the course details page and click on the “Buy Now” button listed in the right-hand sidebar. 

Note: Once you register, you will be redirected to a private page that offers a welcome message from me — including a fun welcome video and some questions to get you started that will help me get to know you.

The course is limited to 10 participants —I hope you’ll join us!

Jesus Is the Beatitudes, Maybe

This morning I was sitting on the beach with Jesus, telling him about something unexpected that happened yesterday about which I’d been invited to make a decision. 

There were some pieces to weigh in the decision, but overall, my response to what had emerged was quite positive. I sat on the beach with Jesus and told him everything I was thinking and feeling about it.

As I spoke, I was quite animated, just letting myself be in the moment and the reality of my thoughts and feelings. And while I shared those things with him, he just kept looking at me, listening, with a smile on his face. It almost seemed like his eyes were sparkling.

I found myself quite captivated by him in that moment, so amazed and thankful that he has given me a chance to know him in this way. But I also found myself quite aware that this is the God of the universe here, sitting on the beach with me, listening and smiling. 

Isn’t this what they call meekness — strength and power brought under control? 

If so, Jesus is the full embodiment of meekness. All the power of the Godhead in himself and all the knowledge of the world and all existence, encased in an ordinary human body and present with us in the minutiae of our lives.

This got me thinking about the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where Jesus says, “Blessed are the … , for they shall … ” Those who are meek are on that list. Those who are peacemakers are on that list, too. Those who show mercy are on that list, and so are those who mourn. 

Jesus is all these things, and more.

And it got me thinking: Jesus is all the Beatitudes, maybe? That is a new thought for me. I can’t say I’ve ever read the Beatitudes list in quite that way before, using Jesus as an example.

Have you ever thought about this? What do you think about Jesus being all the Beatitudes?

PS: If you enjoy learning about Jesus in this space and find yourself wanting to know him more, I invite you to consider joining us for the next offering of Look at Jesus. Registration will open on Monday — space is limited to 10 participants!

Having Fun with Jesus

Something I’ve noticed about Jesus lately is how much he loves to laugh. 

Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I was praying for someone at my desk when I noticed a huge burst of joy exploding in my heart. It was that moment of realizing I’d been in the presence of God and could trust him wholly — and it made me want to dance!

I was back on the beach with Jesus again, dancing around on the sand in my bare feet and even venturing back out into the water with him. We were laughing and playing, and he was smiling and laughing with me, totally enjoying the moment and my joy. 

It’s kind of amazing: the God of the universe, knowing all things and having all wisdom and holding the entirety of creation together, but also enjoying laughter with me.

How might you enjoy the lightheartedness and laughter of Jesus today?

Just Being Held

Today is one of those days when it feels like I’m holding concerns from many different sources in my heart, and the end result is that my heart is now dragging on the ground. It can feel a bit disorienting, like I don’t really know what happened because I thought I was fine just yesterday, but then when I stop and enumerate what I’m holding, I realize it makes a lot of sense that I’m feeling weighted down. 

I’ve had several moments of sitting with Jesus on the beach this morning through this. 

We sit on the beach head and stare out at the waves, and I try to talk to him about the heaviness of my heart. But words are insufficient, and the talking stops almost as soon as it’s started. Usually, I just end up staring back out at the waves, enumerating to myself again all those concerns and reaffirming, “Yeah. It’s there. The heaviness. For a reason.” 

Each time this morning, this cycle of talking, then stopping, then thinking leads to my just leaning into Jesus, my head against his shoulder, so that he can hold me. He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close, just sitting with me and my heaviness. 

And I realize: this is what I want most of all in this place. 

I don’t want someone who will talk with me about solutions. Not right now, at least. I don’t want someone to talk with me at all, actually.

I just want presence.

And being held by Jesus as we sit on the sand and watch and listen to the waves right now? it’s just right. It’s just what I need. 

I love that we can be with Jesus — or, rather, that he can be with us — in whatever state we are. If we need to talk, he’ll talk. If we need to move, he’ll move with us. If we just need presence, he’ll sit with us. 

What do you need in your relationship with Jesus right now?

He Knows You

I don’t know about you, but I have gone through so many seasons of my life feeling lonely and unseen by the majority of people. Finding people in life who take the time to really see and know us is rare, isn’t it? (I, for one, am immensely grateful and hold on tight to those who do come along and offer such extraordinary friendship!)

That feeling of being known, being seen and understood, and being selflessly loved and cared for as we are is rare and an incredible gift. 

That is the kind of knowing Jesus offers you. 

A couple weeks ago, we explored the truth that Jesus wants to know you, and we talked about one way that kind of relational knowing can look with him. And in those cases, we talked from the place of what it can be like for us to choose to share ourselves with Jesus and open ourselves to the experience of being known by him in those places.

Today, I’d like to center on the aspect of Jesus that already does see and know you, without you having to do anything to bring that seeing and knowing about. 

Do you ever find yourself in those moments of loneliness, wanting someone — at least one person — to be with you where you are and take the time to see with you what is there? Do you find yourself longing for someone to completely understand, without your having to wonder if they really get it or having to hide parts of yourself that might not be acceptable or understood? 

That is the way Jesus knows you. 

He knows and understands all of you. He knows you in the inmost being. When you are feeling alone and wishing for someone to see and know you, Jesus is ready to know you in that way. 

What is it like for you to receive the idea of being known by Jesus in this way?