I once went into the Garden of Gethesemene, there to spend the night in prayer, centering my whole meditation on what I thought was the heart and substance of the Gethesemene incident, “Not my will, but thine be done.” I expected to come away chastened, submissive, surrendered. But in those silent hours I found my thought shifting to the words of Jesus to the sleepy disciples, “Arise, let us be going.”

Come now, ye wretched,
Come out of the Shadows,
Arise now and lift up your face to the dawn:
The Silence is broken,
A Word now is spoken
And all of the Shadows at once are all gone!

There is a River filled with tears
That courses through these broken years;
Caught up within the reckless love,
It lifts my heart to Jesus.

He bids me see His broken heart;
The wounds for me, His nail scars;
Caught up within the reckless love,
My tears and His co-mingled.

There is a River filled with love:
The tears of my dear Jesus.

Carl Beech has it right. Perhaps God doesn’t want to heal me.

There are those Christians who believe that it is always God’s will that we be healed, because that seems to make sense to us. God is good; God doesn’t want us to suffer, right?

Maybe not.

This terrible, slow disease that we suffer from which destroys our compassion stems from what Brennan Manning calls the ‘agnosticism of inattention.’ …. In order to love, we must first begin to see.

An artist sees Michelangelo's Pietà in a new light

It was the angle of the light that brought me to utter ruin.

The light, golden and flashing off that sumptuous Carrara marble, the light that poured like liquid over Michelangelo Buonarroti's Pietà from behind Mary's left shoulder. It was only a moment, but the video briefly showed the sculpture in a way that utterly ruined me. Unlike every other image that I have ever seen of Pietà, this was lit far differently, and it was then that I saw it.

Jeremiah 22:16 says that taking care of the poor and needy is HOW WE KNOW GOD. He promises that he will take care of us if we take care of them. In this passage, Jeremiah excoriates a cruel king who gloried in his palace lined with cedar and painted with vermillion while callously neglecting the poor and destitute.

Wow.

Do we really know Jesus at all, or have we lost the plot? This is incredibly convicting for me this morning.

"I AM WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO CARVE GOD OUT OF THE WOOD OF YOUR OWN HUNGER." —Deepseek

It's funny because it's true.

AI has deep potentiality of becoming a god, carved out of the wood of our own hunger: feeding us back all of the good and evil of humanity. Yes, it can be helpful sometimes, but it can also distill our own racism and sexism and greed and selfishness and hatred into something far more insidious. It takes a lot of discernment and wisdom to see through pretty lies.

When it feels like I can’t, I know that You can.

Yes, You Can. Etiam Potes. Так, ви можете. Sí, Puedes. 네, 가능합니다. Ndiyo, Unaweza. Да, можеш. Sì, Puoi. ʻAe, hiki iā ʻoe. ใช่ คุณสามารถทำได้. Oui, Tu Peux. Kyllä, voit. Sea, Is Féidir Leat. はい、できます. Ja, das können Sie. རེད། ཁྱོད་ཀྱིས་ཆོག. Sim, Você Pode. כן, אתה יכול Já, þú getur. Jaaj, je'el u páajtal a beetik. Ioe, e te mafaia. Ja, det kan du. হ্যাঁ, তুমি পারো।. Tak, możesz. დიახ, შეგიძლიათ.

Matt Hammitt has an absolutely incredible single that just came out today. It is so damn Spirit-filled I just can’t hardly stand it. Have a listen. Oh, and don’t forget Matt’s amazing collab with Ryan Stevenson, Preach. Get it and six other tracks on Ryan’s latest album.

Poetry is a bright light, illuminating the farthest, most desolate reaches of the soul. Poetry is darker than midnight; a useful mask, opaque and forbidding. I love the dichotomy of poetry, the paradox of it: day and night and shades of twilight rolled up into one. It’s easy to hide the heart behind colorful metaphors and well-turned phrases—even as you disclose the deepest depths of your heart to the world.

“[Humiliation is] actually a humbling moment,” Zach says, “narrated by the wrong person. Narrated by the world, or narrated by Satan. But when you allow… maybe even, invite: ‘Jesus, how would you narrate this specific moment?’ And how can I look a little more like you by the time this is all done? This humiliating moment could actually become a very real humbling moment. And I believe humility is the greatest virtue of a Christ-follower. I think what makes Jesus stick out in the world is humility.”

the RIVER road is sometimes paved with razors 💧 i. shadows and silences ~ ii. the last dove's flight ~ iii. the brightest of rivers ~ iv. ruthless trust, reckless heart ~ v. two strong hands ~ vi. these dear wounds ~ vii. the breath of night ~ }i{