After they listened to the devil’s sweet nothings, all nature groaned. “How can it be? These God-bearers fall from a cliff when they can hide in the cleft. In a bite, in a whisper, they plot out how to unwrap dependence.
the smell of ants
A scientist observed several ants discarding one of their own dead. "How do they know?" he asked himself, and began mixing concoctions until he could fake an ant's death. He placed a smelly substance that marked out death on the back of an ant and put her inside the colony. Immediately drone soldier ants came and carried her off.
o come, o come...
ghosts
I like the Orthodox. They have ghosts. Catholics do too. They roam about and remind the living that death is not conclusive. Many also say that ghosts revenge the deeds not done while dragging skin and bone around. But, when Protestants entered, they killed off the haunts by theologizing souls springing to heaven, a presumptuous and boring end.
this thing that has happened
a new inerrancy
The Bible hosts inerrant truth, something dismissed, berated, belittled, or severely downgraded by so many church denominations. Inerrancy forces you to fall under the authority of God and his Word. You understand better that you are not special or unique; the law that accuses you of sin is the same for everyone. There are zero exceptions. Inerrancy also instructs you on the one and only way out: Jesus. One of my long-in-the-tooth seminary professors took me into his office one day and said this: “The only thing I learned – amid all this learning and studying and preparation – is Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Keep close to that because it’s the most important Truth.”
i haven't been gone that long
how will this be?
The desert of unprophetic years turns on a moment. It catches stars and pulls them in close like a surgeon caring for a dying patient. An angel descends looking for a certain teenage girl named Mary. When he locates her, she is startled by his appearance and his announcement. The nature of the news invites her to question…
xmas exchange
pain and grief
skyscrapers
eden made the mountains
weight of love
In the face of hosannas alluring ease, you saw through the veil of cloaks and palms to find the soul of restless humanity who spat and hurled insults within the week, the dying messiah who wouldn't speak, ignoring the politic while submitting to the instrument designed that day to reconcile sin by the color red.
write me into your story
I press my ear to the door and listen. I hear a conversation. It drifts in and out. At times there is nothing, just silence... and me – my own person – some purveyor who has bought into the trick and doesn’t know how it works. God, let’s not pretend. My perception of your whole story, from closing up the garden shop onward, falls onto stony paths most of the time.
the pulpit
Christ in you
puzzling christmas
pied piper
We’re inside and away from everyone so go tell the beat generation we finally found home, even though it rapes us of how things once were. Do you remember? Phrases like “new normal”, “social distancing” and “wear a mask” all broke out of the insane asylum and into the heads of faulty followers of Fauci.
mask of the beast
the prophetic is silent
The prophetic is silent. Its heyday is now rained out in an unbaptized haze of tolerance run amuck. O'Connor warned us: we really want a Christ without all that crucifixion talk. We want everyone carrying around open minds on top of shoulders broad enough to narrow nothing, and arms that carry no punch of truth, no signs of crosses, no healed withered-ness in its hands.