Time and time again I have returned to this truth in my life. That relationships are what matter.

It is like a refreshing stream, resetting my pursuits and re-prioritizing my time.

The times I catch myself living more like a human doing than a human being are quick wake up calls to those impulses for productivity and efficiency that simmer inside seeking only to further myself. A quick critique to the selfish set of horse blinders I tend to put on.

We are more than the things we do. In fact, people won’t remember us for our accomplishments, but how we treated them. Relationships do matter.

We know relationships are good for us, but we are categorically bad at them.

The apparent irony of this whole technological age is that the same devices that have promised connection, have only brought us further apart. Social media has made us less social. URLs have cut down on our time spent together IRL.

But it always comes back to relationships—we need community.

I HAD A GOOD college experience. It was fun and formative, and I walked away with lasting friendships.

But I went to a small school in Arkansas that people usually haven’t heard of. So, the first question is typically Why there, of all places?

It certainly became cliche within a few weeks of campus living, since most of the student body would concur, but the answer was always a resounding the community.

But, that’s an all too hand-wavy, ethereal kind of answer. It’s hard to put a finger on what really comprises community. The tendency is to say that it’s the people.

Sure, the people make the place, but it’s not just any people. That’s not good enough either. There are groups of people at work, at school, in your neighborhood, but that doesn’t make them a community.

It takes people, yes, but their is some other secret sauce in the formula. There must be some other sticky ingredient that holds them together tightly.

WITNESSING THE strong bond developed in some communities has led me to ask a question: What is their connection founded on?

People are brought together in proximity for an assortment of reasons. I’ve noticed the groupings that seem to be the strongest tend to have a cultural, sexual or religious commonality uniting them.

The glue that holds community together could be boiled down to any number of things. Perhaps, shared interests or hobbies or proximity could explain this fostered connection. Though, I have seen something deeper that brings people together in the most authentic community.

At my company we have some ethnic employee resource groups. I have gotten to spend some time with the Asian-Pacific Islander group and peek in on their social gatherings. There is a real sense of belonging present among the members, a whole-hearted acceptance of others and a merging of lives.

From the outside it is clear to see that all of the members are Asian. The shared culture and interests are evident. But there is something deeper than ethnicity. It’s not so much that they have Asian features or grew up in Asian culture, but that they are Asian. It’s a defining characteristic. It is an identity.

This looks similar within the LGBT community—regardless of how you feel about the movement. You can feel their comradery and, forgive me, pride in their group. It seems a curious thing to constitute a communal basis on. Though, again, I think it is more than shared commonalities that runs so deep for them. Their sexuality is their identity. And they have found a social asylum with others who define themselves in a similar manner.

All that to say, I feel that I have unearthed an intrinsic truth of human social behavior:

We search for our deepest community with those who share our most precious identity.

I HAVE HEARD people say that they love God, but not his church. This always perplexes me. How can someone claim to love the head and not the body? It seems counterintuitive. You can’t have one without the other.

The stats on church attendance are alarming. About half of professing American Christians don’t attend church at all.

I get it, church hurt is real. I have seen the Hillsong documentary. I know people who have experienced tremendous church hurt. My family switched churches in high school after we experienced hurt.

Though, I see that there is this real disconnect for people. People are unable to discern the wrong done to them as human in nature and not coming from God. Hurt that happens in a religious context ends up finding its way back to a divine root cause, and then the blame gets cast.

The church will always be made up of imperfect people, because, frankly, that is all God has to work with. But he is still doing a good work in his church, and that community is vital for Christians.

As believers, if the most important thing about us at the core of who we are is our identity in Christ, then it would naturally follow that we would fulfill our human need for community primarily in a church context around other believers.

Don’t miss what I’m saying here. I don’t think that finding community in other places is inherently wrong or should be completely avoided. There is great opportunity to be light in other bodies of people that are not foundationally grounded in their faith.

But as Christians we should find our deepest community with other believers.

I OFTEN HEAR people relay their woes of trying to find and integrate themselves into new church community. There is usually a similar sentiment of not feeling a connection or not relating with the people there. Not being able to find “my people.”

From a worldly standpoint this may have some merit, because the church was not intended to be some kind of club to assemble all of the “cool” people—whatever “cool” means. If that is what you’re seeking, this may not be the place. In fact, much of Christ’s impending kingdom will look like foolishness to the world, so it may be quite the opposite of “cool.”

The real beauty of this kind of church community is that it brings together individuals who would have otherwise had no reason to cross paths. It is only the foundational identity of faith in Christ that is capable of uniting in this way. This echoes the revelation that Christ is redeeming to himself a people from every nation, tribe, people and language.

Christ brings together people from different walks of life in a way that nothing else can. This makes for an environment where young families, retired folks, and single college students can all interact, learn from and grow, and encourage one another from different stages of life. It is a haven for seeking biblical wisdom and fertile ground for growing in maturity. The church assembles a slice of life that only Walmart can rival.

If you do not feel like you are connecting with people in your church community, my challenge to you is to reassess your foundational identity. Are you a Christian at the core of who you are? Or, is Christian just a hat that you wear for part of the week, a verse on your Instagram bio?

I truly believe that you will find yourself most at home in a community that shares the deepest defining characteristic of who you are.

If you feel more at home and more comfortable in a community that is not faith-based, this is not an exhortation to ditch them and go find new friends. Those people are still important and valuable. Relationships are never disposable.

However, Christian community is foundational to the vitality of the believer. We need to rub shoulders with people that share our faith. Our deepest identity will breed our purest community. What does your community say about your identity?

Truly, the only redeeming quality of Kansas is the bisecting spine of interstate I-70 that serves as transport to the Rockies. I’ve long thought this would be a great location for the first North American bullet train, and if you wish to help petition please let me know.

When our escape was not Branson, MO—the Christian homeschool Vegas—my family found ample time to visit the mountainous state of Colorado. But, hailing from 1,000 feet above sea level, none of us were cut out for typical mountain adventure sport.

Mile high city was already a stretch for us, but any place up in the mountains threatened to max the lungs out. I remember my first time at the top of Pike’s Peak—we drove—I was fighting altitude sickness just to visit the donut shop.

But college offered ample opportunity for such mountainous adventures that I could never find good enough reason to decline. Eighteen credits of engineering courses was never excuse enough—the homework would could always wait.

It was on one of those first trips that I got a matching stick-and-poke with my roommate in a Denver coffee shop to commemorate our love of the mountains, after successfully summitting my first pair of Colorado peaks, barely. The ink on our ankles—that gets routinely confused for a clock or a gas tank—is really a compass pointing towards the place I’d rather be, the geological features that my heart is set on.

There is an instinctive charm out there. There is an opportunity to bask in the glory of the Divine while putting my own mortality to the test. It’s always been about beauty and pushing the limits.

Unfortunately, it’s never been about planning. Though, that certainly elevates the “dad lore”—and my mom’s blood pressure.

On this particular trip, I was with a group of three other guys packed into a Nissan Xterra, heading west.

Another suitemate had asked one of them earlier that day: “Are you going anywhere this weekend?”

“Colorado,” my roommate responded, nonchalantly.

“Like the state?” came the shocked response.

And, that is how most of these adventures took place—without warning, without planning, and jam-packed into a weekend between classes with minimal time to reset for the week. I would want it no other way.

We left campus promptly after my 3 o’clock Friday class got out, driving through the night from Northwest Arkansas to the trailhead. Besides a stop at Chipotle and a friend’s house for gear—since we were unprepared as ever—it was full steam ahead to the mountains.

Twelve hours later I found myself at the helm, tracing the crevices of a bumpy dirt road like braille in the dead of night. Comments peppered me from the backseat to hedge the vessel port side. In hindsight, I can understand their apprehension: an abrupt cliff lingered on the right side.

Rest was a thought at the trailhead. But with lack of acclimation and proper hydration already in the cocktail, we thought why not throw a lack of sleep into the mix.

Our quartet set out at 4 AM, our loud joviality, no doubt, not nearly as appreciated by the rest of those camping near the trailhead. And, before I knew it, I was in the thick of it—hiking my first mountain!

It was truly a movie out there. The continental divide held the sun back for longer than it should have so most of the ascent took place in the dark, save for the beaming full moon that transformed the landscape into a black-and-white film scene, a grayscale depiction of reality.

But it didn’t take long for the lack of planning to hit with full force. I was grateful to have an extra jacket to brave the cold and windy mountainside. Though, there was nothing to cloak the dreariness and lack of acclimatization. I found my legs crossing over and stumbling in an inebriated fashion, threatening to send my body tumbling over the edge. And, every time our crew took a pit stop, my body seemed prone to slumber, sneaking any possible moment of shut-eye.

There is a point in every adventure where you begin to reason and rationalize with yourself. It is a mix of motivation and meaning that your mind is after. The mental games start to help push yourself a little further, realizing that you’re up against the elements and don’t want to be the one friend dragging behind who gets stranded on a heap of rocks.

Then, the questions start to sink in. Will I be able to finish this hike? Should I just turn around now? What am I even doing out here? Why did I choose to walk all over this pile of rocks? The train of thought veers existential quick.

And, if you’re not careful, it can be easy to keep your head down, so entrenched in the grind and monotony of the hike—the persistent repetition of one foot in front of the other—that you may miss whatever “roses” each vista has to offer.

Our troop made the first summit just before sunrise, passing a goat or two on the “final” saddle push. I say final in jest, because I made that claim about a dozen times. But, that mindset helped me to keep making progress with some breaks within. My other friends kept a slower and steadier pace from the saddle to the summit. We got there at the same time. So, I guess the tortoise and the hare ended up tying this time around.

The summit was stunning. We reclined among the rocky scree, huddled behind a wall of boulders to shelter us from the wind torrents as the sun peaked its way over the continental divide. This was our reward: the panoramic views illumined by the rising sun, both a taste of transcendence and a reminder of our finitude. The vastness of God’s majesty was on full display, while we fought tooth and nail against the elements for a meager seat to behold it all.

The hike was challenging, yes, but equally rewarding—worth it. And, ever since I got a taste of that “high,” I have been chasing it like an addict ever since.

Make no mistake, hiking mountains is no easy task. There is usually some collateral damage the body pays. On this particular trip, it took me all afternoon to recover from the adventure. We took an hour nap on the rock-hard ground back to the car. And one of my friends spent the afternoon rehabbing me in a Leadville pizza joint.

But, mountains are never hiked because they are easy.

They are hiked because they challenge you and take you out of your comfort zone. And, ultimately—no matter how much planning you do—they take away your control. Which is a hard thing for us as humans to relinquish, but necessary to fear the Lord.

The mountain peak renders us vulnerable to the world like the dust from which we came, and it presents a new perspective to appreciate God’s glory from.

So, get out there, and get hiking. There are mountains to climb.

And the line in the sand for this ostracized group will be artificial intelligence.

Lest you have not heard, 2025 has been heralded as the year that AI became mainstream. Companies are pouring more money into the technology than they are getting out of it. Employees are using it as a tool of productivity and efficiency. The general public has overwhelming access to it to generate heaps of senseless pictures, songs and expositions that have become un-affectionately known as “AI slop.” So it goes.

Much to the outrage of many on this platform, Time magazine chose their Person of the Year to be the ‘architects of AI’—that being all of the billionaires funneling money into this grand experiment.

We have been in the weeds of the internet, televisions and cell-phones for a long time now. Technology has always progressed at an exponential rate. Moore’s Law sought to formulate this speed of innovation. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed the trend of the number of transistors on a microchip doubling every two years, increasing computing power and decreasing cost.

This is the rapid pace of technological advancement that we have been thrust into over the past half-century or so. It already feels as if the whole world is available at our fingertips, but the can of worms has just been opened. Now, I think people are beginning to sense that there is something different about the emergence of AI.

It seems to be progressing at an un-matched rate. And, new technologies brings new questions. Will AI take more jobs or simply redistribute them? Will AI acquire too much power before we are able to shut it off?

There is a lot of chatter about AI on this platform especially and it makes sense because it is vying to eliminate creative craft—certainly, the time and effort needed in such creative craft. Though, I don’t think this technology will ever replace the arts. But, there are a lot of creatives here that have read one too many Substack posts about Wendell Berry and now think that we must dismantle AI at its core.

I’m here to tell you, That’s just not going to happen!

I’m all for keeping AI removed from the arts as much as possible. It seems like every other day now I find myself engrossed in some wacky video that I can’t believe is real, until the unsettling truth dawns on me that I was feasting on some AI-generated-slop.

But we can’t keep AI completely at bay. It already has too much of a strangle-hold on everyday life. Many people already use it as their dedicated search engine. My job encourages AI use to maximize our productivity. We are expected to use a company regulated concoction of ChatGPT and Gemini. It seems AI has essentially become a facet of modern life at this point.

If these Christian creatives are any bit serious about following through with their convictions—as posed online—I see this playing out a lot like the Amish.

The Amish are those kind, plain folk who drive horse-and-buggies along the highway and make quality furniture. If you’ve never seen any Amish people before, fly to any Midwest city and drive for two-hours in any direction. You are sure to spot the infamous horse-and-buggy on the move.

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with what the Amish have done and the tradition they hold fast to and the technology that they resist. But most of us tend to see their lifestyle as a bit odd. The plain clothes, the lack of tech, the isolation all seems a tad strange from the outside.

Though, in their best conscious, following their beliefs, they have chosen to disengage with much of the advancements of modernity, in favor of tradition. Their values have kept them increasingly isolated from the everyday life of a modern individual, and I have to wonder if that is for the better or the worse.

As Christians, we believe the Bible offers us God’s wisdom on how to engage with life. However, it does not give us all of the black-and-white answers on how we should live in modern life. So, we have some work to do.

Every time a new technology comes along Christians are met with the challenge to approach it thoughtfully and to engage it in moderation. Though, all too often our approach goes one of two ways. We either fully reject progress and stick to our old ways or we dive in fully without proper restrictions or guidelines to use the technology appropriately.

In most instances, neither of these solutions are entirely helpful. How can they be? The Bible was not written to a culture that had undergone such technological advancement as ours. Merely holding to tradition or swaying with progression is too simple a path to follow.

Life has nuance—things are not simply black-and-white. As Christians we must learn to navigate the gray areas of life. These difficult conversations should not take backseat importance. A theology of how we live in the context of new and rapidly developing technology is an important discussion that needs to be had.

These questions have approached Christians of every age. But today technology is progressing much faster and these questions of how we’ll interact in moderation keep hitting us with more and more regularity.

When deciding to make the jump to join the 21st Century Amish or not, a verse from the Sermon on the Mount came to my mind.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

- Matthew 5:14

We are called to be a “city on a hill” to the rest of the world by the way we live.

Now, with the implementation of AI into culture we have arrived at such a stark crossroads. Some will run for the hills and hide their children’s faces from the technology and others will invest too deeply, building their lives too integrally on something dangerous.

In all this mess and commotion of technological innovation, things are coming at us faster than we have proper time to stop and rationalize our way forward. Jesus calls us to be a “city on a hill.” What does that best look like in this specific cultural moment that is saturated by artificial intelligence?

The Amish method makes one a defined city, isolated from the rest. The difference—the “set-apart”-edness—is attained, but what about being placed on a hill? I fear the isolation may hinder the light-giving aspect of such a city.

Are we meant to be so overtly different from culture and isolate ourselves or should we live differently within the culture?

This leads me to consider how we can best be “light” to those around us: as a monk or as a missionary.

The monastic calling tends to demand isolation from culture in exchange for a life of dedication to prayer. Though it is an evident call to holiness, I see this as forfeiting our opportunity to be a “city on a hill.”

Missionaries, on the other hand, partake in the present culture to an extent. This may look like a manifestation of the phrase “in the culture, but not of the culture.” Hudson Taylor’s understanding of “being all things to all men” as Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 9:22 led him to adopt the cultural Chinese clothing as his daily attire.

It’s about creating commonalities on the most basic levels to have a chance to share the Gospel. I saw this first hand during my time with an inner-city basketball ministry. As a young, white high-school kid from the suburbs, I had effectively nothing in common with my teammates that came from much rougher backgrounds than I did. Yet, I saw the game of basketball create enough common ground between us that I was able to have conversations about Jesus with my teammates.

Do not run for the ‘hills’ to build a city. We are intended to build on the hill within the city. Culture must be engaged with; Christians need to be active participants. I think that all Christians should seek to understand AI; be aware of its strengths, weaknesses, and biases; and be able to utilize it effectively for non-creative and mindless tasks.

The first step in developing a theology on a new technology is awareness. We need to know what we are up against before we can make a game plan. Though, at this point we must be most cautious to not entangle our loves with powers we do not yet understand. Tread carefully.

But, my question still remains:

To what extent should we engage and utilize a technology such as AI?

I don’t have a perfect answer here. I go back and forth day to day on where I stand. I’m still trying to find my path forward. What I do know is that my road is going to exhibit a nuanced approach—I’m neither fully pro-AI or fully anti-AI.

This is still very much an ongoing conversation, and I want it to be. It’s one that we need to keep having as Christians as we continue to monitor technological developments. Tech is only going to change quicker, so we are going to need to be even more discerning. Take inventory often and ask yourself why you are living as you do.

I want to know what you think. Help develop these thoughts further by continuing this conversation in the comments, or heck, write me a retort piece if you feel so strongly.

I have one coworker with three kids in the elementary to middle school age who has become my inside source for staying relevant—knowing what the kids are saying these days. Every couple months or so I’ll ask him if there’s any new slang or trends that his kids are throwing around. Sometimes it’s random quirky trends that die out quick, but every once in a blue moon they go viral.

Early on last year, he broke the news of an impending trend. With his palms waving up and down, he told me that his daughter and friends had been saying, “Siiixxx seeevvven” with the accompanying motion.

(If your hands started flailing up and down while reading that last sentence, you may be just immature enough to benefit from this mindless article. Proceed.)

At this point, the nonsensical phrase has been on the loose for nearly a year, among the old an young alike. One would like to think the momentum would die down, but that certainly does not seem to be the case.

I was at a sporting event last week (indoor soccer, if you must know) and witnessed the full gamete of humanity chanting the cursed words and mimicking the overdone hand motions throughout the course of the evening. At any mere reference to the numbers 6 and 7 in succession or elsewise ever so slightly correlated, I saw kids in the front row going ecstatic repeating the trend. Even the old guy at the ticket gate spun himself into the full theatrics of the trend regarding the numbers on a pair of adjacent seats.

With a trend like this, that has gone on for too long, I found myself wondering what gave this spectacle of brain rot such enduring momentum. Why was this the phrase living rent-free in everyone’s minds?

By now, you may think that my brain is the most rotten of all for wasting such mental capacity to dissect such a ludicrous societal obsession. Nonetheless, I found it intriguing to break down the nuances that made ‘6-7’ such a viral sensation. Join me if you dare. . .

Commonality & Frequency

It seems that much banter arises based on context association. Whether it’s a song or a movie quote or a vine or whatever, it takes a simple interconnection of ideas or content to bring it to mind. And, for most people, by the time that thought hits our brain it has already left our tongue as well.

The more mindless the banter, the more mindless the association required. A nonsensical phrase need only a simple trigger, and not necessarily and appropriate circumstance. A small connection for our brain mush to hold onto, and the words have already escaped us.

A phrase like ‘6-7’ that has unclear, and somewhat arbitrary meaning is certainly reliant upon as meaningless and as numerous associations as possible for its virality. Conveniently enough, the numbers six and seven occur alongside each other organically, quite often.

For one, the numbers occur in succession when counting, something of common occurrence in our daily lives. Counting is also something that teachers partake in frequently in the classroom, leaving fertile grounds for the youth who played a major role in the proliferation of such a trend.

Additionally, the numbers occur together quite often when offering a rough estimate. Whether it’s about time—minutes, days, months or years—or a quantity that’s a tad more than a handful, the ‘6-7’ range seems to be a common and appropriate guestimate for describing these matters. Perhaps, we have a heightened sense of those numbers due to the trend, but they sure seem to occur often in our daily conversations.

The whole point being that there are ample opportunities that provide groundwork for ‘6-7’ to be exploited.

Ambiguity

The question on most peoples’ minds amidst this viral trend was certainly, what does it mean? Especially for older generations looking in, the cultural oddity seemed to be without explanation.

Surely some origins for the trends’ existence have surfaced—presumedly LaMelo Ball’s height—though none as a certain defining catalyst. The refrain seems to be tossed around as one likes.

This arbitrary nature became one of its most perpetuating strengths. The phrase can be uttered in nearly any circumstance, and without (serious) repercussion. The vagueness of intention carried within the phrase renders it adaptable to a multitude of occasions for use.

At the end of the day, the saying is really just as nonsensical as it sounds.

Easy Laughs

The extended endurance of this trend only gives proof that humans are easily enticed by low hanging fruit. There is nothing inherently witty about the phrase itself, and its typical use case does not demand clever composition or delivery.

However, unless you have been living under a rock, most people are aware of the saying and correlated hand motions. It is guaranteed to invoke a reaction. At this point, it may incur more eye-rolls and sighs than laughs, but a reaction nonetheless.

The trend found its impetus amongst kids in grade schools. Though, nowadays I see more older folks trying their hand at the joke. Some of these occurrences seem to be in ironic jest or in an attempt to embarrass one’s kids. Nonetheless, all ages are in on it now. It has become an all-encompassing trend that knows no bounds—people eager to be apart of something and ride on the coattails of this brain rot ‘fun.’

The Aftermath

What are we to make of all this useless and bountiful wisdom? I’m not quite sure. I’ll leave that up to you. None of my dignity was spared in the composition of this article.

All I can do is echo the words of the prophet, Jermaine Cole: “Listen, history repeats itself and that’s the way it goes / Same way that these rappers always bite each other’s flows.”

I’ve laid out some tactics that gave wind to the sails of this viral trend. If meme-ing is your MO, perhaps you can learn a thing or two from ‘6-7' on marketing yourself to live rent-free in the minds of thousands. Brain rot trends will come and go, but the ones that tarry in our vernacular the longest will adhere to a similar blueprint. Do with that what you will.

If you’ve ventured this far, you may need professional help. Leave a comment below and I will send you my exclusive BetterHelp discount code to get you 15% off of Real Therapy, Online.

So, you can imagine I was a bit stunned when she responded with Ecclesiastes. I didn’t know if this was a cry for help or if she was trying to impress me by being edgy.

It turns out she was being quite serious. But, it was not until recently that I understood why.

Ecclesiastes has always been one book of the Bible that necessitated an asterisk next to it for me. It feels depressing and negative throughout most of the book. And, the repeated refrains of cynicism bid it a distasteful read much of the time.

Certainly, it was never a book of the Bible I would have chosen to spend time in, let alone call it my favorite book!

But, things changed this last year. I came to see the value and the wisdom it offers us. Now, I would venture to say that it feels like the most applicable text for us on a day-to-day basis.

Billy Jamieson. Everything is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness. WaterBrook, 2025. $17.00. 255 pp.

Jamieson lays out well how Ecclesiastes shows us we can hold two realities at once, that can both be true. All of life is a gift, while at the same time all of life is absurd. Qohelet shows us that life offers us these two counter-intuitive realities in tandem, with the looming call to fear God above all else. Jamieson cleverly extrapolates Qoholet’s wisdom into three different perspectives personified as building floors. He begins at the

Ground Floor: Absurd

Humans love to grasp for control. We clutch our circumstances tighter because we think we can impact our fate, but the white knuckles will not produce the happiness we strive for in the end. “Life is hevel because. . .life is uncontrollable.” It’s like trying to grab onto the wind—it’s both impossible and unproductive.

I have a working hypothesis that people tend to pick hobbies that put them in environments where they feel in control. Whether it is a sport or an instrument or video games, people choose to enter an atmosphere where they can take charge. And, I think this is a very human feeling to want to pick up the reins of life. Our hobbies tend to put us at ease, because they place us in control.

Jamieson points out that “satisfaction is a false summit.” This has been a tough truth for my heart to understand. I naturally have a lot of expectations—of myself, of others, for life—that will let me down if they are not accomplished. The tricky thing about this desire is that even if it is realized, we will find out that what we really need is still somewhere just over the horizon. He warns “Desire can always outrun fulfillment. Desire can also detach from its object when you are on the brink of obtaining it.”

Qohelet says that “all skill in work come[s] from a man’s envy of his neighbor.” He seems to have foretold the modern-day rat race of the workplace to a T (but maybe that’s how it has always been). We are only spurred on by competition and comparison. Jamieson later advises “to keep work from ruling your life, set limits to its domain. . .Happiness. . .comes from knowing when and how to rest.”

The absurdity really struck me in the checkbook (or should I say Venmo balance to be more relevant?). Jamieson suggests that “Money is a means, not an end.” More 0’s in the bank account may signify a high exchange value, but it is ultimately lacking in what really matters in terms of wealth: use value. Additionally, more abundance of money diminishes our dependence on others.

Ecclesiastes helped me see that true wealth is about how we steward the things we have been given. It’s not about stuffing acorns into a savings account. It is how we are functionally using all of our resources to effectively bless those around us.

Time was an especially precedent topic for me last year. We tragically lost my brother-in-law in a motorcycle accident. In the aftermath, I found myself swinging on the pendulum past valuing moments in their finitude to guarding my time jealously. Qohelet demonstrates that we bear no control over when our life ends. Instead, Jamieson says “Every action will sometime meet its equal and opposite.” Time takes back all that it gives, and at the end of the day we have no choice but to accept its limits.

Ultimately, Jamieson says that we are adrift in the absurdity of life, because “the eternity within does not satisfy but renders us innately insatiable.” Simply, we have an ache for God that the things of this life will never fully satisfy.

Second Floor: Gift

This section provides a more encouraging read after bathing through absurdity and aiming to tame incessant strivings. There are blessings in life that we can simply enjoy. Though, this element requires the same posture as absurdity—hands wide open—lest we aim to grasp onto what we are meant to receive.

Much of receiving life as a gift has to do with our presence. If we are holding on to life too tightly and seeking control in what the future holds, we will not be able to accept all of the blessings that God daily offers us in life. On the other hand, presence within our circumstances allows us the possibility to enjoy our ‘lot’ in life.

Yet, enjoyment of the gifts we’ve been given is not the ultimate answer to the absurdity of life. The gifts themselves are still absurd as ever, though we are given them as gifts to enjoy for a time.

Jamieson offers that we can enjoy work by limiting it and enjoying its fruits. We can enjoy money properly by “using it for the sake of enjoying God.”

This picture of enjoyment culminates in the image of a tuning fork. By properly attuning ourselves to the world, we can hope to receive the resonant enjoyment from the Giver of all good gifts. In summary, “gift explains why life is good and God explains why life is gift.”

Third Floor: Beyond

Lastly, Qohelet takes us way above the world a few times in the book to unveil the bigger picture. We are certainly not all that we think we are. “Only God is the creator, sustainer, and judge of all.” We are called to fear God.

The themes of Ecclesiastes come full circle in that “All of us fear what we cannot control and aim to control what we fear.” Yet, for us to be adequately fearful of our Creator, requires us to relinquish control. Once again, we must ease up on those white-knuckled grips and trust the One who really has control.

Overall Rating: 10/10

Ecclesiastes portrays the great nuances of life we so often try to sweep under the rug. It’s easy to push this harsh unsettling truth to the side and forget that it has laid valid claim to the innerworkings of reality as well as anything else in Scripture.

Ecclesiastes meets us in the awkward and mundane and the loss just the same. This book is life at its rawest, and 2025 was a lot of living for me. The wisdom of Qoholet met me last year. It doesn’t offer us all the tangible answers we seek, but it certainly kills the facade of any false answers we try to cling to.

Lastly, I want to give a big thanks to for this book recommendation.

I’ve always been averse to the cold weather and will be a snow bird if the finances work themselves out. Last year, my wife and I ran away to the beach during one storm and during another we found ourselves in the southern hemisphere, guaranteeing full-on summer weather.

That being said, I was not thrilled to see the incoming blizzard on the forecast.

Yet, I have still been able to see God’s hand at work in the bleak dreariness of it all. There is beauty to behold even in the cold of winter, and graces offered amidst this frigid snow.

Recently, I wrote about how the weather and the seasons are caught up in a cyclic re-telling of the Gospel—a pattern of life, death and resurrection. I also highlighted how autumn serves as a welcome mat for the Advent season. Truly, the heavens are ever declaring the age-old story.

And, even now, in the dead of winter there are mercies from our Creator, active declarations of Gospel glory. I want to invite you into the divine goodness that is bestowed even in the blistering cold months, and especially with snowfall.

Winter tells the story about Saturday.

It is the awkwardness, the in-between. It’s the uncertainty and questioning. It’s an uncomfortable place that most of us don’t like to dwell in.

And, ultimately it tells of death.

Tree shed their leaves. Animals go into hibernation. Plants die. It is the death of all things. The atmosphere seems to wear thin as we are subjected to the bitter cold.

The message reaches its climax. Nature unites in the big crescendo. Creation cries out in remembrance of Jesus, in remembrance of his death and sacrifice.

The season personifies the slain lamb as pictured in John’s vision. The dying weather tells of the sacrifice.

And, for a few cold, dark months we are forced to sit around and wonder if there is any light at the end of the tunnel. Is there any life to be had in all of this mess? Does any hope remain?

It’s that awkward tension of Saturday—the disciples sitting around, wondering whether Jesus was really who he said he was, or just a fraud. And, every year we are brought back to that dark day alongside the disciples, left to wonder if there is any hope in resurrection.

It is a bleak time, the space between crucifixion and resurrection. The Savior of the world buried in the tomb. A tough reality to reckon with, I suppose, but certainly a necessary one to make way for our redemption.

But, there is much hope to be had in snowfall.

Snow brings such a gracious reminder amidst a season of death. I have often complained at the inconvenience of snow, but now I can see its grace. I hope you you can muster gratitude for it, as well.

A fresh coat of powder is a reminder of what winter’s death ultimately accomplishes—purity. Christ’s blood was the cleansing sacrifice to make us white as snow. All of our transgressions wiped clean, whiter than the wispy flakes that coat your yard. A gracious reminder of how Christ earned our righteousness before God.

It’s a poignant symbol of the mighty redemptive power of Christ and his atoning sacrifice. Now, many of you only have to look out your front window to witness this sign. Bitter as I may be about the snow’s disruption, I am all the more grateful for Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. That is the truest thing that I see when I look outside.

Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow.

I certainly can’t change the weather for you and brighten up your day that way, but perhaps this perspective can change the way you look at this weather and allow you to accept the graces offered to us during this God-forsaken season.

The word Kintsugi effectively means “to join with gold.” The whole restorative process of the artform can take up to three months to complete. First, the broken pieces are carefully glued together using the lacquer from the indigenous Japanese urushi tree. Then, they are left to dry for a few weeks, allowing the lacquer to become tacky. Lastly, a gold powder is sprinkled to adorn the mended cracks. The restored piece of pottery stands as a testament to the beauty in embracing human imperfections.2

In a world that is quick to hide our scars and cover up our flaws, Kintsugi stands as a counter-cultural practice reminding us of our inherent brokenness as humans, and even celebrating the beauty that can be restored there.

When I heard about the practice of Kintsugi, it reminded me of God’s redemptive work with humanity. He only has broken pieces to work with. And like Kintsugi artists God has a plan to restore beauty to the brokenness.

God does not cover or hide the broken parts of us. He chooses to work in our lives in spite of our brokenness, highlighting those flaws to his own glory.

In fact, all he has to work with is broken pieces. The Church is a conglomeration of broken vessels that God is restoring.

I hope this imagery helps you develop empathy for others, and gratitude toward God’s redemptive work in our lives. Enjoy!

Kintsugi

What broken vessel here once lay,
Shattered pieces in disarray—
Without form, mere jagged edge—
Futile in most every way?

Were not a potter’s hand to sculpt,
Restoring essence to the full’st
By mending each lone jagged edge,
To reinvigorate what dulled?

Had that porcelain e’er not shone
In the vibrance it now beholds,
Glimm’ring along the jagged edge,
Both worth and image now of gold?

What restored vessel purposed through
Christ’ning oil pervading into
And cascading o’er mended edge,
Excess abundance apt to prove
This was made for honorable use?
Oh, to be made for honorable use!

The market has grown used to the saturation of hefty albums from Bryan year after year—American Heartbreak (2022), Zach Bryan (2023), The Great American Bar Scene (2024), etc. On January 9th, his newest music dropped and the reviews are in: this album is in fact more of the same. Good songs albeit, any listener would admit, just no new flavor to remark on.

On first listen, the sound is unmistakeably Bryan. So much so that some joked that some of the tracks are what you’d get if you asked AI to make a Zach Bryan song. The songs all blend together at a certain point and minimal standouts remain. And, this is the problem musicians run into. They need to evolve or else they’ll be gone with the wind.

Too many artists make the mistake of saturating their discography with minimal sonic variation to appease the masses. Fans think they want the same, but what they really need is something new and fresh. Artists have to change their sound. And, what Zach Bryan offered with With Heaven On Top is the same stubborn sound.

He even hints at his own inherited unwillingness to change on the album. “DeAnn’s Denim” employs clever wordplay usage of the homophones jeans/genes relating his mom’s denim dress to the stubbornness of alcoholism that plagued his family tree. It seems to me that his musical prowess is now at odds with the same bull-headed-ness.

One distinctive feature of Bryan’s recent albums that I have come to enjoy is the intro poems that have commenced his last three albums. They create a firm foundation with raw spoken word for the album to build upon. Though, the trend I have noticed is his words have moved from a more grounded place to an air of ego-centric accomplishment flaunting.

It is not uncommon to hear Bryan weaving references to the Divine within his lyrics. Early on in “Runny Eggs,” Bryan expresses the conviction to confess wrongdoing to God. On “Miles,” he admits his tendency to run from the things Bible tells him to become. And, in the title track that concludes the album, Bryan seems to hold some idealistic hope of the concept of heaven as something to be found on the other side of hard times.

Though, the album is entitled With Heaven On Top, Bryan shows time and time again that he clearly does not hold heaven as his top priority. On “Slicked Back,” a stand-out song on the record, Bryan asks “When I get to Hell or Heaven, can I bring my girl?” Heaven clearly is not what he’s after. He just wants his girl there with him in whatever the after-life manifests as “‘Cause she likes romance, good sex, music, and ruling the world.” There’s no hope in heaven itself, but in that the other pleasures of life he clings to will remain.

The track “Cannonball” expresses a genie-in-the-bottle type relationship with faith. Bryan sings some Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque lyrics about one of his relationships: “You was praying to Jesus, we was running from the police.” Their only propensity to pray is when trouble is on the horizon or during hard times.

The song “Say Why” employs a repetitive use of the biblical forty days—symbolic of trial and testing—placing Bryan himself as the Christ-figure in his relationships as he endures countless bouts of testing. Lines like “So I carried my cross to the bar last night” present somewhere between a sacreligious and a satirical bent on Jesus’ own testing of forty days in the wilderness.

“All Good Things Past” is a bright point in Bryan’s understanding of heaven. The varied refrain, “the comin’ of the Lord couldn’t keep me from,” alludes to a belief in the coming kingdom—that the events of Revelation are now upon us. Though, this perspective is overshadowed with an evident preoccupation with other things in the meantime including the oddity of Oklahoma popsicles.

The chorus of “Always Willin’” may offer his most blatant theological take on the album. Bryan sings, “But God ain’t a man in a two-piece suit / He’s a miner deep down and he’s covered in soot.” Bryan offers this image to suggest that God is not above getting his hands dirty working in us—think about the incarnation after all. He likens our souls to “an old Kentucky coal mine” to symbolize the dark places inside of us that God will enter “whenever it’s time.”

“Bad News” is the hot button song of the record for its ICE-related lyrics. Bryan does a fine job of tap-dancing around his true feelings on the subject while making it apparent that trouble is brewing and that he served his time for this country.

This is one of the lone tracks on the album that shows Bryan discussing material outside of himself, his relationships and his ventures. To aptly express his priorities based on lyrical content the album would be better suited titled With Zach Bryan On Top.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

By the time you’re opening this, it will be reaching you late, no doubt. The time of New Year’s resolutions has came and went. Most have already crashed and burned.

If you’re just now concocting what new goals to embrace you’re already a week behind the action. Many peoples’ grand hopes of finding some healthy habits that stick have already fizzled out. But you should not feel left out of the action if you have not made resolutions yet, or even if your lofty goals have lost momentum.

And, that’s because what you need may not be more. More stuff on your schedule. More responsibilities on your plate. More things to strive after. Adding to your life through the form of goal-setting resolutions is not the answer.

I was challenged against the goal-setting language that our culture loves from my tenure through the synonymous works of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (John Mark Comer) and To Hell with the Hustle (Jefferson Bethke). These books arrived in near tandem in chronology and philosophy. They largely deal with incorporating spiritual disciplines into our lives as believers—silence, solitude, sabbath, and whatnot.

Bethke challenges us to trade goal-setting in exchange for formations. He writes, “Goals are about what practices I’m doing. . .formations are who I am becoming through the practices I’m doing.”

By nature, goals tend to leave us disappointed when we don’t achieve them. Formations give us a path forward, a road towards becoming something. We are constantly improving, we are constantly getting better and moving towards a goal.

More goals are not what you need. We have enough clutter in our life. The margins have already run us thin. We are already too busy and don’t need more things to hold ourselves to. Knowing our limits is wise too.

I’ve been trying to relinquish control in a lot of areas of my life, and live with my palms out and open more. It’s no use trying to white-knuckle the outcomes we want in life. We can’t hold on tight enough, and at some point the facade has to crumble where we realize we should have never sought that much control.

A practice that seems much more pertinent and productive to our development as believers is a rule of life. The idea of a rule of life is central to much of Comer’s teachings on cultivating spiritual disciplines. The practice encompasses building a framework to guard our habits and guide our lives.

The idea for a rule of life comes from a trellis. A trellis is a structure used in a garden that gives vines and plants support and direction for growth. That is the idea of a rule of life when implemented properly—to give structure to our lives.

Though, I have struggled with rules of life in the past myself. I have tried to stuff them too full and make more rhythmic commitments than my life afforded margin for and my rule of life was at risk of becoming burdensome in the same respect as goals.

This year, instead of adding things, I think it’s time that I shed some weight. I’m asking myself some questions, and I would suggest you ask them too.

I’m asking myself Why?

I think this is a valuable way to take inventory on our lives, rather than stretching ourselves thin with too many commitments that are only going to discourage us.

I’m asking myself Why? Why am I living like this? Why do I do the things I do?

I’m asking it about everything I do in life—all my habits, routines, and time expenditures. Every activity and action is getting sent to the stand to defend itself.

I want to know the reasoning behind the things I do, and the things I fill my time with. All too often, we drift through days seemingly at the whims of wherever the day pulls us, whatever stimuli demands our attention.

As Comer and Bethke’s teaching on spiritual disciplines affirm, we are always becoming something. We are being formed by the things around us, whether we know it or not. We are building our lives on the structure (or lack thereof) that we have set for ourselves.

My basketball coach used to say, “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse! Nobody’s skills are stagnant in the game of basketball.” Most of my teammates would roll their eyes at this, but I think their is some valuable life wisdom hidden in there.

We don’t naturally find ourselves doing things that are worthwhile. Nothing beneficial just happens. You only go downstream when you’re drifting—wherever the current takes you.

My pastor characterized this well. People don’t accidentally go out and run a marathon. There’s training and preparation necessary. People accidentally find themselves eating ice cream and binging Netflix.

C.S. Lewis may have said it best in Mere Christianity: “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.”

When our little habits play out over a lifetime they get amplified, they have exponential impact on the person we become. That’s why I’m asking Why? now.

It’s time to determine the reasoning for the way we are living. If a habit or routine or time expenditure can’t be proved beneficial then it would be best to replace or remove it.

Allow me to give an example.

For me, one of the big things I’m questioning is my phone usage. Why do I keep it next to me when I sleep? Why is my screen time so I high? Why do I retreat to it when there is a lapse in the action?

Phones have become a staple of life in the 21st Century—tech claims so many of our waking hours—but I have begun to wonder if everything they offer us is really beneficial.

The conclusions I’m coming to is that they are not. And, that something needs to change. I’m still working on how to address that fully. But levels of replacement and removal will be crucial.

As Christians, it is important that we know the reason why we partake in the habits, routines, and activities that consume our time. Inevitably they are forming us.

Ask yourself, Why?

I hope these ramblings are of some use to you, but anyways, I wanted to ask. . .

What are your personal goals and resolutions for 2026?

We can see some biblical stories personified in the seasons. My eyes were increasingly drawn to this in the correlation of autumn and Advent.

Advent

Now, Advent, I must confess, is a part of the church calendar I haven’t understood very well. Other than the lighting of some candles and eating of chocolates each day of December I could not have told you what the season was about.

Advent itself means “coming” or “arrival” and is intended as a time of preparation focused on Christ’s coming. The season walks us through stages of hope, peace, joy and love as we wait expectantly.

A couple biblical stories of preparation for certain coming’s of Christ came to mind: the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and John the Baptist’s ministry.

Autumn behaves in a similar manner of preparation in the months leading up to Christmas, inviting the coming of Christ on a yearly basis and celebrating his Advent each calendar year. Whether or not we intend to, we all observe this Advent in nature.

Enjoy these poems of Advent, as seen in the changing seasons.

palm sunday

the deciduous crowd declares a coming—
          all flora reveling in the very presence,
preparing the streets for triumphal entry
          with leaves cloaking the ground in reverence.
the breeze echoes of a rumored king 
          shaking branches as if whimsical fronds
and liberating others to surround the road
          in a crowded procession of unkempt lawns,
as if the changing season were shouting:
          “hosanna in the highest!”

john the baptist

the harvest season lingers on—
          wheat is gathered, chaff is burned;
the wilds of nature are calling out
          in preparation of Whom it yearned.
the locusts chant their triumphal song
          o'er crisp autumn nights, sweet as honey.
fallen leaves give the earth a fuzzy coat
          at last submerged in a cleansing sheet,
as if the changing season were declaring:
          "the kingdom of heaven is near!"

I’ve often wondered why Christmas seems to be the pinnacle of Church celebration. Don’t get me wrong, there are so many good things to pause and ponder on during the Christmas season—the incarnation, the virgin birth, God being with us, the list goes on.

But I have always seen Easter as the real Super Bowl for Christendom. That is where Christ accomplishes his redeeming work, the task that he came here for. It seems like the inevitable high point that everything points back to.

This week I was challenged by John Eldredge, that we spend too much of our Christmas celebration focused on Christ’s first Advent. He affirms that there is value in this, but suggests we should also focus on Christ’s second Advent—his future coming. Eldredge suggests that at least 50% of our Christmas celebration should be devoted to the return of Christ.

There is immense value in this, because this is where our hope lies. We need to take peaks in the rearview mirror to remember the ways that God has met our hope and longing in the past, but right now we are primarily looking forward. The return of Christ is the Advent that must comprise our hope.

So, as the seasons change and the leaves fall each autumn, I hope that you see it as preparation. The rhythms have a story to tell. Autumn is a season of Advent, a time of anticipation for a coming. May each new year bring you more hope and longing for the return of Christ.

Come, Lord Jesus, come!

Something in common

Perhaps it’s a low-risk, softball question to toss in amid small talk. I can admit that. Because when all other commonalities fail to establish connection, one can count on having the forecast in common. So, it seems we’ll flee awkward moments, rushing to yap about our lone shared experience, regardless of our interest in the topic.

Personally, I can’t stand these filibustering conversations that only exist to clog up airwaves and salvage rapport between fringe acquaintances. I’d rather discuss something we are both interested in, or can at least feign interest in. I’d even be content to accept the solitude, but all too often I find myself caught here.

A brief encounter with a colleague in the break room, or the sputtering conversation in front of the urinal. It seems a brief meteorological musing is necessary to diffuse such a situation.

Weather does put us on a level playing field and gives us something to relate on us humans. It is a neutralizing middle ground. Regardless, of status, background or beliefs, weather is something that bears impact on everyone’s life.

People will talk weather

Ever since I was a kid, I can remember weather-talk baffling me. Like nails on a chalkboard, I can hear those overused refrains clearly:

“I mean, how bout this weather we’re having? I can’t wait for hoodie season!”

“Sure is getting hot out there, but it’s the humidity that’ll really get ya!”

Conversations born from this impetus are the bane of my existence. But they’re a dime a dozen in places that require small talk, and also have an atmosphere. Maybe you can find reprieve from such chatter on the dark side of the moon.

Especially old folks

I always found it curious that the older someone was, the more they’d possess a genuine interest in the weather. Or, at least the more words they had to spare on the subject.

As many times as they’d been around the block, one would have guessed, they’d be clued into the cyclical pattern of the seasons by now. The pattern should have become old hat. But the longer they were around to witness the changing of seasons, the more it seemed they felt compelled to comment on them.

I can testify that this is the case for my own grandma. If Steve Harvey’s not on her television yelling, “Survey says. . ,” then you’d better believe the weatherman is on the screen. Knowing the weather is a lifestyle for her generation.

Yet, I’ve never been able to figure out why old people are so dead set on discussing the weather.

Shouldn’t the cycle of things have become commonplace by now? I would have thought it would have lost its luster, but you can always count on a Boomer to chime in on weather changes.

It pains me to say that I opt for the weather-related strain of small talk more than I care to admit. When there’s nothing else to say, it really is the easy common denominator.

Cyclical seasons

We become accustomed to the rhythm of the seasons from a young age.

Nature wakes up to a new life in the spring. Things begin to thaw and melt. Plants begin to burst forth and fresh leaves bud on the trees. Then, comes the steamy summer months, the swampy humidity offset by the joyous sunshine. But before long the days start to get shorter, the weather starts to cool off and the leaves wither and change color as they plummet to the ground. This brings the cold dark days of winter that offer a blanket of snow as a sign of surrender, solemnly accepting the lifelessness of all things. And before we know it, when things seem most bleak, the cycle repeats all over again.

It’s a cycle of life, death and rebirth that has a firm grip on our reality. We eagerly await the seasons that bring us joys and bemoan the ones that are tied to bitter memories and inconvenience.

But have you ever stopped to think about why this happens. This repetitive cycle that is fundamentally ingrained into the framework of the world we live in. Why do we experience seasons?

The heavens declare

This repetitiveness has a purpose. We’re being told something. We’re being reread a story each time the calendar comes full circle.

The Maker of this realm wants to tell us something.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

-Psalm 19:1-4

The beauty evident in creation is certainly an important facet of its existence, but perhaps the world is more than a mural to gawk at. I think there is even more glory the heavens are declaring that we shouldn’t want to miss out on.

The power of stories

Christ walked the earth for 33 years and he chose to speak to us in parables. He chose stories as the means to convey bounties of truth to humanity. Time and time again when Jesus speaks to his followers, he addresses them with parables.

While they might seem cryptic at first, he was truly pulling out all the stops to relate to us as humans. We were made to love stories—hearing them, telling them, sharing them.

Think about the stories you love. That is why movies and TV shows resonate so deeply for us. Our brains tend to place us inside the narrative when we experience a well-told story. Stories give us the feeling that we are a part of something that is bigger than ourselves.

Stories connect us

Stories are key to connecting to the human soul.

I don’t plan to Andrew Huberman the whole neuroscience of why stories have this connecting effect, but I presume it has to do with the empathy they prompt. Stories put us in another person’s shoes, as the saying goes.

We were created by a relational deity without beginning. He has thus existed in relationship for all eternity due to his triune nature. That’s a tough concept to grasp. Just know that this implies that God is relational by nature—his very being is in relationship. So, part of being made in the imago Dei is this relational aspect. We crave connection, and stories offer that.

We live for stories. But I’ll do you one better: We live in a story—His story.

Metaphors in life

It was fundamental for Christ’s mission to relate through parables, through stories. Parables are a form of extended metaphor that invites an audience into a realistic narrative and offers an underlying lesson.

This seems consistent with the heart of God, as he has laced the framework of life with poignant metaphors that carry deeper meaning. This is God’s way of packing our daily routines with reminders of truth and the beauty of his plan.

I think about how marriage is meant to be portray Christ’s relationship with the church. Even our very bodies, the innerworkings and pain felt within, are meant to point us toward the functioning of the church body. So many aspects of life have deeper meaning as reminders of truth.

Which leads me to ask: What reminder do the seasons hold?

The seasons tell a story

That repetitive pattern of life, death and rebirth is telling us a story and re-telling it year after year.

It’s the Gospel. The Good News for humanity. The focal point of His story on replay across time.

The story of Christ coming to earth, offering himself as the perfect sacrifice, and raising from the dead. Thus, giving us the chance to be made right with God on Christ’s behalf. This is the story of hope for humanity.

It is interwoven into the fabric of the changing seasons. How cool is that?

The Gospel in season

The summertime tells of life and bears the goodness of things living and thriving. It is a celebration of life and flourishing. It signifies communion with our Creator, and enjoyment of Christ.

As the leaves begin to drop in autumn, death enters the picture. This is Friday night of holy week, when the sacrifice is made. Christ breathed his last, the Father turns his face away, and we are left mourning the loss.

The winter months are a long and bleak period of waiting and wondering if it will always be like this, if there is any hope. Plants lay dead, animals remain in hibernation, just as Christ laid in the grave. Winter lets us sit in the awkwardness of Saturday.

But before long springtime comes, the long-awaited hope is finally here. Plants come back to life and creation is anew. The world proclaims Easter Sunday every spring. It declares the resurrection of Christ. The grave could not hold him, he is risen!

The glory of the Gospel is what the heavens so boldly declare. They proclaim of Christ’s finished redemptive work.

And the cycle goes on, season after season, re-telling the wonders of the story.

Confessing in season

The weather itself pays homage to its Maker, ceaselessly confessing the Gospel story to humanity.

Likewise, we have been given the opportunity to speak of God’s story as we experience these rhythms of nature. We have the chance to share the Gospel under the pretext of shared experience.

There is beauty in the Gospel to be shared in every season, facets of God’s character to be enjoyed and savored in each one.

We should aim to explore these truths, and share them as opportunities arise.

Effective confession

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that every break room encounter will turn into a Romans Road presentation of the Gospel. That would be great, but it isn’t realistic. And that’s not necessarily the goal here.

The goal is to saturate ourselves in truth. We should want to be so filled up with truth from God’s Word that it is seeping out the edges and overflowing the brim.

Think about the way certain song lyrics will pop in to your mind when your brain makes some minor correlation. If you’re anything like me, you may sing the words from recall without thinking twice. It’s not that you’re always trying to belt out that pop song, but it is so ingrained into your memory that you cannot help but sing the words.

This is the point we’re trying to get to with Scripture. I want it to be so entrenched in our hearts, that when trigger words get tripped, the truth can’t help but spill forth from our lips.

Before we know it we’ll find ourselves in a conversation that devolves into another discussion about the weather. This time when those trigger words hit, our stockpile of truth will allow us to bear witness and confess Christ instinctively.

Summer plans become easy avenues for talking about the blessings and joys of God’s gifts. Fall colors provide a segue to talk about beauty amidst sacrifice and death. The long winter months give space to yearn for things to change, to instill hope. Talk of spring weather demands comments on new life and resurrection.

These are small adaptations that can have a big impact for the Gospel.

Redeeming small talk

I’m not going to get my way any time soon. People are never going to stop talking about the weather.

But small talk situations can be transformed into opportunities to declare the glory of God. In my eyes they are good for nothing else. They’d be better spent planting seeds or watering them. That would serve everybody better.

In small talk settings, we’ve been given a shared experience to connect on: the weather. And, we’ve been given a story to tell: the Gospel.

It’s time we redeem small talk by pointing people back to the Gospel and echoing the declaration of the heavens.

Bathed in the luxury of every creature comfort when we are in control, and anxiety-ridden to the core when we are not. It seems we all function from a core desire to maintain power over our circumstances. It’s evident by the hobbies we choose, that we desire to be the master of our domain. People tend to choose past times where they can enter a flow-state and become dominant among their vicinity.

Sometimes it seems the Christian faith is no different. It becomes just another realm we seek to assert our authority over, gripping so tight to guarantee we get our way. Hanging on with vice-like strength to hold some sway in the theological undergirding of our beliefs. The human inclination is to maintain some sense of autonomy or control, even as it pertains to spiritual life. I can certainly attest to my own struggles.

I have grappled with salvation. What could an eight-year-old have understood when undertaking such commitment? The get-out-of-hell free card was evident, but the paramount impact of such a life-altering decision may not have been so vivid. How could such child-like faith administer salvific qualities? My testimony is a hodge-podge of ups and downs. I was always squeamish to offer a definitive point of conversion to my own story. How could that eight-year-old faith have saved me?

I began to hang on tightly to the capacity of my faith in the later years. As if some litmus test of it could prove it effective in its redeeming power. As if my younger faith was void of the juice—the saving component. Though, it has never been about how much faith one soul could muster, only what source the soul would put faith in. When I relinquished control of the power in my faith, I found out God’s grace was greater.

I have grappled with legalism. Was faith alone capable of saving a wretched soul like mine? The inkling to earn righteousness was all too real. The striving and the behavior modification were a hard habit to knock when the indicator of one’s faith is based on displays of righteousness. I would record a mental tally of my week’s battle with temptation to justify my case. Any success resulted in pride, and any failure brought doubt. How could I be savable while harboring such unrighteousness?

I began to hang on tightly to my works and my moral resumé. As if some forced righteous façade could earn me grace and favor. As if enough had not been done on the cross and it was my role to supplement it. Though, it has never been my place to earn righteousness. It simply cannot be accomplished. Christ’s work is finished and thorough, so I relinquished control of working for my faith. I found out God’s grace was greater.

I have grappled with election. How could all of history just be planned out and foreknown? The motivation to live purposefully seemed rather dull since all the outcomes had been set in stone before the foundations of time. It felt proper to take charge of my faith, and be commander of my destiny in this miniscule way. I presumed I deserved at least this slight leverage over my faith. Shouldn’t my agency play into the story? It should really be my faith, my choice after all.

I began to hang on tightly to the free will to determine my destiny. As if I could write the course of history my own way. As if I even knew what was best for me, and could have ever discerned my need for saving. Though, it was always out my hands to choose. I have been chosen to the praise of God’s glory. At last, I relinquished control of my choice in faith and I found out God’s grace was greater.

I have realized that white knuckles are not badges of honor for our faith. There is no sense in adhering to our illusion of control. It’s better to accept impotency and loosen my grip. Perhaps, there are other things to let go of and that’s fine with me. I now hold things with open hands when I approach God’s Word. The more I realize that I am not in control, the more of God’s immeasurable grace I can comprehend.

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I know those words. They race to the forefront of my mind with minimal prodding. A simple word association is all it takes to recall the platitude. And, I am always first to offer this trite solution when the occasion presents itself.

But to what purpose, really? The words fall flat, because I don’t even believe them myself. As many times as I recite them, my soul won’t claim them as truth. I don’t believe that comparison is actually in direct contention with my joyful disposition.

Actually, I believe the exact opposite. At least, that’s how I go about my days.

Deep down, I believe that comparison is the basis for joy, or at least happiness, or some sort of fabrication thereof. Because I’ve never gotten any joy from simply having things or achieving accomplishments. The only joy to be found is in having more things or better things than someone else. And, the real joy in accomplishments is reaching a higher bar than all your peers.

Comparison fuels my joy. I crave it to feel a sense of satisfaction.

There is no point in running at all, if I am not running faster or farther than someone else. There is no use in writing, if my words are not more profound and touching than another authors’ words. There is no sense in travelling, if I don’t return with the most interesting story and breath-taking pictures.

Sure, this methodology becomes pointless if you can’t gather up enough inferior peers to appropriately measure yourself against. Then, this thinking becomes the very nails in the coffin that are certain to bury your joy six feet deep.

But, I have been fortunate enough, that this has not been the case for me. I can usually find someone worth comparing myself to.

Perhaps this is why I parade around my corporate office building with my nose pointed up pretentiously in the sky. I really do my best to engage with coworkers and new faces, but most of the time I leave the conversation with the same gut feeling about that new acquaintance: unimpressed.

No matter their story, it is never enough. I judge their use of free time, hobby interests and values. Oh, they spent this weekend playing the newest update of League of Legends. That time could be much better spent. Oh, they spend their weekends out clubbing or chugging beer. How degenerate. And, in a secular workforce it doesn’t take much to become self-righteous when no one else spends their Sunday morning at church. These heathens were either at the lake all day or just plain sleeping in. It’s easy to assume the moral high ground on a values basis.

All around me, I find people who are worthy of my comparison. Souls that I can wring the life out of, dispensing their humanity to the credit of my joy, or happiness, or momentary fulfillment. I don’t know what to call it exactly, but the comparison certainly enlivens me in a way I like. Well, at least, for a moment it does, until someone comes along that ruins my comparative streak. And, then it’s back to the drawing board.

I tend to forget that C.S. Lewis mentioned, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” That type of perspective would be damning to my modus operandi, so I usher it back into my mental recesses. It’s important to erase the humanity of my peers so that they can better suit my comparative needs. What I value is mere data points to measure against, not a run-in with soul-filled creatures exhibiting the imago Dei.

Yes, this deep-seeded pride has gotten this delusional bag-of-bones thinking himself better than others. I don’t know how I ended up here, with comparison as the giver of my joy. It has worked often enough, to keep me coming back, but it is never without fault.

I suppose I could blame all the participation trophies for my entitled attitude, or my rearing on social media for the comparative lens through which I view the world. And, maybe I will do just that, because it is certainly easier to pass the buck than own any responsibility for it.

Comparison has worked for me on occasion. And, if it’s ever failed me it’s because I didn’t have enough. Comparison is not the problem.

I’m with Qoheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, on this one: “All toil and all skill in work come from man’s envy of his neighbor.”

While it may not be the advice your grandma gave you, it can still work. Go compare yourself to others. Give it a try.

It may work for a time, but I promise you it’s all hevel.

It’s not because we are imposing new meaning on the passages or uncovering some hidden meaning that has never been discovered before in the text. But, I believe, this is due to the Spirit working in our hearts and opening up our eyes. 1 Corinthians 2:11 says, “So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” This is proof that the text is living and active.

In the recent weeks and months, I feel my eyes have been opened to understand the image of the body as a portrayal of the church in a refreshed light. And it’s not in a new way necessarily, but in a more profoundly realized understanding that I now see it.

Between my own personal musings on the importance and relevance of denominations, and my churches own sermons discussing unity in Ephesians with a short side quest in 1 Corinthians, I have been revisiting this idea of unity frequently. And, it’s a testament to how fast I was whipping together content when I omitted this foundational image from my ecumenical manifesto earlier this summer. I dared to talk on all things denominations and offer my own metaphors of unity while foregoing the fundamental one given in the Bible. I also regret not mentioning Ephesians 4: 4-6 which offers a series of seven '“one’s” that can unify us as believers and give us real hills to die on.

The body is such a relevant and potent metaphor for the unity of believers. It highlights the call to unity, not uniformity.

It is easy to get siloed into an echo chamber of thought by surrounding ourselves with believers that think like us. It’s our natural human tendency to seek spaces we feel comfortable in, and I only think the polarization of media has heightened this tendency we have. But unity is not the same thing as uniformity.

We do not all have to live out our faith in the same way or have carbon-copy doctrinal convictions. Uniformity is not necessary and not the goal. In fact, that’s not what the Bible calls us to at all. It’s our differences that make us an effective church body.

We are called to unity, but not to uniformity.

It’s easy to get those two confused in our daily practice within the church. Convictions matter and have importance no doubt, but when we hold to our own nuanced doctrine as the only right way and become almost evangelistic about our own way of seeing things problems arise. We have placed our sights on an unhealthy uniformity.

The metaphor of the body does a great job at helping us understand the nature of the unity of our calling. Uniformity will ultimately fail the body. A uniform body is, in fact, no body at all.

Now, would be a good time to refresh ourselves on 1 Corinthians 12. Give it a read if you are not familiar with it. Near the end of the chapter, Paul gives us this ironic personification of some of the body parts in conflict. In the scene, some of the body parts feel neglected and un-useful to the body. Other body parts assume a pompous demeanor supposing that they can function alone. Paul is quick to point out how silly and shortsighted these body parts are for highlighting their individualism.

After all, they are only parts of the body, not the body as a whole. They were not meant to function alone. The individual organs are not meant to function as lone organisms. Bu as parts of the greater whole. Their identity is not in their own specification, but in the sum of the parts.

Paul notes how this connection should affect us in verse 26:

“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

We are called to both rejoice and mourn and rejoice with the body of believers.

And, this is why I think that the metaphor of the body is so unique and such a blessing.

We have all been given an earthly vessel that understands this tension. We are in bodies of our own that depend on the cohesive operation of different parts. We live the metaphor. We are walking examples of the unity the church has been called to.

When any part of the body feels pain, it affects the rest. A small toothache, and that’s all you can think about. A bump to your funny bone, not funny. Stubbed toe, game over.

While the parts affected are not the body, that pain certainly has an affect on the whole body. The whole body suffers.

But we are not to discount the importance of the individual body parts. People with chronic ailments or disability understand this metaphor deeply. Living within the limits of a part of the body that doesn’t function as intended exposes the need for abilities that can only be met by a specialized body part. Another eyeball won’t help an amputee. Another foot won’t cure blindness.

The individual parts do have their own importance. They have a special role to play. They have a gift they have been given to employ for the well-being of the whole body.

However, a body part’s gifting is not to its own credit or something that it has earned. The gifting is God’s choice to make that member an effective and functioning part of the whole.

In the same way, we all have been given spiritual gifts. These are not trophies to claim with pride based in our own achievement or ability. They are not a ranking system to measure us up against our believing peers. The gifts are dispensations of God’s grace to help edify and encourage the body.

I’m going to hold my tongue on talking about certain types of spiritual gifts for now, but the important take away is that these gifts are given to the church body for edification. They are intended to encourage and buildup. It’s not consistent with the heart of God to institute confusion and disorder.

God has given the gifts of the body to the parts for the betterment of the body.

We are living, breathing depictions of the unity of Christ’s church. May these vessels remind us of that. Not uniform in gifting, but united in purpose.

—Hermeneutics Crash Course—

While this course may be cramping my style a bit by neutering me to lifeless academic tone for assignments, I’m undoubtedly consuming droves of content that have only provided more fodder for thought. So, naturally, I thought I would dump some of that brain vomit here occasionally. Don’t expect tidiness, it is vomit after all. But my hope is that you can pick out some bits of knowledge from all the grey matter.

Hermeneutics—as this class is called, and I will pretend like I knew what that meant—deals with the interpretation of the biblical text. Amidst my wrestle with the different value brought to the table from different denominations of Christianity, the question of “who gets to interpret the Bible?” was answered in varying ways by different traditions. Catholics would say that the church has the final word over it, whereas many Protestant small group studies allow the most infant believers to impose their own meaning onto the text. That in part was why I was curious to study this subject matter.

I’m now a couple weeks in and I have been a bit dizzy, attempting to recover from the plethora of hermeneutical spirals thrown at me. Allow me to explain, or attempt o anyways.

The logic assumed in hermeneutics feels counterintuitive to any rational thinking. At every step along the way it feels apt to fallacies of circular reasoning. We discussed the Bible’s self-authenticating qualities. Keeping verses like 2 Timothy 3:16, we assume that the Bible is God’s Word because it tells us so.

If you’re anything like me, that’s probably not a satisfying answer. We want proof that this is God’s Word. It’s hard to take that at face value.

And, the conclusion that hermeneutics offers is that our view of the Bible begins with our presuppositions about it. Rational and reasoning based on what we can logically understand won’t get us there.

We must begin with the presuppositions that the Bible is from God, self-authenticating, inerrant, and difficult to understand.

God is the Author of Creation, so he has assumed author-ity in his Word. The self-authenticating nature of the text cannot be established from any other mere philosophical train of thought. It must be presupposed. And likewise, if you are not to hold to these presuppositions of the Bible you are undoubtedly bringing the antithetical presuppositions to the table just the same. So, there you have it:

We inevitably bring presuppositions to our interpretation of Scripture.

I hope week one of this mini crash course was beneficial.

Last week, I sent out a call to help support the high school discipleship ministry KLIFE, that I volunteer with. This was an opportunity for you to help cultivate this place through discipleship of the next generation. Thank you to those that donated!

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Actions Still Speak Louder

Actions still speak louder
Shots are heard 'round the world
To silence any doubter
That discussion is absurd

When bullets fly, what is the power
That is held within our words
They tarry in the solemn hour
That the slain returns to dirt

But still the comments shower
Both sides of the sorrow and the hurt
A reminder that we are now e'er
Between the Kingdom and the curse

Again, I ask what is the power
That you hold within your words
For actions still speak louder
Their voice is always heard

Expect content to slow down as class ramps up. In the meantime, those who feel deprived of content should check out Wormwood Academy for more full-length articles with a modern day take on the style of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.

From the desk of Dulldrum:

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#HotDemonSummer

Dear Nimblestratus…

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8 months ago · 1 like · Brandon Engel

From the desk of Nimblestratus:

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Effective Distraction

My Dear Dulldrum…

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9 months ago · 2 likes · Ethan Noden

Lord, as I step into this season of learning help me to posture my heart. Give me the grace to approach this pursuit of intellect with humility.

Tear down the foundations of pride in me that await knowledge only to bolster the glory of self. Lay them completely bare, O Lord.

Give me new beginnings to selflessly seek you that I may know you better. May I not approach my study with haughty eyes.

Purify my heart, O God, in my pursuit of learning. Make my desire righteous and honorable.

Lay the groundwork of humility.

I aim to enter with my mind fully submitted to you in reverence, for I know that

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;

    fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)

Lord, this is my prayer:

Let me not lose sight of the reason I study your Word.

Let me not lose sight of the One who delivered this Word.

I come not only to learn more about you, for the mere knowledge of your character and existence. For,

Even the demons believe—and shudder! (James 2:19b)

I come not simply to acquire knowledge of your Word, for knowledge’s sake alone. For,

This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Corinthians 8:1b)

May the orthodoxy I gain from my intellectual endeavors inform and ignite the orthopraxy that I walk from day to day. For we are told that

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

Lord, grant me the grace to comprehend more of your Gospel.

Give me the capacity to love you deeper through my educational pursuits.

Meet me here. In these textbooks. In this doctrine. As I come to study your Word.

I pray this learning does not return void.

Meet me here. I want to know more about you, so that I can know you more.

I want to know you more.

I do it to myself. It’s probably too early in life to be feeling this way, but following the diaspora of my friends from college there is a lot less going on now and I’m left with more time in my thoughts to really contemplate how the last year went and what I accomplished.

I tend towards perfectionism and I set pretty high expectations for myself. So, when taking this kind of inventory on the past year I’m almost surely bound to be disappointed with myself. Twenty-four was a rough one for some reason. I spent most of the evening blubbering like a baby and discontent with what I had completed through the last year, and where I was at.

The thing was: I was not giving any consideration to what I had accomplished. Mostly, it was just disappointment by what I had not accomplished or what I had yet to achieve in life. Depressing. That was a sad place to be dwelling on all of that comparison and unable to be grateful for what I did have or did get to experience. I was only looking to what I had not achieved or did not have yet.

And in actuality, I had big, exciting accomplishments to be proud of. There’s no need to list any, because that’s not the point. My dismal mood was a concoction of dissatisfaction born out of comparing with other people who’d achieved more impressive feats by this age milestone. I was discouraged by the “did not have”, the “had not achieved.”

But, frankly it’s not about having or not having. It’s not about achieving or not achieving.

This week I turn twenty-five and I have been prepared for the same waterworks and hysterics to hit me on my birthday. I mean that’s a quarter of my life gone at this point, if we’re being generous, likely more of it. Who really knows when we’re not guaranteed tomorrow.

This time around, I’m trying to swap the narrative I’m feeding myself. Instead of wallowing in the “have not” this year on my birthday, I feel like I’ve been given new perspective by God on understanding progress and living life.

I can sense the time speeding up, filling up, and running out more than ever.

I recently saw an image that visualized all of the weeks in the average American’s life with a grid of dots. It’s crazy to see every week of your life laid out before you in a 52 by (?) matrix of dots, that each represent a bite-size but meaningful portion of your life. By now I’ve got 1,300 of them.

Certainly some of those just pass in haste. Especially in a post-educational setting, without distinct markers for time apart from the changing seasons, the monotonous rhythm of life can seem to blend together—one day into the next in bland fashion. The routine can suck us in, and before we know it a year has passed. Think of all those dots lived through in a grey haze.

I think about how easily it is for one week to bleed into the next in my mind, for each one to seem like a dull carbon copy of the last. But those are chunks of our life. Think about how many dots get lived in a lackluster, forgetful way. The routine can do that to us.

What I’ve found is that we can reclaim some of this and effectively “slow down” time and reinvigorate meaning into things. The routine speeds us up. If I can find ways to break that, then I’m having a novel experience. My senses become more aware, time seems to move slower, and circumstances are more memorable.

It’s a surefire way to breathe meaning back into all of those dots, to reclaim those weeks. And it doesn’t always have to be a mountain top experience. Even mundane novelty can be memorable and meaningful.

I have one specific mundane memory that resonates with me from the summer because I chose to break routine. I was driving home and spotted patches of pink flowers sprouting up in different areas along the road. When I found a patch that looked public enough and unclaimed I parked the car in the middle of the road to go retrieve a few stalks of what I later found out to be “naked ladies.”

Call it whimsy. Call it wanderlust. But I found a moment where I was able to slow things down and be present.

There’s nothing wrong with setting goals for yourself. I’ve done it this year. And I’ve taken strides to pursue things that I’m passionate about as well.

But if that’s how we plan to grade how well we’ve spent our time, we can always find someone else who has achieved more in comparison.

Maybe what I’m saying is that when we assess our progress and growth it’s more helpful to consider ourselves as human beings rather than humans doing. You could crochet that on a pillow, but someone’s grandma probably already has.

So, this year I’m planning to consider how I’ve been living the moments, the days, the weeks of my life instead of what I’ve accomplished in the year. That’s the plan anyhow. Let’s see how sappy I get this time around.

It is exciting and overwhelming and all of the things.

I go back and forth from day to day on whether I think it was a wise idea. But we’re committed now, soldier.

We certainly got a steal of a deal for the price we paid, but that’s not to say the seller didn’t get away with some things on his end as well. Being first-time homebuyers, I don’t think we were prepared to ask the proper questions and advocate for ourselves well at the time. The place certainly has become more of a “fixer-upper” than I had originally expected.

I remember the feeling during the home inspection as somewhat akin to the syllabus shock dealt out on the first day of classes. The inspector was helpful and thorough, but it was nonetheless daunting to follow him through the house as he scrutinized every nook and cranny that would need attention. In that moment I thought I must have been crazy for agreeing to fork over a six-figure sum in exchange for ownership of these problems.

But the improvement projects have been a fun chance to cultivate something together with my wife. Along with help and guidance from family, we have given a reasonable facelift to our new home—painting the walls, replacing the kitchen floor, and renovating the bathroom. These projects can be tedious, but are time-consuming more than anything, though fulfilling once completed.

In a house as old as ours, we’ve no doubt noticed some interesting things during renovations. The house in general possesses some quirky designs and we have uncovered odd practices during our remodel. No matter who is actually responsible here, we have chosen to cast all the blame on the previous owner, naturally. So, “Webber Bennett” has become one of the most-frequently uttered expletives in the Engel household.

And, this has given us motivation to maintain diligence and produce quality work during our remodels. The fear of being compared to our previous owner in work ethic, or have one’s work criticized a being “a bit Webber Bennett-y” is a strong enough incentive to create a thorough finished product, for the most part.

But in all these things it has been a blessing to have something to steward and I’ve been learning a lot.

No matter where you are at in your life, you have been given a place of ownership that is your very own to steward. Whether that is a house and yard, an apartment, a bedroom, a car, a locker—we all have a place that is ours to cultivate. We have been entrusted with the responsibility of looking after a chunk of God’s creation. I believe, this is an opportunity for real kingdom work.

Here are just a few of my takeaways about stewardship that I have learned from my own experience so far, that I believe sheds greater light on our role as Christians to help God in submitting reality back to order.

It takes TIME to cultivate

The term “cultivate” evokes garden imagery. I employ this term often to refer to humanity’s innate calling to be gardeners as a summary of the dominion mandate in Genesis 1:28. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden and tasked them with tending to its needs.

Gardens by nature are not quick easy ventures. They don’t come out of nowhere and they don’t just appear overnight. Gardens require ongoing attention and care if they are going to thrive. They take time.

We closed on our house in the middle of May, but we did not end up moving in for over a month. We had work to do. The home improvements took time. In fact, they are still ongoing.

We had to move in, and we have multiple projects that are still lingering around waiting to be completed. And that’s how I’ve learned that cultivation takes time.

It’s not rocket science. If you’ve ever planted a garden or another type of plant it takes time for it to grow. There’s seasons to it. There’s a season of sowing, then a season of reaping.

But cultivation takes time. Both patience and perseverance are qualities we must develop to not grow discouraged. We play an active role in the submission of creation to the kingdom of God, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t grow weary. We take ground little by little.

It takes RESOURCES to cultivate

One of the perks of owning our own house, is that we are building equity instead of paying rent. The flip side of that coin is that we now own it. Along with that we own all the problems that accompany it, and if we don’t own ‘em they only become worse.

Part of owning a house that I initially overlooked, was all of the capital needed to maintain and cultivate the asset. A fridge, a lawn mower, flooring, furniture—it all adds up. It requires resources to make this house a home and maintain it properly.

The practice of gardening is no different. The actual cultivation of flora demands some value input from the gardener. Plants need water and sunshine and good soil. They need to be tended and weeded and cared for.

When it comes to cultivation, presence alone is not enough. We will need to bring some resources to the table to effectively work towards our goal. The goal of submitting things to order.

God has blessed each of us separately with varying amounts of gifts and resources. This can range from financial resources to time or education. What are the gifts and abilities God has given you?

You have been stewarded with those resources to bring about change for the kingdom of God. They are needed for kingdom work. Your resources—whatever they may be—are valuable in terms of cultivating this place.

RELATIONSHIPS benefit cultivation

It has been a blessing to get to walk through this home-buying process and remodeling with my wife. And apart from that our families have been such great help through it all.

I don’t think I can overstate the value of relationships enough in terms of this recent home maintenance work. It’s not enjoyable to do it alone. I can get the lawn mowed by myself but lack the drive to stick with larger tasks by myself. I’ve chronically put off small tasks for weeks at a time.

My wife is a nurse and has been on night shift for the duration of the summer—basically since we moved in. I always have lofty goals for progress that I’ll accomplish on evenings when she’s at work. But when it comes down to it, it never feels like the thing I want to do by myself.

We get more done when we’re together. She has a plan. She keeps me on task. And we can make some progress. I think there’s something to doing a project with other people. Relationships are integral to this ordering process.

In fact, the first half of the dominion mandate itself is relational: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. . .” We are called to generate offspring through intimacy with our spouse to populate the world. This is a relational calling. We are called to bring about the kingdom of God through our relationships, primarily through our families as this framework demonstrates.

Not only are relationships a part of our calling from the garden, I believe that they aid us in the rest of our calling. The “subdue it, and have dominion over” it aspect becomes easier and more enjoyable when done in relationship and community. There is immense value of doing the work of God together. We are a body of believers after all.

We ALL have a place

No matter how small, or seemingly insignificant, we have all been given a place to cultivate. It could be as small as a middle school locker or as big as a country to lead. But it is a place that we have been entrusted with to look after and tend.

No place is too small or unimportant to be transformed. It is about what we are able to reap from what we’ve been entrusted with rather than the size of what we were given to steward.

I am reminded of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). A man who left on a journey entrusted his talents to three of his servants—to one he gave five, another two, and yet another a single talent. The men took various approaches to protecting and investing the assets. So, when the man came back from the journey he had them settle their accounts. The first servant had doubled his allotment, bringing back a sum of ten talents. The second did likewise doubling his two talents he’d been given to steward. But the last servant who’d been entrusted with a single talent had buried his in the ground, and therefore had no investment to show his master. The master is furious with him taking away the one talent he was initially given and casting him out to darkness.

This parable shows us that the way we choose to steward the things we’ve been given in this lifetime matters to God and the furtherance of the kingdom of heaven. Again, it’s not primarily about the size of what we are entrusted with, the significance comes from how we choose to engage and steward it.

Though, in the parable Jesus does mention that “he gave. . .to each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). So, there is some sense that we may be given more to steward as we mature. I’ve definitely seen this while stepping into a house that carries much more responsibility than the bedroom and car I had in high school. The difficult thing is that cultivating a clean car and bedroom are still two things that I struggle with, but now pair that with a home to cultivate. Sometimes the responsibility may precede the maturity, I guess. Yours truly as case and point.

Stewardship responsibility will only increase during your life, so it is best to work on cultivating those little spaces. Wherever you’re at in life, whatever you’ve been given, the best thing to do is to start submitting the things you have been given to order for the glory of God. Start today and cultivate this place.

Thanks for reading Cultivate This Place this week! I hope this little window into my life was encouraging to you. Share it with a friend:

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I will be starting a new publication with my pal, . “Wormwood Academy” will bring the heart of Clive Staples Lewis to the modern day through the letters of Nimblestratus and Dulldrum. Subscribe to stay up to date as they release their deceptive memos.

I am taking a seminary class starting in September while still working full-time. I still plan to keep Cultivate This Place active as there are plenty of ideas in the hopper. But in general, I expect to pull-back some from posting weekly articles as I settle into a rhythm of schoolwork again, and begin to dabble in deception. I also hope to experiment with varied types of content and writing. Get psyched

-Brandon Engel

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He had the whole note sheet printed out for us with bolded sections. Now this isn’t uncommon practice, in fact my home church will typically print sermon notes when the senior pastor is preaching. But the overall synopsis felt vague and rudimentary, with the pastor rarely deviating from his bland bullet-pointed script.

He frankly wallowed in the condemning aspects of the scripture too long, and high-tailed it through the redeeming grace and mercy facets in the text. But what really hurt to listen to was his monotone delivery that I doubt even AI could replicate. It truly seemed like someone may have handed him that script backstage five minutes before he went on, and he just had to improvise.

No, I don’t really think it was an AI-crafted sermon. However, the dryness in his delivery and the overall lack of enthusiasm certainly made me speculate.

If anything, it made me contemplate that coming reality for a moment and wonder how we can best engage with this emerging technology in terms of our faith and spirituality.

Artificial intelligence has become a such a commonplace tool at this point that it should need no introduction. It’s likely a part of your job and everyday routine by now. I know many people who have adopted ChatGPT as their primary search engine and have developed its conversational ‘personality’ through extensive communication.

Now, it is important to remember that most technology in and of itself is a neutral force. It’s merely an innovative tool that’s ultimate outcome depends upon the application. And throughout history the typical problem that leads to poor outcome is user error. Take the candlestick for example, which was created with the function of illuminating spaces in mind. But it could also be used as a weapon by Colonel Mustard in the dining room.

But the rise of digital tech has not been so neutral in its application toward us humans. In a talk series called the Issachar Lectures, my pastor offered this stance on the emerging technology. He said that the specific design choices used in digital tech are intended to direct our habits and appetites. This ‘tool’ shapes us, rather than vice versa, as the algorithms are incessantly vying for our fleeting attention. These are not tools to make us more effective, but to render us more addicted. The real product is our attention.1

This is no secret. We have known the prime functioning strategy of all algorithm-based technology for the better part of a decade now. Netflix’s 2020 documentary, The Social Dilemma, exposed the innerworkings of the algorithm’s that manage our social media feeds to the mainstream. These types of media collect copious amounts of data, that can help to produce meaningful predictions of content that you would want to interact with.

Many can attest to the odd phenomenon of receiving a digital advertisement shortly following a conversation of close relation. Some may attribute this to technology that is listening, but these apps garner enough data from the excess of your online history to make educated guesses about your interests that seem shocking. Media uses our search data to feed us endless streams of content that aligns with our interests.

Why would we assume that AI functions differently?

There are already multiple Christian AI companies emerging onto the market. One example is Gloo, which has programmable denominational-specific capabilities so it can scan a church’s website, read their statement of faith and be on standby as a chatbot to answer questions ranging from church event times to theological topics.

But this is troubling—here’s where my inner-Boomer comes out.

The proclivity of AI is to tell us what we want to hear and to cater towards our existing notions and leanings. Christianity Today’s Bonnie Kristian referred to the use of AI as “looking in a mirror and tickling [our] own ears.”2

I find it concerning to bring our faith ponderings to AI because of this innate flaw of the technology. These large language models are programmed to show us more of what we want and to cater towards what you already believe. You may have experienced this with Gemini’s AI Overview when you are asking a nuanced or vague question to the Google search engine and receive reassurance regarding some nonsense.

It also feels like a disservice to ourselves to take our theological questions and spiritual concerns to a machine rather than to a brother or sister in Christ. It’s not so much that AI wouldn’t be able to give an adequate answer as much as it is undercutting an opportunity to foster community. It removes the chance to build relational equity from the most simple and foundational of questions. These small questions have the potential to be the grounds for building deeper interhuman trust within a faith community.

Now, I am not naïve enough to think that we are going to abstain from the use of AI altogether, nor do I think that total withholding or prohibition is the proper course of action. If that was our mission as Christians, the 21^st Century would leave us behind like the Amish have been. Our goal is not conformity to the ways of the world, but it is important to have awareness and engage well.3

Even artificial intelligence is a response to the dominion mandate (Genesis 1:28). It is a tool that can be used to submit creation to order and to eliminate chaos. Like any form of innovation, it must be wisely assessed. We are not intended to run from it, but to possess a healthy respect for it as we meaningfully engage it.

As Christians, our role should be to determine how this novel technology can be most effectively stewarded to cultivate this place.

The question was never if, but how? So, how do we properly engage with AI in our faith and spirituality?

I’ve read about some churches in Europe that have already experimented with AI-led worship services.4

Many pastors are already utilizing AI in their sermon prep to varying degrees. Some use it to develop sermon notes or questions. Others use it to construct an outline. And others use it to do historical research and find anecdotes to employ in their sermons.

All of this is done in the name of efficiency.

Some pastors are opting to use AI for “content digestion” tasks to help streamline the sermon writing process, hoping to save time for the “real work” of ministry. But writing their sermon is part of their “real work” and should not be outsourced to computers.5

I have found myself beginning to use ChatGPT for questions concerning bible study at times. At this point I’ve only used it as a reference to search for verse references I’d forgotten or to find instances of word usage. This feels harmless.

But at some point there is a grey line we cross where we shift from using it as a tool to a source of truth. We stop seeing it as a search engine and begin to view it as more of a confidant. We start asking it to analyze passages and to think critically about the text for us, and confiding in its guidance.

In fact, that is one of the prime concerns I have about this brand of tech more generally. I feel like there could be a potential slippery slope of falling into immense trust and overdependence on these AI structures. I think the kids that are going to school with these LLMs at their disposal are not going to properly develop critical thinking skills. It will be too easy to rely on the info AI offers, rather than engaging challenging thoughts that come up.

Because already, we tend to trust whatever AI feeds us. I admit that I’m guilty of this. Many of my online searches end at the AI Overview, and I neglect to peruse further.

We treat AI like it is a bountiful source of truth. But it is only as good as the questions it gets asked and the data it gets trained on. It gets trained, but can’t ultimately be controlled. Given enough input, there is going to be variation in the output. The model can change overtime to adapt to the user just like we’ve witnessed with our social media feeds.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, if we are giving these models too much reign within our faith communities and into our spiritual development.

While we can hope that a certain model is trained on the biblical text, every form of artificially intelligent software is crafted by humans and possesses a bias that administers the guardrails for its functionality. Can we trust that this bias will be consistent with the text and the character of God?

Beyond that, AI tends to be a very self-seeking technology. It caters responses towards what we want to hear. In a culture that has already twisted the presentation of the gospel into a song-and-dance to attract people inside the doors, won’t AI be a dangerous culmination of those already present self-centered and self-prioritizing tendencies?

Theology and spiritual formation are too important to our souls as Christians to risk tarnishing them to the touch of AI. Things are too nuanced to merely rely upon AI to fully explain differences in theology. Life is too relational and experiential to trust AI to guide us in our spiritual formation.

And at the end of the day, there may not be a singular correct biblical answer on some topics. We should not let ChatGPT replace our convictions. Do the work of studying scripture on your own, to come to your own conclusions.

Find other uses for AI to streamline. Because it is here to stay. There’s no use fighting it. We can’t completely reject its use as Christians, but must find ways to engage with it appropriately. There is opportunity for good here. I believe there are meaningful ways that it can help cultivate this place. It’s just going to take someone more optimistic than me to figure that out.

AI will have a place in our faith communities, but right now I’m not sure to what extent is reasonable and beneficial.

For now, I’m going to continue to use AI to write Substack essays for me, because it was a huge time-saver this week.6

This essay certainly offers more questions than answers. Join in the discussion and share your thoughts below. Or share with a friend:

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Tidbits of Knowledge I didn’t come up with on my own: