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A Lament for a Nation Unmoored

There is blood on the ground again.
A young woman in North Carolina,
who fled one war only to be swallowed by another …
stabbed on a train,
her story cut short before she even had a chance to write it.

A congresswoman in Minnesota and her husband,
executed in the quiet of their own home …
a sanctuary turned into a grave.

Children in a school,
their laughter silenced by gunfire.

And a man … Charlie Kirk …
shot while speaking words to a crowd.
And before the echo of the bullet fades,
before we know who or why,
the blame game begins.
Because we already know, don’t we?
We already have our villains picked out.

This is what it means to be unmoored.
To drift.
To lose sight of the shore.
To shout across the waters
instead of rowing toward one another.

We rage.
We divide.
We accuse.
We forget that we belong to each other.

Sit quietly. Breathe. Let the weight of what we know settle in our bones.
We live in a time of sharp edges …
a time when words are weapons before they are bridges.

The story of America was always a grand experiment …
a fragile dream
that people with different names and faces and prayers
could actually live together.

But somewhere along the way
we confused difference with danger.
And now we are drowning in the waters of our own hate.

And into this chaos,
a voice still whispers:

“Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good.” ~Romans 12:21

Let that be our lantern in the dark.
Not to deny evil … to name it, to resist it … but to refuse to become what we despise.
To resist the shrug of indifference, the snap of judgment, the hardening of the heart.

Not platitude.
Not sentiment.
Resistance.
Rebellion.
A counter-narrative in a world where anger is currency
and hate is power.

So what do we do with this ache,
this grief,
this fracture?

We weep.
We lament.
We refuse to numb ourselves.

We name the evil.
We sit in the tension.
We cry out to the One who hears the blood of Abel still
crying from the ground.

And we remember …
we do not have to agree to love.
We do not have to understand to honor.
We do not have to win to serve.

So …. we lament

We lament These are not isolated tragedies; they stitch together a pattern. A rising heat of fear. A widening chasm in what we believe, who we are allowed to be, and who we think deserves justice or pity.

We lament that we do not yet know the full stories … the motives, the shadows, the human hearts in them … yet we so quickly assign them to “other,” to “them.”
We lose integrity in our haste.

We lament that civility is ever more fragile; trust ever more scarce.
That the presence of another … different in speech, in belief, in background … feels like threat. That compassion is increasingly viewed as weakness.

May we live as people who follow the Romans’ call … resisting evil, but not becoming evil; loving even when angry; speaking truth even when tempted by blame.

May our nation, which is unmoored, find its anchor again: justice, mercy, peace.
May our neighbors be recognized … not as enemies to defeat, but as souls to see.

O God … anchor us.
O Christ … heal us.
O Spirit … breathe civility, compassion, and courage
back into our weary lungs.

Until we learn again
that the only way forward
is to be overcome not by rage,
but by good.

Amen.

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The Dust That Dances

A Meditation on Ezekiel 37

There’s a valley.
You know this valley.

Not because you’ve walked through Ezekiel’s vision,
but because you’ve walked through your own.
The valley where hope has been buried.
Where the laughter has long stopped echoing.
Where the bones … your bones … lie scattered,
bleached by time, brittle with disappointment.

It’s that place where the dream died,
the relationship cracked,
the faith went silent.

Ezekiel is led there…
not by accident, not by misstep,
but by the hand of the Lord.
God takes him to the place of loss.
Not away from it.
Not around it.
Right into it.

And the question comes:
“Son of man, can these bones live?”

It’s almost cruel, isn’t it?
The question you don’t want to be asked.
The one that forces you to look
at the wreckage of what once was.

Ezekiel hedges:
“O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
Which is Hebrew for:
“I can’t say yes, and I don’t dare say no.”

And God doesn’t explain.
God doesn’t hand over a five-step plan.
God doesn’t analyze why the bones got there in the first place.
Instead, God tells Ezekiel to speak.

“Prophesy to these bones.”
Speak life into what has no ears.
Call to breath when there are no lungs.
Preach resurrection into the silence of the graveyard.

And as he speaks…
the bones start to rattle.
Bone finds bone,
ligament finds ligament,
flesh wraps around skeleton.
It looks alive.
But it isn’t.

Not yet.

Because form without breath is still death.
Order without Spirit is still emptiness.
Religion without Ruach is still a valley of bones.

So God says again:
“Prophesy to the breath. Call it from the four winds.”
And when the Spirit comes,
the bones rise.
An army of the resurrected,
standing on their feet,
alive by the Word and the Breath.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

God takes us to the places we’ve buried,
not to shame us with what we’ve lost,
but to remind us that resurrection begins in the valley.
Life doesn’t start in the temple…
it starts in the tomb.

Your bones … those broken dreams,
that faith you thought was gone,
the parts of you you left for dead…
they are not beyond the Breath.

Resurrection is not about trying harder,
but about yielding to the Spirit
who comes from the four winds
to do what you cannot.

So maybe the invitation is this:
Step into the valley.
Name the bones.
Prophesy anyway.

Because in the hands of God,
even the dust knows how to dance.

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Scars Over Swords

A Meditation on Revelation 6

The seals are breaking.
One after another.
And the world …
our world …
comes undone.

A white horse rides.
Conquest.
Victory at the expense of peace.

A red horse rides.
War.
Blood staining the soil.

A black horse rides.
Greed.
Bread for the rich, famine for the poor.

And then …
the pale horse.
Death.
Followed by Hades.
The shadow we all fear.

Do you see it?
It’s not just future.
It’s now.
Every time empire marches.
Every time the powerful take.
Every time we worship profit instead of people.
Another horse is unleashed.

And under the altar …
voices cry out.
“How long, O Lord?”
How long until the violence ends?
How long until justice rolls down?
How long until mercy has its day?

And we feel that cry, don’t we?
When the news breaks our hearts.
When another child goes hungry.
When another war begins.
How long?

But then …
don’t miss it …
the scroll is in the hands of the Lamb.

The Lamb.
Not the emperor.
Not the generals.
Not the ones with crowns and swords.

The Lamb.
Slain.
Scarred.
Risen.
The one who conquers by laying down his life.
The one who opens the seals because only love
only sacrifice
only resurrection
is strong enough to hold history.

So yes …
the world unravels.
Yes …
the horses ride.
Yes …
the martyrs cry out.

But the Lamb holds the scroll.
The Lamb holds history.
The Lamb holds us.

And maybe …
just maybe …
every time we forgive instead of retaliate,
every time we share instead of hoard,
every time we choose love instead of fear,
we silence the hoofbeats.
We resist the riders.
We live the Lamb’s way.

Because in the end …
it’s not the horsemen who win.
It’s not death who wins.
It’s the Lamb.

Always.
The Lamb.

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The Knock at the Edge of Everything

a meditation on Revelation 3

It’s late.
And the world feels weary again.

Letters are being written, messages whispered to flickering lamps in seven churches. Echoes of divine warnings and promises swirl like incense through thin spaces.

And in Revelation 3,
the curtain pulls back…

Laodicea, lukewarm.
Philadelphia, faithful.
Sardis, asleep.

Each one invited into something deeper.
Each one addressed not with contempt, but with invitation.

Because Revelation 3 isn’t about shame.
It’s about a holy longing.

A longing for us to wake up.

“I know your deeds.”

That’s how it begins.

A phrase that cuts and comforts all at once.

Because someone sees.
Someone knows.
Someone who hasn’t turned away, even when we have.

These aren’t the harsh words of an angry deity with a clipboard.
They’re the fierce words of love that won’t settle for numb apathy, for dead religion wrapped in perfume.

This chapter, like much of Revelation, is poetry disguised as prophecy.
It’s not a threat.
It’s a call home.

“You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”

Oof.

That one’s for Sardis.
But let’s be honest … it might be for us too.

Because it’s possible to look awake…while sleepwalking through our lives.
To keep showing up.
Keep saying the right things.
Keep doing church-
while the soul atrophies from lack of fire.

We build programs instead of altars.
We cling to comfort instead of resurrection.

And Jesus says,
“Wake up.”

Not because He’s angry.
But because He misses us.

“I stand at the door and knock.”

That verse…

We’ve domesticated it.
Turned it into kitsch.
A soft watercolor Jesus politely tapping.

But this isn’t a Hallmark moment.

This is divine urgency.

Jesus is outside the church,
outside the heart,
knocking…not just to come in,
but to dine, to commune, to reignite something.

To tell us that He wants more than our religious compliance…
He wants our company.

He wants us hot or cold,
not safe and tepid.

He wants something real.

To the faithful in Philadelphia…
He says, “I’ve placed before you an open door.”

And I wonder…
What doors has He opened for us that we’ve been too afraid to walk through?

Because sometimes it’s easier to build bigger walls
than to walk through open doors.

Sometimes we mistake familiarity for faithfulness,
and call it obedience,
when really…it’s fear dressed up in Sunday clothes.

But Jesus opens doors no one can shut.

So maybe your fear doesn’t get the final word.

And to the ones who overcome…
He gives names,
white robes,
crowns,
intimacy.

Not as prizes for performance…
But as restorations of what was always meant to be.

Your name.
Your place.
Your belonging.

So today,
maybe we pause.

Maybe we stop pretending.
Stop posing.

Maybe we get quiet enough
to hear the knock at the edge of everything.

Maybe we invite Him in…not just to our churches,
but to the parts of ourselves we’ve kept hidden behind thick doors and polite smiles.

Because He’s knocking.
And not just to judge.

But to heal.
To wake.
To feast.

To make us fully alive again.
Not someday.
But now.

“Whoever has ears…”
Listen.
Really listen.
The door’s open.

And He’s already moving toward the table.

Are we?