The cursor blinks on the white screen with a rhythmic, judgmental pulse while the dryer hums in the distance. This simple electronic heartbeat feels less like an invitation to work and more like the sheer, smooth wall of a deep pit I cannot climb out of. You can spend your whole life analyzing the wind for the perfect conditions, or you can trust the Master of the Harvest and just start sowing.
As I type these words on a laptop with a dying battery, I recognize the familiar warning signs of a spirit running on empty. The headlines may have changed since the pandemic, but the anxiety we feel is just the same old song playing a different verse. We can continue to drain our energy on fear, or we can choose to plug into a source that actually sustains us. It all comes down to deciding which wolf you are going to feed.
For years, I have been ambushed by sudden lightning bolts of shame over mistakes I made decades ago as a teenager. It feels like I am constantly answering hateful phone calls meant for a version of myself that doesn’t exist anymore. I finally had to learn how to hang up on the prosecutor in my head and accept the grace I so freely give to others.
I used to start every semester by asking my students to define economics in a single word, and they almost always got it wrong. We often make the same mistake in our spiritual lives, trying to balance a ledger of good deeds to outweigh our failures. It turns out that the math of heaven is different than the math of earth, and the debt was never ours to settle.
I spent many nights trying to smile through pleasant conversations while a thumping anxiety beat like a drum beneath the floorboards of my life. Just like the killer in Poe’s famous story, we often exhaust ourselves trying to keep a calm surface while a hidden fear or secret screams to be let out. If the internal noise is driving you to the brink of madness today, come read why the only way to find real peace is to finally tear up the planks.
I spent the holidays working ten-hour days, running as if starving junkyard dogs were snapping at my heels. In my frantic drive to cross a mythical finish line, I forgot the basic economic principle that everything comes with a price tag. It turns out that true productivity isn’t about how late you stay up, but about trusting the One who grants sleep to those He loves.
I imagine the shepherds eventually had to leave the warmth of that stable and head back into the wind-driven cold to face the same smelly sheep they’d left behind. They returned to the exact same lives, but they went back as men forever altered by the sight of a King napping in a common cow trough. If you feel the letdown of the holiday ending, come read why the real miracle isn’t found in the noise of the celebration, but in the quiet way God remakes us for the ordinary days ahead.
If you’ve ever worked the night shift, you know it’s a lonely business spent in the quiet corners the rest of the world has forgotten. It was into that same damp, frigid air that God chose to rip open the ceiling of the world and pour out His glory—not to a palace, but to a pasture full of men smelling of sheep and woodsmoke. If you feel like you’re laboring in the dark today, come read why light always breaks best exactly where polite folks wouldn’t think to look.
I stood in my parents’ bedroom on Christmas Eve in 1968, watching a grainy moon slide across the screen of our Zenith television. While the world outside felt like it was unraveling with war and riots, the voice of an astronaut reading Scripture from space brought a sudden, holy hush to the room. That night taught me that even when history feels like a wreck, God is still on His throne. It is a reminder of where we need to look when our own world feels out of control.
The entire 20th century turned on a dime because a driver took a wrong turn and a finicky gearbox stalled in front of the wrong person. We tend to think history is written by powerful men in oak-paneled rooms, but more often it’s shaped by the “accidents” we never see coming. If your life feels like a series of random stalls and wrong turns today, come read why there’s no such thing as luck when a sovereign God is moving the pieces.