​Maybe you’ve read the story in the Bible. The Israelites lived in Egypt for over 400 years. In the early years, they were favored guests - protected and provided for. But in the later years they became victims of systemic oppression: forced labor, brutality, dehumanization, and even infanticide.

Intergenerational trauma.

So Moses was called on by God to carry out one of the greatest rescue missions in history - to free them from Egypt and lead them toward a promised land. A land flowing with milk and honey.

The rescue mission was a success; Moses did indeed free them. But as it turns out, freedom came quickly. Healing did not.

After the rescue, the Israelites didn’t march straight into the promised land. Instead, they wandered in the desert for forty years. Not because God lost his way, but because fear kept reappearing.

When food felt uncertain, they panicked. When water ran low, they complained. When danger loomed, they longed for Egypt. Again and again, a people freed from slavery found themselves unable to trust freedom.

What they had been delivered from changed faster than what was happening inside them.

The wilderness became a long, slow re-learning. Where a generation formed in trauma gave way to one formed in trust. The desert wasn’t just a delay between Egypt and promise. It was the space where God patiently worked to remove Egypt from their hearts before inviting them into a land they weren’t yet ready to believe was truly theirs.

For the longest time, the Israelites settled for less because for generations their traumas had taught them to accept that they WERE less.

I wonder how many of us are wandering in deserts - with goodness just on the other side and within our reach - because we've experienced seasons in our lives that taught us to settle for less.

Who has settled for relationships that are distant, inconsistent, or unsafe - not because we don’t want more, but because more never felt reliable? We tell ourselves not to expect too much. We stay quiet rather than risk rejection. We accept crumbs of connection because at some point that was all that was available.

Who has stopped pursuing work that feels meaningful and settled for what feels safe? We choose predictability over purpose. We downplay gifts because standing out once made us targets. So we stay in jobs that pay the bills but slowly starve the soul.

Who has come to accept inner narratives that say, this is as good as it gets. We don’t ask for help. We don’t ask for more. We don’t cross the river. Not because the land is unavailable, but because somewhere along the way we learned that wanting more was dangerous.

The tragedy of the wilderness isn’t that the land was unreachable.
It’s that trauma convinced them the land wasn’t for them.

And I wonder how often the same is true for us.

I am here to assure you, no matter what your past, the promised land you long for is absolutely for you!

​It is easy to claim faith.

To proclaim it.

What is much more difficult is to align behaviors with the beliefs that come from the faith one claims and proclaims.

It is a great question to ask of one's self - how well do my behaviors illustrate the story of my faith?

And also important, equally if not more so, when others see my behaviors, what story would they write about my faith after seeing me behave?

Faith - in and of itself - is rather meaningless.

It is making choices, choosing directions in life that couldn't be made without fully trusting whatever it is we have faith in that brings meaning to our faith.

What we choose to do in life is the purest definition there is of what it is we believe in. What he have faith in.

The story of the disciples' faith in Jesus isn't one of disciples merely believing in him. Their faith story is Jesus asked them to drop their nets and all they had ever known as meaningful in their lives and to follow him.

And they did. Without a second thought, they followed him.

They could have said, no thanks, we're really needed back here at home, Jesus. We're honored by the invitation. Truly. And we wish you well on your journey. Please know that we believe in you.

We believe in you.

Faith makes belief easy to say.

Choices make beliefs look like faith.

Sometimes choices are hard. But here's the thing, faith was never meant to be a part of the easy choices. It was always meant to be the backbone of the hardest ones. 

A group of Buddhist monks is walking for peace from Texas to the White House in Washington, DC. Their walk has arrived in central Virginia, and I've seen many friends who've attended the walks posting pictures and stories of the experience.

My hope for this walk is that its real mission won't get lost in our own wishful thinking - our own desires - desires for world peace. Because I'm here to break it to you: world peace is never going to happen.

That is not hopeless, that's reality. Because world peace doesn't happen when the world turns peaceful, it happens when all the hearts of the world embrace peace. History laughs at that possibility. Even the bible I follow says at the end of the world their will be those who elected peace and those who did not.

Seems to me that is a division that has defined the world from day one to this day.

In a written statement, Bhikkhu Pannakara, spiritual leader of the Walk for Peace, said, "We walk not to protest, but to awaken the peace that already lives within each of us."

And in a blog post written by the monks on the walk, they say, "Our walking itself cannot create peace. But when someone encounters us — whether by the roadside, online or through a friend — when our message touches something deep within them, when it awakens the peace that has always lived quietly in their own heart — something sacred begins to unfold."

The monks get the path to peace. It's reaching inside the humanity of others where peace is born, where peace lives, and they walk to invite it out of them. To invite others to begin their own peace walk.

We live in a dark world. It always has been and always will be. But that darkness isn't and never has been a reflection of the world, it's a reflection of the hearts that populate it.

I love what these monks are doing. Modeling peace, not trying to force it. The world has long tried that approach - forcing individual versions and crafted frameworks of peace on the rest of the world.

Surely it's as obvious to you as it is to me that this has never worked.

The monks went on to say in their blog post, " "This is our contribution—not to force peace upon the world, but to help nurture it, one awakened heart at a time."

Peace will never be forced upon the hearts of the masses, peace comes to the masses through the awakening of individual hearts. Desires for world peace will always start with inward reflection, not outward strategies.

I am wishing the monks well through central Virginia and beyond. Not in the name of world peace, but with hopes that folks along the path of their walk will accept their invitation to experience peace within.

I cannot reasonable hope the world will ever experience peace, but I can surely hope the people I encounter on my walk through it will. For we each have a walk, one that walks as an invitation to peace or one that does not.

Either way, we are all on a walk.

​A friend shared some good news with me recently. She'd received an answer to a prayer she'd been praying for quite some time. She said, "I never thought I'd get an answer, as it just seemed stagnant."

Boy, that hit me.

It hit me because lately I've realized how often I miss God's presence in my life when I feel like God is showing up without answers.

Translated: I too often reduce God to answers.

If ChatGPT doesn't spit out answers, the presence of ChatGPT in my life has zero value.

But God is not ChatGPT.

When we’re struggling, we tend to turn God into a solution-provider. We ask for clarity, direction, rescue, relief. None of that is wrong. But desperation has a way of narrowing our vision. We start measuring God’s faithfulness by outcomes instead of presence. We ask, “What did God say?” or “What did God fix?” rather than “Is God here?”

This didn't start with us, it's ancient.

Moses doesn’t get a roadmap, he gets “I will be with you.” The disciples don’t get certainty about tomorrow, they get “I am with you always.” Even in moments of agony, the promise isn’t explanation, it’s companionship.

God doesn’t stand at a distance shouting instructions. God steps into the room. But a God without explanations can sometimes be a God we don't feel in the room.

I don't know why that is, for many of us have experienced it. When we are going through a tough time, having someone we love sit next to us makes all the difference. We don't dismiss their presence because they've shown up without a full-proof answer to our tough time.

In parenting, especially the older our kids get, they don't stop calling us when we stop having all the answers, they stop calling when they stop feeling the beauty and peace in our connection.

From the moment we are born, as babies, we long for closeness more than we long for answers. As babies, closeness IS the answer.

But we grow up, and our brains wire to need to know everything, they need to know ALL the answers, and all the while our bodies hold onto - crave - the greatest answer we've ever had.

Being held. Held closely at birth by those who gifted us birth.

I will always believe that God chose birth as the means by which the world would be populated for a reason. Mainly so we'd always know and long for the answer that would always be found in being held.

So that even in moments when God shows up without the answers we are looking for, we'd never stop craving - and noticing - the greatest answer of all - being held by Him.

I have often experienced a God without answers. Sadly, that has too often felt like a God who is not holding me. It is good to be reminded that God has always held us first, and from there flows the answers we seek.

If you feel like you aren't getting the answers you need from God, I encourage you to sit quietly in silence, in prayerful listening, and in the silence feel yourself being deeply held, like a mama holds her baby.

I encourage this because you indeed ARE being held.

From there, I promise you, the answers will come.

God is never stagnant, he's too busy holding us for stagnation to ever enter the picture. Look for God and not the answers, and then, my friends, the answers will come.

​I had coffee with a friend yesterday. She told me about a recent flight she took. In telling the story, she told me about the prayer she said while sitting on the runway waiting for the plane to take off.

It was quite a detailed prayer.

Then, I told her about the simple prayer I always whisper when flying. A prayer not quite as comprehensive, but still a request for God's intervention in my travels.

As we were talking about planes and prayers, it occurred to me just how infrequently I say similar prayers when driving a car. Or even when being a passenger in a car. This seems strange to me given that statistics suggest automobiles, when looking at deaths per mile traveled, are at least 100 times more dangerous than commercial airplanes.

I reflected out loud with her about this. I said I think this is about control. When driving, we perceive much greater control over our safety than when flying - no matter what the probabilities tell us.

And I wondered, is my reaching out to God directly proportional to my fears? Am I more likely - maybe even MUCH more likely - to have a conversation with God when I can't imagine anything other than God being powerful enough to ensure my safety or positive outcomes?

I told my friend that MY airplane prayer is simply, "God, put this plane in your hands." I told her as I say this, I actually visualize God holding the airplane in midair. He looks like a father holding a precious baby.

Why don't I say the very same prayer when driving? Is it because I literally have the steering wheel, and for all practical purposes - the automobile - in MY hands. Can some situations make me so confident in my own hands that I presume away any need for God's hand?

Why do I so readily place my airplane life in God's hand, but resist doing so in so many other areas in my life? Has my own life, my own personal risk statistics, not proven beyond any doubt that God's hands are much healthier than my own when looking for direction or protection?

I will answer that question: my statistics all point to God....

My friend and I had a great coffee chat, but I think my biggest takeaway in our conversation was that I need to treat more of my life like I'm sitting on a runway in an airplane about to take off.

I need to have airplane relationships. Airplane jobs. Airplane dreams. Airplane finances. Airplane parenting.

And more.

I need to spend much more time visualizing God holding more areas of my life in his hand like a precious baby than just the airplane I might be sitting in.

Even things as simple as this article and Facebook post.

God, hold it in your hands.

Like a precious baby.

​Yesterday, I wrote about New England Patriot's coach Mike Vrabel, and how he made connection with his team a priority in his coaching style. I wrote he does that because that is what each of us requires - longs for - relationship.

I thought about that deeper yesterday in terms of Jesus - and Christianity. There's an old saying - a cliche' of sorts - that says 'Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship'. What that is saying is the heart of Christianity is not about cleaning up your act, it's about drawing closer to the one who gave you your act to begin with.

It's about loving the one who gave the rules so deeply that rules feel more like a path to love than mandates that begin to feel like the price of love.

And this is how Christianity often gets distorted into something transactional:

“If I do this, God will do that.”

“If I behave, God will bless.”

“If I fail, God will punish.”

That’s not relationship. That’s spiritual management.

As someone who has experienced a failed marriage, I started thinking of this spiritual management in terms of marital management. How you can be committed to following every rule of marriage and still land in an emotional desert. How if you don't wake up every day centered on growing and nurturing the love in the connection, the rules of the connection can become quickly meaningless.

Behaving like a happily married couple doesn't always mean there is happy love between the couple.

And I think of it in terms of fatherhood. How a dad can raise children to fully understand the rules of a home so strongly that the child's greatest desire becomes leaving that home. It's easy for parenting to become about establishing and enforcing rules at the expense of not growing a connection.

Rules will never bring a child back home; connection will make it impossible for them to stay away.

I think that's what Jesus longs for - a connection that makes it impossible for us to stay away. And too often, it's breaking the 'rules and commandments' of Christianity that leaves folks believing they are unworthy of a connection with Jesus.

That's a completely upside down understanding of Jesus, and a repellent to those longing for a connection with something bigger than themselves.

Jesus came to help us understand that following rules is not the path to him, but rather, loving him is the path to following the rules. Jesus love is built on accepting that he came to love the flawed rule breakers, not the folks who believed they could become flawless enough to earn his love.

Following rules is rarely the path to a loving connection, but a loving connection is often a path to longing for guardrails and rules that will protect that connection.

Memorizing the rules of love will leave you in a constant pursuit of love. Getting to know someone - a never ending desire to do so - that is the path to love.

That, is the ONLY path.

​Jesus once told a gathering of people:

If you are not for me you are against me, if you are not gathering you are scattering.

Jesus was telling the people there really is no such thing as neutrality.

There is no middle ground.

Passivity is a choice, and there is no such thing as an inconsequential choice.

Maybe you are not a Jesus follower, but I think the implications of his words here are applicable to all.

It is a reminder that being passive does not freeze outcomes in our lives, it simply hands them over to the forces that are already the most active.

In a relationship, silence hands things over to the status quo. In organizations, inaction empowers the loudest or most entrenched voices. In culture, disengagement rarely preserves values - it dilutes them.

Many people think passivity is neutrality. Not so. It's usually more about avoiding a price to pay for engaging. It's avoiding conflict, responsibility, being misunderstood, or a loss of comfort or belonging. But avoiding cost doesn’t avoid consequence, it just delays the price to be paid and lets others decide the price.

I am not suggesting that we all should be actively engaged in everything. But I am suggesting you can't say something is important to you and then not move in directions that look like importance.

Jesus was telling his followers that SAYING you're a follower doesn't make you a follower. Following looks like movement, like action, like GATHERING.

What's important to you?

What truths or principles or obligations are big enough in your life that you would call yourself a follower of them?

And maybe here's a bigger question. Do others know you are a follower of such?

I think what Jesus was telling us is that we can't take a stand by sitting. Sitting is too easy to confuse as no stance at all.

Sitting might not feel like a direction, but it surely is.

​We can get so used to the negative patterns in our lives that we stop imagining the patterns can ever change. We can get so rooted in hopelessness that it no longer feels like hopelessness, it just feels like life.

In the book of Acts in the bible we read the following story:

Every day, a man who had never been able to walk was carried to a gate outside the temple called “Beautiful.” He sat there and begged for money because that was the only way he could survive.

One afternoon, Peter and John were walking into the temple to pray. The man saw them and asked for money like he always did.

Peter stopped, looked right at him, and said, “Look at us.” So the man looked up, expecting some coins.

But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold. But what I do have, I will give you. In the name of Jesus Christ - walk.”

Then Peter took the man by the hand and helped him up. Immediately the man’s feet and legs became strong. He didn’t just stand - he started walking, then jumping, then celebrating.

He followed Peter and John into the temple, walking and leaping and thanking God out loud.

Everyone there recognized him - the same man who always begged outside the gate. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The whole crowd was filled with wonder and amazement at what God had done.

I wonder how long ago the man had given up on the miracle of ever walking again.

I wonder how long the man had been begging for help to survive instead of expecting a chance to heal.

How long had the man been dreaming about making it through another day and not imagining and expecting a completely different life?

And what about us?

How many of us are begging our way through the day instead of expecting change that will open doors to a completely different way? A way that will leave people marveling about what God has done in our lives.

I fear that I - and maybe you - get so used to begging humans to do for us what only humans can do, that we stop expecting that God will show up and do what only God can do.

Maybe as we enter 2026 we can shift some of our expectations?

And maybe at the end of 2026, people around us will be filled with wonder and amazement at what God has done.

Quit begging for coins; start expecting change.

​Maybe like me, you grew up imagining grace as the “cleanup crew” - something God sends in after we’ve blown it, a superpower that shows up with a mop, shakes its head, forgives us, and says, “Try again.”

In that view, grace is reactive. It only becomes necessary once we fail. Thankfully, it's an inaccurate view.

Megan Fate Marshman says, "Grace is not just God reacting to your failure, but initiating your future." Which means, grace is baked into our story from the beginning, not rushed in from the sidelines when we fall down.

Our failures don't show up on God's doorstep as a mess he's suddenly tasked to deal with, grace says God has already accounted for those failures and chooses daily to keep calling us forward in spite of them.

What a gift. If grace is already here, we don't have to live in fear of our next mistake. So many of us live with the anxiety that our next mistake will count us out, disqualify us.

Grace says failure is not a cliff we fall off of, but part of the terrain God already factored into our path. Grace says failure isn't the end of our calling, but part of the path to who God is calling us to become.

We are not walking a life littered with landmines ready to unexpectedly blow up our existence, but rather, with grace we are walking with a holy guide that always and forever knows the way though them. Before, during, and after the inevitable explosions.

Too often we imagine God saying, “Come back when you’re better.”

But grace says:

I am here in the confusion.

I am here in the relapse.

I am here in the numbness.

I am here in the unfinished story.

Grace doesn’t stand at the end of the road waving you home, grace walks the road with you.

Maybe you've made mistakes recently. Maybe you feel like your life is failing. Maybe you feel like you are in a place that is beyond any return. Maybe you feel like there is no way you can possibly earn the favor you long for.

Please be encouraged, grace says you already HAVE that favor.

Grace says there is more to your story than this moment, and it is grace that always has been, is, and forever will be bringing it to life. We don't have to wait on the cleanup crew to clear a way, grace cleared the way before we got here.

So go....

Go without fear of screwing it up; grace is right beside you.

​I started the year this morning taking a 6-mile walk with a dear friend; (YES to starting the year with my longest walk in MONTHS - bring it 2026!!).

But on our walk, an old favorite song of mine came up - Little Is Much, by Downhere. Maybe you'd like to reflect on it as we did to start the new year.

At the start of the new year, we often have BIG dreams. But too often, I fear, those BIG dreams are built on a false narrative that what we are already doing is too small. They are often built on looking around and deciding what he or she or they are doing is more than me, so I need to do more this year.

I am grateful that I follow a God who sees us all as seeds. Not big seeds or small seeds but quite simply - seeds.

Seeds with which he changes the world.

Seeds that look like:

A mom.

A millionaire.

A janitor.

A writer.

A Heisman trophy winner.

A volunteer in the childcare center at church.

An Uber driver.

A CEO.

God looks at that list and sees seeds, not a ranking or a hierarchy. The minute we believe we have to be someone else on that list to do big things in God's eyes is the moment we do not know God.

As you go into the new year, maybe you don't need to dream big. Maybe you just need to spend a little more time reflecting on how BIG God sees what you see as small.

Sometimes we don't need to make our dreams bigger, but rather, we need to have a bigger view of God.

Sometimes we simply need to be reminded:

Little Is Much When God's In It.