David, in Psalm 31, writes:
Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;
my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
my soul and body with grief.
My life is consumed by anguish
and my years by groaning;

The internet has accelerated the news cycle from a breakneck pace to a rate that crushes our spirits. I often wonder if the age of information is not just another way of saying we constantly eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Now, through our phones and computer screens we can see the world at a meta-level in all of its horror. And worse yet, the allure of being “like God” turns out to be an illusion all over again—we have this pseudo omniscience and omnipresence yet severely lack much in the way of omnipotence. News of genocide in the Sudan is followed by the grim reports on our climate. And, as if to hammer home the absurdity of our media-spun culture, these stories are set alongside “news” of a figurehead monarch’s china selections for their wedding or the anxieties of balancing “career” and motherhood for reality-TV celebrity X. The temptation for us, trying to withstand the relentless onslaught of notifications, is either to despair or to distraction—its the best our figs and leaves can do.

Psalm 31 illustrates a man trying to find refuge in God in the midst of the insanities of life. What’s remarkable is how agile David remains in the face of his circumstances. Here, David maintains an honesty free of Instagram filters or carefully crafted status updates. Life is hard; traps are set for him (v. 4), he is afflicted (v. 7), strength is failing (v. 10), friends and neighbors have all abandoned him as though they had already buried him in the grave (vv.11-12). David hears the growing chorus of whispers, the slogan of the news outlets with their wars and rumors of wars, “Terror on every side” (v. 13).

It would seem completely reasonable for David to feel completely paralyzed by his present condition. And yet, David is not given to the fearful murmurings of so many in our generation who spend too much time watching the news. David is focused on something much more radical, much more real than the prophecies of doom, gloom, and inanity. He clings to something much more solid, a rock (v. 3), a fortress—David clings to hope.

David defiantly pronounces:

My times are in your hands
How abundant are the good things
that you have stored up for those who fear you,
that you bestow in the sight of all,
on those who take refuge in you.
In the shelter of your presence you hide them
from all human intrigues;
you keep them safe in your dwelling
from accusing tongues.
-vv. 15; 19-20

Our times are in his hands. This is not the resignation of despair but a bold declaration of doxology. No matter the headlines, no matter our anguish, the Lord remains, he reigns and he saves. In a day such as our own, perhaps there is no more prescient reminder. We see our world at a macro-level and are overwhelmed, but our lives as small, insignificant, and vulnerable as we often feel are never “cut off from his sight” (v. 22).

We can cry out to him and he will hear (v.22b), we are free to love him with everything we have (v. 23). David’s closing exhortation is a rallying cry to the faithful, a word louder than the headlines:

Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the Lord (v. 24).

Psalm 30 comes from a life well-worn with God’s faithfulness. Here David is a luminary, speaking from the wealth of his own experiences and his deep life with God. This is part prayer, part call to worship, and part sapiential wisdom. The pain here, though extremely perilous, is relegated to the past. For David, dawn has come. “If you’re still in the throes of night,” David proclaims the gospel to you: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with morning (v. 5).” Hold on, morning is coming,

It would seem from the text that David brought about this dark night all by himself. He knows that God was “angry” with him (v. 5) and that God hid his face (v. 7). Like the twilight descends upon the daylight, it grows dark slowly. Sin does this, it creeps slowly, incrementally and then suddenly—its pitch black outside. It was only when David found himself alone in the dark that he realized the trouble that he was in. In his despair, he cried out to the Lord (v. 8).

David doesn’t just call out for help, he bargains with God, reminding him. You see for David, there is no life beyond the grave, no future beyond his existence walking in the land of the living. And so in the midst of his dismay, he protests to the Lord: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?” David isn’t ready to be another member of the dust choir, the melodies of the shades don’t reach the throne of God.

When God removes himself, it feels like the worst kind of abandonment, like death, like eternal solitary confinement. But his momentary anger is nothing compared to his lifelong faithfulness (v. 5) and his judgment is only a beckoning back home. Whatever David did to find himself in the snares of death, it was only in his dismay at feeling alone that caused him to cry out to God. God, either due to our sin or because he is further refining us, will often remove his manifest presence. This can be a judgment for our disobedience or a “dark night of the soul” ^[1]see John of the Cross. But the specific reasons are secondary, the primary reason is God calling us to himself.

As David reflects upon the faithfulness of God, he testifies to this incredible reversal that has taken place. God has replaced his mourning not just with a calm disposition but with dancing, he is literally wearing joy as a garment. And even more, it’s possible that David’s whole framework has been transfigured. Whereas in the midst of his pain, David lamented that he would be consigned to the chorus of the dead, who sing no songs and whose voices make no sound. But now he declares, “My soul will not not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”

Forever. David despaired of his earthly life because there was nothing beyond. But now, there’s this defiant forever, this hope that dances upon the grave of death. Forever. Only dark nights can drape the dawn in the most splendid hope.

In the beginning the spirit of God is hovering over the waters (Genesis 1vv1-2). Out of that primordial darkness, the voice of the Lord breaks forth, “Let there be light” and a mighty symphony of creation begins to resound. On the seventh day, like a God taking residence in his temple, the Lord rests, makes his dwelling within the sanctuary of the world, not confined but graciously drawing near in every corner.

This same voice that spoke creation into its form, as the psalmist notes, is still present and is still powerful, still reigning over the waters of chaos, still breaking the cedars of Lebanon and Syria— the trees that the woodworkers of Canaan craft their “god” Baal out of. The same voice that was so powerful that it formed a world with the shape of its words sits enthroned still.

This tells us two things. 1) God is still so big and reigns in so much majesty that he doesn’t even have to get up from his throne to keep order in the universe. His very word manifests his will, he speaks and it happens. This is a vast departure from other theological myths of the Ancient Near East, who envisioned their gods as warriors subduing rival forces through bloody combat. The God of Israel wars with his words, and his word is enough. 2). God is still creating. The voice of God which brings light out of nothingness, is endowed with such generative power that it is always dynamic, always creating new possibility. Words create worlds, and God’s ongoing word to his creation, even in the face of forces that would seek to unravel the shalom that God intends for the world, still carves out a path of hope when all seems lost.

Psalm 29 brings us back to this creative sovereignty of God. Likely this psalm was a prayer offered in the temple-worship of Israel with a corporate refrain in v. 9. Like a Southern Baptist preacher leading his congregation in the rote, “and all God’s people said…Amen;” the psalmist as he walks through the mighty acts of God cannot help but turn to the congregation and invite participation. He beckons the gathered faithful to respond and they sing their “amen” as they shout with one voice “glory!”

The final stanza summarizes this poetic prayer. It serves as a powerful reminder that no matter where we find ourselves, God is still king, still present, still creating. The Lord is enthroned over the chaos, he is king now and forever. He is still speaking relationally to his creation, and the word that he speaks is strength and peace. And all God’s people say, “glory.”

There is still a river, that makes glad the nations
A river wider than the Rio Grande
Where daughters swim in the arms of their fathers
Not from shores of violence to sands of vitriol;
But between banks of delight, where a picnic lunch awaits.

Her arms draped around his shoulder
Like my toddler holds her dolls.
Those muddy currents unrelenting—
O my God, don’t you care if they drown;
Are you dozing in the stern of this madness?
Or are you too in a cage, sleeping under an aluminum blanket?

Separated.
Maybe it’s us who lost our father, not them.

In that brown, murky water
Where a father desperately, hopelessly tried to save his daughter
You still whisper, “Peace, be still.”
And in their stillness, you still scream—
Don’t you care if they drown?

Separated.
Maybe it’s us who lost our father, not them.

I used to run. Every day. Now after three kids, and a year plus of church planting, I run more like once a week. But when I get the chance, I take full advantage. This past Wednesday I had factored an evening run into the end of my work day and so as I was winding down my tasks, I was gearing up for some music, some solitude, and that feeling of relief mixed with satisfaction when the running is done. I found a new run in our town that is a paved path that extends out to some rolling farmland and a secluded backroad. I love it.

But on this day, little did I realize that I as my little GPS dot all too slowly moved eastward on the radar I was running into a massive amoeba of red and orange that would soon consume the whole of my Weather app and the whole of the horizon. At first the lightning was far off. I’m from Oklahoma, which is another way of saying when it comes to thunderstorms, I consider how I can get the best vantage point to witness the strokes of static electricity on a canvas of stratus clouds. So to say I didn’t mind running with a soundtrack of The National’s new album (Easy To Find, simply brilliant) accompanied by a light show in the distance is an understatement. But as it turned out the storm that I thought was moving away from me was actually rather quickly descending upon me.

I don’t know whether its an old wives’ tale or not but amateur meteorology folklore tells you if you see a flash of lighting and then count the seconds until the rumble of the thunder, you can gauge how far the lighting strike was away. It started innocently enough: flash…one, two…ten, eleven…boom. But then what do you do when there is lighting flashing all around you? As the lighting increased the cadence decreased: flash…one…boom. So I guess its on top of me? Mind you I am in the middle of a field which is not exactly the greatest place to be.

And then the heavens opened. Torrential rains joined the chorus of thunder and here’s me, just your average dope who doesn’t check the weather very often out running in the electrified deluge.

Lessons From The Storm

And, well, I’m a pastor so I guess I spiritualize everything. But as I was completely at the mercy of this awesome force of nature, a New Jersey thunderstorm of truly midwestern proportions, I couldn’t help but talk to Jesus— you can be a tough guy all you want, I was a little unnerved by it. And I believe that unlike Elijah, who heard the the voice of God “in the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19), I heard God speak through the thunder.

The Only Way To Get To Where You’re Going Is To Keep Going

At the literal halfway point of my run, right about the moment I realized that I was the last peg on the game of Battleship and that nature had all the other coordinates covered, I stopped under a metal shed that serves as a farm store. It was closed up for the day, the rain started to fall angry on the tin roof (hello 90’s music) and really I could have stayed there. But my wife and I often share a car on work days and I was due to pick her up in a mere fifteen minutes. As I rejoiced in my reprieve from the storm I realized that if this storm lasted any length of time, I was going to be very late to pick her up and that neither of us would get home to our children for quite a while. I realized that the only way to get to where I was going was to keep going.

Church planting is kind of like this. You set out, you set out because you know you’re doing what you should be doing, you know that even though its hard, it will be worth it for all involved. But then it gets really hard. The idealism of beginnings is met with the reality of building something from the ground up. You are literally in the middle, you have leveraged your career, your family’s security, and your own emotional wellbeing to launch something new and it is so very slow and hard. And there are so many illusions of shelter, places that you tell yourself that if you can arrive at you will be able to rest. But the only way to get to where you’re going is to keep going. If you ride out the storm in the shelter (which if you’re honest with yourself you realize is a joke of shelter anyway), you will never be what God is calling you to be.

He Calls Us To The Storm

Because God doesn’t call us to shelter, he doesn’t call us to destinations, or assurances of controlled environments of security and sunshine. He calls us to himself. And thus, he calls us to the storm. As I realized that I had to keep going, the storm intensified more and more. The lightning became like a strobe light. The sky turned green, like Twister (killing the 90’s references), stuff’s about to start flying sideways green. And the thunder. That bass that doesn’t just hit you in the chest, it makes it hard to breathe. And here I am running in the middle of it. And the voice I hear in the thunder is shouting the question, “do you trust me?” As I am running in between lighting bolts, as I want so desperately to be in my car, as it seems like I’m running in a waterfall—”do you trust me?”

What choice did I have then and what choice do I have now? I don’t know what planting a church will ultimately mean, but one thing I have discovered, is that planting a church was never about what I could accomplish for God, as if he somehow needed me. It was always about my heart, he was calling me to run through the storm to find that he would always be my refuge, that truly the “wind and the waves”—and the lighting bolts— obey him and that its only when I feel small, when I actually need this to be true, that he really is Lord of all and that he really is relentlessly pursuing me, that I will know it for myself.

Usually God whispers. But sometimes God shouts to get his point across. In the tremble of crashing thunder God had drilled his message into me: keep going, do not be afraid, I will be with you. I am grateful for what I discovered that day. As I finally arrived at my car, I had prayed a couple hundred times: “Lord, I trust you, I get the memo, I’ve been telling everyone that God is not an angry, Zeus-Like figure waiting to hurl a lightning bolt at you, it would be really ironic if I died getting struck by lightning.” And you know what? I’ve discovered something else. Running in a thunderstorm is kind of awesome.

Psalm 28 is not a psalm that was written in one sitting. It is a psalm that slowly took its form like the way the sunrise defeats the darkness—there is a spark of hope that pierces the dark, irrevocably breaking its hold, but it takes time for the light to diffuse, permeating the starry dome, finger painting with the clouds. David begins, bearing witness to his own pleas. He is essentially saying, “I am doing it all right, I am trusting in you, I am bringing my needs before you, don’t ignore me.” 

David then turns his attention to those who ignore God’s ways. He describes those with long careers in rebellion against God. Eugene Peterson calls them “full-time employees of evil.” It seems kind of out of place at this point in the psalm. But sometimes, if we’re honest even with our less flattering emotions before God, we compare ourselves to others. We go on detours to the rough side of town, driving through with the windows up and the doors locked, harboring a sense of superiority. Is David’s judgmental attitude right, is it just? He would think so but but the answer is “probably not.” But that’s not really the question is it? The question that the psalms are asking is will you live your whole life before God? Will you bring every ounce of action, emotion, circumstance, fear, and triumph before the Lord? Will we open the inner sanctum of our lives to the holy of holies where God resides?

The psalm finishes with a joyful flourish. Time has elapsed, the ordeal has turned a corner. David rejoices:

Blessed be God—
He proved he’s on my side;
 he heard me praying.
I’ve thrown my lot in with him.
Now I’m jumping for joy,
 and shouting and singing my thanks to him.

David now speaks from the other side of the chasm, God hears, he is faithful. David responds in exuberant praise. He’s been proven to have chosen the winning team. He now holds both ends of the ordeal in his hands and can tie them into a bow, mark them down as another chapter in the story of God’s faithfulness. 

Perhaps the message of this psalm is the brief glimpse we get into the in-between, the point between the petition and the praise. In that time, David doesn’t lose his head, he doesn’t become somebody he’s not. David doesn’t become one of those who “moonlights for the Devil.” For the time being, he maintains his identity and thus holds onto the promises of God. This is reinforced by David’s ending praise.

Pain has a way of teaching us who God is and who we are. The hard-won fruit of this suffering is that David sees his identity clearly and he sees even more clearly who God is— David is the leader of God’s people and God is the salvation and refuge for all, leader and layperson alike. David’s task as a leader, in leading them to godliness, blessing, and safety then becomes clear: follow God, the shepherd and stay true to his own God-given identity.

Photo by Serrah Galos.

Fearless Trust

Psalm 27 invites us to a glimpse of a well-worn, mature faith. These words are not those of one freshly afoot on the road of life with God. These words are the embodiment of the image of the tree in Psalm 1, a life firmly rooted in God, watered by past experiences of God’s salvation, by the promises and hope of what the Lord has said. David writes as one well-schooled in the art of trusting God.

Perhaps most striking about David’s assurance is that chaos seems to be the vantage point from which he prays. He describes his circumstances with images of vandal hordes descending and all hell breaking loose (vv.2-3). David’s increased depth of trust and hope in God has not resulted in a diminishing of the very real threats that plague him. But David’s trust has reframed everything. In the midst of this anarchy, David is “calm as a baby, collected and cool” (vv.2-3). 

There is something so radically this-worldly about the shape the hope Psalm 27 invites us into. The pain and the danger are real but so is the reality that God is inviting us into counter-rhythms that syncopate the cadences of chaos with order and beauty. Two important practices stand out within the context of the psalm. He writes in vv.4-5:

I’m asking God for one thing,
only one thing:
To live with him in his house
my whole life long.
I’ll contemplate his beauty;
I’ll study at his feet.

1. Contemplative Prayer

First, David invites us to the disciplines of contemplative prayer, silence and solitude. David’s world much, much like our own, moves at a frenzied pace. We are constantly being discipled by the antichrist rhythms of noise, notifications, news, and the normalization of violence. David knows that the only response is to retreat. A retreat not away from this world but a retreat into the refuge of God’s presence. Thomas Merton writes that when Christians forsake contemplation they substitute the “truth of life” for “fiction and mythology” bringing about the “alienation of the believer, so that his [sic] religious zeal becomes political fanaticism.”  David instead of leaning into the madness, embraces silence and solitude. He writes of the presence of God:

 That’s the only quiet, secure place
in a noisy world,
The perfect getaway,
far from the buzz of traffic.

2. Immersive Worship

Second, David immerses himself in worship both private and communal. Even on the way to church, he’s already singing his own songs:

I’m headed for his place to offer anthems
that will raise the roof!
Already I’m singing God-songs;
I’m making music to God.

Worship is the eruption of joy and gratitude, not a response fueled by emotivism, but a quiet resolve to contemplate what God has done and to voice heartfelt thanksgiving for it. Worship is the antidote to our own poisonous obsession with self, our propensity to live at the mercy of our circumstances and our ever-changing whims. Worship in the face of great trial is not a denial of our situation. Rather it is God’s invitation to to view the world from his own vantage point, to be with God and find that in all things he is drawing near to us.

This Exuberant Earth

David expresses one final plea, “You’ve always been right there for me; don’t turn your back on me now. Don’t throw me out, don’t abandon me; you’ve always kept the door open” (vv. 9-10). He asks for guidance, he needs God to show him the way. He writes:

Point me down your highway, God;
direct me along a well-lighted street;

And he ends his prayer in one final, resolved, steadfast, radically hopeful expression of trust. Again, what’s remarkable about this ending stanza is that this resolution is not reserved for another life. He finds hope right here in the midst of the confines of this world, this place, amongst these people and these circumstances. He knows that God won’t quit on him and so, grizzled veteran of faith and trust in God that he is, he won’t quit on God. He holds fast to the hope that God’s goodness will reveal itself again, right here in this “exuberant earth.” Don’t quit. God is faithful. In the beautiful translation of Eugene Peterson:

I’m sure now I’ll see God’s goodness
in the exuberant earth.
Stay with God!
Take heart. Don’t quit.
I’ll say it again:
Stay with God.

In honor of the life and legacy of Eugene Peterson, I will be using the Message version of the psalms as our text. Psalm 26 sounds, on its face, like the self-righteous protestations of a deluded legalist. Is David really placing wagers on his own integrity (v. 1) in the presence of a holy, all-seeing God? He even invites God to perform open-heart surgery on him, examining the hidden caverns of his life (v. 2). So what are we to do with a psalm that most of us would never claim is true of our own experience? How do we pray this along with David with a straight face?

What David expresses here is a visceral, unflinching trust. It may sound as though he is unwilling to confess his own sinfulness but that misses the point. This psalm is not about who David is, this psalm is about who God is. The steadfast love of God is the branch that David clings to, holding fast in the rushing currents of falsehood and idolatry. Left to his own devices, David would be swept along with the sinners, the devious, the frauds. But David’s life is not defined merely by his own actions, his life flows from a deep river of confession, worship, and prayer.

I scrub my hands with purest soap,
then join hands with the others in the great circle,
dancing around your altar, God,
Singing God-songs at the top of my lungs,
telling God-stories.
God, I love living with you;
your house glows with your glory. 

The Message, vv.6-8

He expresses his trust in the means that God has provided for purification. He recalls rapturous times of worship in the presence of God and the community. His life is shaped by story and song both of what God has done and his own experience with God. Everything for him starts from a deep and personal encounter with God.

David invites us to a faith that is embraced in momentary acts of faithfulness, where the words of our mouths and the state of our hearts are constantly presented to God for examination. God’s presence is a fire, engulfing and purifying every corner of his life. We can trust that God’s presence will not simply rubber stamp our agendas, or provide us with good feelings to get us through the day, but it will provide a way forward, a way of openness, of integrity, of transformation.

David beautifully conveys the meaning of life: God, I love living with you. David’s life before God expresses the poles of this life: exuberant displays of abandon in the congregation where everything is in its right place and a life of contemplative nearness in the midst of ambiguity and brokenness, a life lived up close to God. Openness, vulnerability, this is the life that is oriented to God’s presence. Trust is the foundation of this life, a trust that says God is exactly who he has shown himself to be, abundant steadfast love and thus, I can trust that I am exactly who he says I am: beloved.

Christian faith is not neurotic dependency but childlike trust. We do not have a God who forever indulges our whims but a God whom we trust with our destinies.” -Eugene Peterson

Some men are less than their works, some are more. To have known the man would have been enough; to know his books is enough. [He was] the same man in his life and in his writings.^[1]T. S. Eliot on Charles Williams. Feels appropriate for Eugene as well.

I suspect my story is not unusual. I was languishing in self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-absorption. I was a pastor, in title, not in practice. I was given a title and a job description but not a vision for doing God’s work that actually cultivated an awareness of God’s presence. Church work seemed like the least Christian work I could imagine. Five years into pastoring, I had made up my mind that I wanted to be more where the action was, where the power of the Gospel was manifested in ways I could touch, and where I frankly felt a little more useful. I was going to study law.

And then I met Eugene Peterson.

Up until that point, I was aware of Eugene Peterson but wrote him off as the author of a “popular” Bible translation—my two semesters of Greek encouraged me to use this word, “popular,” pejoratively…little did I know at that point that Peterson was a Semitic languages scholar whose translation, The Message, was a pastoral attempt to help his congregants better hear and read Scripture, it was not the first or the last time Eugene taught me a lesson in humility and listening. I picked up the book “Working The Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity.” This was my second conversion.

For the first time, a light was beginning to shine on what it meant to pastor not simply as a job but as a vocation. It would not be long before I had read every book I could find by Peterson. Eugene was drawing me into a deep life of doing for God that flowed from a being with God, a way of “saving souls” while finding my own. Eugene wrote as an artisan, a tradesman who crafted pictures out of words. Eugene was a storyteller in the heritage of Jesus himself, drawing people into the expansive world of Scripture and making its world seem not so distant from our own.

Before I met Eugene, people would ask me what I did for a living in different social situations and I would always respond “teacher.” I told myself that I did not want to push people away who might have reservations about the idea of talking to a pastor but really I am just not sure I believed in what I did—really, I am not sure I knew what it meant to be a pastor.  Eugene’s wise words and contemplative faith saved my own faith. Not my faith in Jesus, or in the power of the gospel, but my faith in pastoring— in doing thousands of seemingly irrelevant tasks faithfully, of committing to Scripture and prayer above all else, of discerning a vocation of deep spirituality in the midst of a demanding job description. Eugene Peterson awakened me to the reality that it is a profound and fearful thing to call one’s self a pastor. It is now a title I wear with great pride and even greater humility.

In an interview recently, Eugene said his hope for life’s work was simple, “I hope I can be part of changing the pastoral imagination of pastors in America.” To that prayer, I know the Lord has answered “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Eugene was my pastor. And by judging from my own experiences with my colleagues, Eugene was a pastor to thousands of other pastors and thus his congregation is in the millions. Though I never met Eugene, I apprenticed myself to him, acquainting myself with his generous mastery.He gave me a trade, he passed down tools of Word, gospel, prayer, and poetry, he invited me into the kind of work that dignifies a man, that makes him grateful for a hard day’s labor. He made me want to be a better pastor and a better man. He writes, “A life of congruence. It is the best word I can come up with to designate what I am after…”^[2]From Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places

I am not only grateful for Eugene’s life but forever shaped by it. I have great joy in the thought that at this very moment, Eugene is beholding and smiling at the face of the Savior he loved so dearly—I hope that Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Karl Barth, and John of Patmos are there for the first brunch by the lake as well.

Thank you, Eugene. You have been my companion in finding my way as a pastor, it is lonely work, and I needed you. ^[3]From Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor. The afterword is a “Letter to a Young Pastor”

To those with minds whose imaginations paint with every color until the canvas is stained with streaks of brown and black.

To those who write scripts of loneliness, abandonment, and failure.

To those who only remember songs of lament, even on a bright and warm autumn day.

To those whose breathing grows shallow, whose chest feels heavy, whose shoulders ache from unseen burdens.

To those who are well-acquainted with the harrowing darkness of the middle of the night.

We have too many testimonies of anguished brothers and sisters who lived with the pain day in and day out to say that there is any formula for healing. For most of us, life is not linear, some days go up and others go down. But just because there is no formula does not mean the promise is void. The promise proclaims to us no matter the darkness, the light will break through. No matter the swells of the waves, they obey the command to be still. No matter the grave, life will rise up.No matter the depth of despair, there is hope.

We need hope, we need it to sing over us, to bring our distorted realities into focus, to repair our broken imaginations, and to lift our heads. Hope often connotes something in the future. Hope is not simply that it will all work out in the end. It will. But what does it hope look like right here, right now?  For those mired in the struggle of mental health, what hope is there? As C.S. Lewis writes achingly, “I need Christ, not something that resembles him.” We need hope, not something that resembles it. Hope is not an outcome, it is the very presence of Jesus. Jesus knocks at the door, he comes in and he sits down to a meal with us. He says to us simply and without qualification or prerequisite, “I am.” I am here, I have overcome, I care for you, I have healed you, I am healing you, and I will heal you. I am.

For those brothers and sisters fighting, clawing, despairing because your own brains are double agents, betraying you, isolating you. There is hope for you, there is healing for you. It doesn’t depend on you, saying the right words or performing the right rituals.  1 Peter 5:7 invites us to cast all of our anxieties upon him because he cares for us. The Greek form of the verb translated “cast” (epirito) does not designate a period of time (past, present, or future) it simply acknowledges it as a fact. Essentially, Peter is saying, “Jesus does not tire of your wrestling with mental health, he does not grow weary, or heavy-laden by anxieties past, present, or future. He will take them, he will carry them. Every single time, every single day. He will never fail.”

You are welcomed as a beloved child. Jesus will always come to you. There is hope now and forevermore. Cast your anxieties upon him, every moment if you need to, he cares for you. Grace and peace to you.