Austin and I just got back from traipsing around Charleston for two days. I had never visited, and having celebrated our five year anniversary only a month ago, we relished the opportunity to eat our way through the city. Charleston is beautiful. It is a city of coordinated historic buildings, and mauve (my new favorite
I hold the plate delicately. It feels light in my hands, and yet bears an unspoken weight. I turn it carefully in my hands, intentional to make it accessible to all who approach. “This is body of Christ,” I say with familiarity and resonance. “It is broken for you.” The words fall familiar on our
We remember the childhood trek through the store, when mommy and daddy faded from sight. We scurried and scrambled and shook just a bit and they found us again down the next isle. We remember the more serious journeys of youth, the ones that led down dark paths. We scurried and scrambled and shook a
The mornings roll together in sleepy familiarity. The routine is consistent, the rhythm the same. But this morning I heard a bird trill a familiar tune, and suddenly I was back in that wonted place dear to my heart. Swept up in the music, I sat on my old back porch with Your Words
The dark horizon hides itself in the blackness of the sky. The world is concealed in night this hour, and we watch the motionless mass once again. We have sat awake in many midnights. Never has this black horizon proved persistent. Never has this darkness been eternal. And in the unintentional expectations of our
We have heard the whispered promise that You are still to come. And we, too, have been those who preached those promises, claimed those confessions, declared those decrees. But we also confess that as soon as the creed slipped from our lips, we left the pews without expectation, viable hope, or any bit of
Sunday morning has come and gone. We ate our fill, and were very proud we had cleaned our spiritual plate. We heaped our plates with service, song and solitude. And walked out the stained-glass doors satisfied, gratified, and fulfilled. And Monday we sat down in passive wontedness, occupied and busy and quite unconcerned with
You are the God of that land we have not seen, and the God of this one we can. You are the Maker of every square inch, those we have discovered and those we never will. You are the God of history, of ages, outside of time, and it was Your imagination that crafted seconds,