Alex was exhausted. It was three in the morning and he still could not sleep.  All the voices in his head would not stop clamoring. Depression and Guilt were working together whispering lies about how pathetic he was. He had been working overtime all month. He had not been to church in weeks. He could not remember the last time he confessed his sins to someone. All of his accountability partners had flaked over time. Alex could already see the patterns repeating themselves. He was about to go on a porn binge and he knew it. 

He reached for his phone. It was going to take him a few minutes to get past the porn-blockers but he knew how. He could feel the darkness all around him in his room. The scent of sin began to attract a new group of demons. From within Alex, Guilt whispered to Depression, “our plan is working. Make room for The Others more wicked than us. He will not escape this sin cycle.”

Guilt stepped out of the open door of Alex’s heart and slithered around the room trying to find the perfect spot for The Others to enter. His shadowy husk began to look at every dark corner trying to find the right spot for the portal to open. The sin-scent was filling the entire house. The atmosphere grew darker and darker. A thick cloud permeated the atmosphere around his home.

 Two of Alex’s Angels were fighting to break through to him. They flew around the dark atmospheric cloud-wall around Alex’s home. Micah’s sword battered it over and over again to no avail.  He screamed toward Lydia, “we must break through to him!” I can sense a portal about to open into the room.”

 Lydia peered through the veil of the rapidly growing cloud-wall. She could barely see Alex through the sin-born darkness. Her tender heart called to him, “Resist, chosen child of God! You were made for more!”

The room was finally full of darkness. Guilt cackled with delight as the portal opened in front of him. He could see her coming from a distance. She moved like a serpent.  She began to step through the portal that Guilt had opened for her. Her naked body had skin like that of a snake. A foul odor filled the room as her bare foot touched the floor of Alex’s house. She fully stepped through the portal and stood in front of Guilt. Snake spirits began to slither in behind her and fill the house. Some of them began to slither up her calves and adorn her while others darted off toward Alex near his bed.

 “Is he watching?” her voice dripped. 

“Yes, my Queen Mother” answered Guilt.

 She patted Guilt on the head. “Good boy.” Her neck twisted back toward the portal as her voice called for The Others, “come my children!” 

Another seventeen demons stepped through the portal. One at a time their goblin-like bodies squeezed through the narrow portal. They were famished and ravenous to be inside a human. They filled the house. Their tattered bat-wings touched the ceiling and their bodies were covered in slime and vomit.

She beckoned to Guilt, “Keep the portal open. I will enter him and feed on his flesh.” Her serpentine body rubbed up against Guilt as she sauntered over towards Alex on his bed.

 “No!” screamed Micah as he saw the Succubus Spirit get even closer to Alex.  Micah yelled toward the other side of the cloud wall where Lydia was trying to break through. “We need Elsius or the boy will lose his soul to Hell!” 

Lydia was growing more and more distraught with each passing moment. “He is caught fighting in the Second Heaven in the dark realms,” she responded. “There is no way he can get to us. If Alex doesn’t pray he will be doomed for all eternity.”

Lydia peered deeply into the rapidly growing cloud-wall. Her pure eyes could still see through the darkness. She saw the Snake-Woman join Alex on his bed. Lydia screamed at the top of her lungs, “Alex, seek the Father for help!”

Alex had his back leaning against the headboard of his bed as he continued to watch pornography. Every demon had followed the Queen Mother into his room. She would be the first to enter him. They watched her waiting to get full invitation to enter the door of his heart. The Queen Mother’s torso elongated as she leaned in toward Alex. Her long forked tongue licked his shoulder and his neck leaving a trail of slime. Her tongue circled his ear as she whispered dark temptations into his thoughts. The porn was not dark enough yet for her to enter him. It was getting darker as she tempted him. The room grew ice cold. The Snake Spirits climbed the walls and slithered into the bed with Alex and the Temptress. 

Alex felt feverish. The voices of Depression and Self-Pity were echoing inside of him telling him to comfort himself with what he was watching. It was not working. He felt no comfort. He felt no pleasure. He thought it was odd that he was not feeling any guilt like he normally did. “Where did my guilt go?” Alex thought to himself. “I used to call myself a Christian.” 

Micah’s sword clanged against the cloud-wall over and over again. His wings flapped frantically as he strained with all his might to get past the cloud-wall that was being created. “I can’t break this atmosphere. There is deep witchcraft involved somehow.”

Lydia kept yelling. Hoping her voice would pierce the darkness of the atmosphere. “Alex! Ask God for help! You don’t have to do this!” 

The Queen Mother looked up from her victim and locked her gaze on Lydia. Her right hand moved her silky black hair away from her face as she taunted the pure angel,” You cannot save him! His sins have invited me here. I destroyed his father and his father’s father and I will destroy him as well.  But first I will enter him and feed on his flesh.”

Lydia did not want to show her pain but tears began to stream down her face as she felt helpless to rescue her beloved human. The Queen Mother laughed at her. “You are so weak and pathetic. And your friend cannot break my witchcraft.”

Micah had fully lost his composure hacking at the dark cloud-wall like a madman. He flew to the top of the cloud and struck it with his sword but his blade broke into two pieces. Micah collapsed upon the dark canopy of sin and witchcraft and began to groan. With both hands, he pounded on the canopy and yelled at his beloved human that he had watched since birth, “Alex! Pray to the Father to free you from your sin!”

The Temptress laughed at his effort. Her left hand cupped the back of Alex’s head as she whispered dark temptations into his mind.

Alex’s willpower was breaking over and over again. His flesh was craving something more explicit. Thoughts he had never heard before ricocheted inside of his mind daring him deeper down into lust. Suddenly, Alex heard a faint voice in his mind. “Ask God for help! You don’t have to do this!” Alex looked at the search bar on the porn site and the disgusting words he had just typed in it. 

“I don’t want to do this,” he said allowed. Alex put the phone beside the bed. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His lips barely moved as he prayed for the first time all year. “God, please help me.”

In the spirit, his prayer shot straight up to Heaven. It pierced the cloud-wall right between Micah and Lydia. “He prayed!” they exclaimed. 

In a moment, Alex’s prayer left his house, crashed through the darkness in the second heaven over his city, and reached the ears of Father God on his throne. The Father heard the voice of his son cry out to him and he immediately shouted to the Hosts of Heaven with a voice that echoed like many waters, “GO NOW!”

Across the the heavens in the dark realms, Elsius heard the command of the Father, and all of heaven thundered as he took flight to protect the Father’s child. He flashed across the sky like lighting; the sound of thunder following him in his wake. His armor grew hot and glowed like embers as his speed increased. His wings peeled back like a hawk as he began to dive toward the earth. He descended like a comet in the night sky. Fire followed him leaving streaks of blue energy in his path. Sound exploded from him as he broke the darkness of the Second Heaven. Without slowing down, he flew straight through the cloud-wall of Alex’s home and landed with a boom as light exploded from his being! As his armored feet hit the ground beside the bed, light and lightning exploded from his being vaporizing the snakes and stunning the demonic horde. The aftershock of his arrival disintegrated the cloud- wall freeing Micah and Lydia to fly in behind him. 

Elsius’s giant hand instantly grabbed the top of the Queen Mother’s head. His fingers drove into her skull behind the skin on her forehead. He jerked her head around and locked eyes with her as if to melt her with his gaze, “HOW DARE YOU TOUCH A CHILD OF THE KING!” his voice roared like a giant lion. His other hand ripped her forked tongue out of her mouth stealing the scream right out of her. All the goblin demons were frozen in a fearful panic. They had never seen a warrior-class angel before.

Alex suddenly felt much lighter. “God please forgive me for my sins. I bind the Spirit of Lust in the name of Jesus.”

“Elsius took a metallic silver cord from his waist and wrapped it twice around her neck. She screamed as the hot silver melted her skin. With one swift motion, Elsius tightened the cord, and black blood splattered all over the floor as her head was severed from her body and bounced on the floor in front of him. Micah and Lydia were stunned speechless as they stood several feet behind the giant angel. 

Elsius took a step forward toward the rest of the demons. All of his armor was silver and glistened with power. His long hair was silver and white like a white wolf in the snow. His muscles were like chiseled stone and he stood before them as a king and a warrior. His diamond-moon eyes stared at his enemies as he drew his sword from his back between his giant wings. Lightning and fire danced across the blade as his right hand gripped it tight.

His mouth barely moved when he spoke, “I am going to kill every last one of you.”

Before they could respond, he kicked the head of the Queen Mother right at them! It crashed against a little demon called Self-Hatred knocking him on his back.  In a flash of metalic light, Elsius was upon them and sliced all of them into pieces. His blade consumed them faster than they could scream, leaving nothing but a pile of limbs and wings and blood on the floor. It took only a few seconds. 

Elsius turned around toward Lydia and Micah and began to clean his sword as he walked toward them slowly. Lydia had a pure white towel in her hand and was already cleaning the slime off of Alex’s neck as he was bent over in repentance. 

Elsius looked at Micah, “this house is defiled. You must send for the Angel of Cleansing. That familiar spirit of Guilt got away and closed the portal behind him. You must help teach the child to forgive himself or he will always invite that accursed creature right back.”

Elsius sheathed his blade and turned toward Lydia, “Have you gotten all the snakes out of him?” 

As Alex continued to pray, Lydia reached inside his back and pulled out another Snake Spirit. She broke its neck and tossed it aside.  “He is a work in progress” Lydia responded with an endearing smile towards her favorite human.

“Why was the witchcraft against him so strong?” asked Micah.

“The Monitoring Spirits alerted the Marine Kingdom to his bloodline. The boy has a great destiny.” 

“I want you to stay and protect him,” said Lydia. 

“I have not been fully commissioned to serve him. He must mature into his identity as a beloved son before he ever steps into his calling. I must continue to fight on behalf of his clan. Where are his Guardians? Both of you are his Attending Angels, correct?”

 “Horrible things have happened,” Lydia said quietly as she looked down. 

Elsius paused solemnly. He then motioned for Micah and Lydia to come to him and he embraced them under his arms and wings. 

Lydia began crying, “I was so scared we were going to lose him just like his father.”

Micah started sobbing as well. “I wasn’t strong enough to break her witchcraft. I was going to have to watch them consume him.”

Elsius’s words were gentle. “you did your best son, that’s all the Father ever asked of you.” The boy is safe now let your hearts be at rest. Trust in the Father. He has good plans to prosper him.” He held them until their hearts were at peace once again. 

He bent to look at them in the eyes, “Fear not, the Father will commission new Guardians for the boy. Attend to him. There is a man at his church who wants to teach him the ways of the spirit. Make sure they meet. If the boy learns to pray he will not fall to the temptations of the Evil One.” 

 Elsius took a few steps back to prepare to spread his massive wings. He looked at them with assurance in his voice, “I trust you to take care of him.” The giant angel spread his wings and ascended in a whoosh of wind and was past the Second Heavens in a moment.

Lydia and Micah looked on into the night sky above them seeing the warrior fade from view. Their eyes returned to the room. Demon blood was everywhere. Charred snake remains plastered the walls and the floor. The tongueless head of the Succubus was still where Elsius had kicked it.  

Micah put his hands on his hips as he retracted his wings, “I still have no idea how the two of us are going to protect him when all of Hell is coming against him.”

Lydia had returned to attending to Alex. He was still bent over on the floor repenting of his sins. She got down on her knees next to him. She leaned over him and hugged him deeply.  She smiled sweetly back at Micah, “as long as he learns to pray he will always have a fighter’s chance.”

Sometimes “I’m proud of you” means more than “I love you.”


My dad told me he was proud of me the other day. “I’m proud of who you are, Richard.” It felt really good. I didn’t really show it then but all the happy little emotions started to boil up at that moment. Why do words have so much power?

Not all words are weighed equally. Some words are worth more than others. Words from a father mean more than others. Everyone likes encouragement. But in order for words to have value, we have to value the person they are coming from. If we don’t care what someone says about us then their words don’t have any value. But if we do, their words have an incredible transformative power on our human souls. Their words can build. Their words can break. Their words can restore and refine.

“I’m proud of you.” It means I am happy to be seen with you. I see you and what I see is good in my eyes. You have both my recognition and my approval. You see, you don’t have to be amazing for someone to be proud of you. The pressure is off. You can finish in fourth place and someone can still be proud of you. Someone being proud of you is not contingent upon your performance but upon how they see you and how they feel about you. I’m proud of you is different than I’m proud of what you did. It is not a performance-based thing. The approval is based upon identity so you don’t have to work for it. Your heart can rest in knowing that your father is smiling at you.

In the biblical narrative of the creation story, God creates man and then declares that he is good. He sits backs and rests and watches as his creation takes his first steps upon the newly formed planet. It’s normal biblical language to refer to God as father. The father of the universe and of human beings. What’s interesting is that the creation narrative states that man was made in the image and likeness of God. So man was made in the image of The Father. Maybe that is why fathers have so much power in their words. Like Father God they create worlds with their words inside their creation. Maybe deep within the human psyche, we see fathers as more than fathers. Maybe fathers, if they truly are made in the Imago Dei, teach us about God. Almost as if the voice that spun the universe into existence dares to whisper through the mortal frame of a flawed human that gifted us half our DNA matrix.

Maybe that’s why when a father says, “I’m proud of you” it means more coming from him than anyone else.

Humans were not made to cry alone.

We need to be held. Why is it when we cry we want someone to hold us? Pain is not meant to be carried alone. When we carry pain that’s meant to be shared the weight becomes more than we can bear. Then we break under the pressure.

Tears are the weight of sadness leaving our spirit. Tears are the release of pain that is not meant to be internalized. Whenever we hold onto things that we are meant to let go of it always hurts us. Holding onto tears hurts us, but letting them go heals. When we cry we heal.

Although tears release healing, they also release pain. Pain is not meant to be experienced alone. When we are in pain we are weakened. When we are weakened we are in a vulnerable state. When we are in a state of vulnerability we are most ready to receive love.

In the moments that we cry we need to be loved. When we don’t get the love we need it hurts all the more. Why does it hurt more? The absence of love begets loneliness and when we are lonely everything hurts more because there is no one to share our burdens with. So our tears are our burdens and when we are alone they feel extra heavy.

So what does love do? Love bears all things. Love is especially good at bearing pain. How does one bear the weight of something? It can’t be done from afar. First one has to be close to it. Close enough to touch it. Close enough to hold it. Loading bearing walls are not just close enough, they are directly underneath and fully attached to the weight they are designed to bear. Similarly, love draws near, attaches itself, and fully embraces with its strength the weight it wants to carry. This is what happens when we hug someone who is crying. There is a grace in the embrace that lifts the heavy-laden heart. It is in the mutual embrace of the burden that pain, which was once exclusive to the burdened, dissipates in the touch of companionship.

This is what love does. Love overwhelms pain. It doesn’t ignore it or pretend it’s not there. Love rushes in and overwhelms pain with compassion and comfort. In human relationships, this can look like a hug to the hurting. So when we see someone we love crying our hearts draw near and we hug them and hold them. It’s love’s natural response. To draw near to where the pain is, not to run from it. To withhold comfort when someone is hurting is actually unloving. Love is not distant when pain is present. When life hurts, love comes close.

Society is growing more distant, more isolated, less affectionate. This is the opposite of love. Love seeks union. Love draws close. Love wants companionship. Love showers affection. Love doesn’t just want nearness, it wants touch. It’s in the touch that we are transformed. When we are held we become healed.

My friend died recently. It took days. I wanted to be close to him when he was dying. I didn’t want him to be alone. Many people came to say their goodbyes. Every time someone visited, I was there. I didn’t want my friend to be alone. But I also didn’t want those who were visiting to be alone either. Grief is too heavy a burden to try to carry alone. Humans were not made to cry in isolation. Over the course of time, I held a lot of people who were crying. What’s interesting about that is when you hold someone who is crying, oftentimes, you begin to cry as well. It’s the human thing to do. Another one of my friends died last week. The day of I was strong and helped, held, cared for, and cried with many of my friends. The next day I wasn’t so strong. The next day I was a mess. The next day I was a sobbing, screaming, cursing mess. Fortunately, I had someone to hold me and cry with me. I healed a little bit at that moment.

When bodies touch, spirits touch. When spirits touch they melt together a little bit. This is called intimacy. Sharing pain is an intimate experience. It’s intimate because it’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable because it’s not always safe to cry. Not everyone should get to see you cry. What’s remarkable about humanity is that in our pain and grieving and tears we are very much vulnerable to harm and yet this is the place where we need to be loved the most.  For some inescapable reason, our hearts were created with a bent towards great risk. Our place of greatest vulnerability is the place where we have the capacity to be loved the deepest.

There is a story about Jesus where he went to visit a friend. Her name was Mary and her brother had just died. She was in the agony of grief and overwhelmed with pain when Jesus came to visit her. She threw herself at his feet and cried and lamented the pain of her loss.  Our hearts were not hardwired; they were fashioned from love. To cry is to embrace your humanity. To let hot tears flood down your face is to be truly human. Robots don’t cry. They don’t because they can’t.

Jesus cried with her. He was fully human. Capable of pain. Capable of grief. Capable of breaking down and crying in public. What’s astonishing about this reality is that Jesus claimed to be the very face of God. The perfect visible image of the invisible God. The physical manifestation of the wholly spiritual God.God in the flesh.

Jesus claimed to be God. If Jesus cries then God cries. The uncreated God of the universe who exists outside of space and time, breathed the Andromeda Galaxy, hand-crafted stars, and formed the earth with meticulous attention to detail is capable of feeling pain. If Jesus is God then God is capable of tears. He’s not far off or distant or stoic and unsympathetic to our pain. Not only is he capable but he actually cries? Why? Because he loves us. Because he feels our pain.

If God cries when does he cry? He cries when we cry. Because he loves us and love draws near to the broken-hearted. It does not shy away or withhold comfort and affection to the mourning. No, love embraces us in our pain. This is the nature of God.

We were God-fashioned for love. Humans have spirits. God is spirit. Humans come from God. Humans were made from love because God is love. Love cries when it hurts. Love comes close when it hurts. Love embraces when there is pain. This is the love-nature of the human heart.  Our nature was crafted by our Creator. We do things this way because we were made this way. We were designed in the very image of our Creator.

His heart is in rhythm with our hearts. Next time you cry, remember he is crying as well. When you are hurting he is hurting. Let him draw near to you and embrace you in your pain. He is not the unfeeling, far away, emotionally distant God. He is the God who cries when you are crying. But even more than that, he wants to cry with you. Don’t shy away from his embrace. Remember, when we are held is when we are healed. We need to let God hold us.

Adoration.

The silent exchange given between lovers when they lock eyes. Exclusive affection. The love that is only given between two people and will be shared with no others.

The nature of adoration is that it loves to gaze. It’s not in a hurry. It is undistracted. Adoration is the preoccupation of the soul that is lost in loving the one upon which it gazes upon. The extended gaze makes you become lost in the loving. This soul-merger takes place as you get lost in another person- where you are not sure where they end and you begin. This fusion of hearts is what we call intimacy.

Intimacy is knowing someone inside and out. But intimacy is not one sided. It grows in equal measure as both lovers give and exchange. Intimacy is never forced and always consensual. This realm of affection cannot be accessed from behind walls. It cannot be touched from a place of self-created safety. To walk into this room where intimacy blooms you can’t wear your armor. You won’t fit through the door with your form-fitted protection. You have to proceed naked. Why? Because vulnerability precedes intimacy.

To be vulnerable is to voluntarily expose the places of your heart that are tender and fragile and easily damaged while trusting the other person to be gentle with those places of your heart. Vulnerability requires courage because there is great risk involved. To be vulnerable is to open yourself up to the risk of being rejected, hurt, and broken. So since the danger is so real and  the risk of pain is so great, most people prefer to live with armor covering their hearts and never experience true intimacy.

Intimacy is not sexuality. It’s easy to get naked with someone. It’s much more difficult to truly share your naked soul with someone. Having a skin-to-skin connection with someone doesn’t mean you have a heart-to-heart connection. You can hide behind your nakedness.  The unspoken groan is, “Look at my body but please don’t look at my soul.” What a sad interaction when two people can be completely naked physically while there souls simultaneously wear suits of armor and they never once have a spiritual connection.

As you grow in this journey of love toward adoration you must first reach intimacy which will require you to undertake the risk of vulnerability. The sad thing is…most people never even experience vulnerability. Why? Because people are unkind. Most of them, anyway. And all the other people know it. So why risk being vulnerable when the odds are that you are going to get hurt in the process? If the treasure is so valuable and the potential damage so great why should anyone ever dare to take off their self-created heart-armor and risk being vulnerable?

Because we were created for love. We were hardwired for intimacy. We were destined for the ecstasy of adoration-unhindered intimate love. This is why we must choose to take the risk and be vulnerable. 

Yet, there is a place of vulnerability that cannot be reached between mere humans. It is reserved for the Divine. There is a place of vulnerability that is meant only for the Creator and his creation.  You see, only God can see your naked soul. Only God can truly know all of you. Only God can see past the armor and the masks and the appearances and see the true you. He is the only one that can see all of you and love all of you. No one can love you more than him because no one knows you more than him. There is no one you can be more vulnerable with than God. He knows all of your thoughts, dreams, pain, and secret desires. He knows all the tears you would have cried if you were in a safe place to cry them. He knows all your faults, and iniquities, and mistakes and the dark corners of your soul and he loves you anyway. He loves you…intimately. More than all the others ever could.

And this is why there is no greater realm of love to be experienced than the love of God. With no one else can you be more vulnerable, intimate and in love. His all-knowing gaze dares to see your unveiled soul. The soul that dares to stare into the eyes of the loving God will inevitably fall in love with him.This gaze of love isn’t shared with others. It is sacred.

Loving him, cherishing his beauty, getting lost in affection for him as you gaze back at him with loving adoration is the highest calling and the greatest ecstasy of all created beings. Dare to look at him…as he is looking at you…and get caught up in adoration.

Humans are exceedingly capable of being evil. Have we evolved in our capacity for evil or has it always been there? Has it been hiding like a latent monster beneath the darkness of our subconscious just waiting for the proper combination of elements to spark its arrival? Human history is a history of war and malevolence. It would appear self-evident that humans are very much capable and inclined toward great evil and destruction. Utopia seems inevitably far out of reach if it were ever possible. Paradise has been lost. Little is sacred or innocent these days. Is there a greater tragedy than losing innocence? It’s almost as if it’s the human thing to do.

The beginning of the biblical narrative paints a really sad story of humanity. The first humans were banished from paradise due to their decision to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life. But it was not always this way. Before they were banished, God and the first man named Adam walked together in the garden enjoying unbroken harmony.Yet, something was amiss in the heart of man. Something happened on the day man decided to partake in and ingest the knowledge of good and evil. He was no longer innocent. He had full knowledge of good and evil and the evil that he had come to know was now inside of him.

Evil does not exist outside of choice. Evil is when you know what is the right thing to do and you do the wrong thing. Evil does not exist by itself so much as it exists opposite of that which is good. You cannot participate in evil unless you are knowledgeable of it and to be knowledgeable of evil is to be simultaneously knowledgeable of good. We live in the crossroads before two paths. One path is full of darkness and the other is illuminated by light. Being able to distinguish between the light and the dark (good and evil) and still choosing the dark is evil. At that point the darkness is inside you drawing you towards the darkness in front of you. Choosing the path of light is called righteousness.

Not being able to distinguish between light and darkness is called innocence. It’s when you dont know better. It’s that state you live in before you have eaten of the tree of knowledge and good and evil and can discern right from wrong. Children are like this. Children are innocent. Where there is knowledge there is responsibility. Where there is responsibility there is guilt.  Adam was no longer innocent. He was guilty.

Now the evil within Adam causes him to leave the garden and travel a path away from God. Away from God is the way to Hell and the further you get from God the closer you get to Hell. Yet, despite the evil within him, and the road to Hell that he walks, there is still a chance at redemption. The rest of the biblical narrative unfolds God’s divine rescue plan and makes it possible once again for God and man to walk together. Redemption is possible but not inevitable. Sadly, the prerequisite of redemption is destruction. Things have to be broken before they can be restored. You cannot be healed unless you have been wounded.

So what happens in the in between?  What happens to humanity on our road to perdition? We continually march towards Hell’s gates creating war and destruction in our wake unless divine intervention leads to our salvation. Seems pretty grim. It appears as if we create a lot of unnecessary pain on our path away from God. It seems with the overwhelming wickedness that is flooding the earth, humanity is in a great state of duress.

 In the aftermath of World War I, many of the ideas birthed from the Enlightenment and continued through social positivism took a serious hit. Maybe we were not progressing as a species. Maybe we were devolving as a society if all of our collective intellect and creativity led us to create weapons to more thoroughly slaughter each other than any previous generation. Maybe we were not getting better but getting worse. Maybe we were much more on the road to Hell than to heaven. Maybe the structures we created were just our own faulty tower of Babel that would ultimately fall down upon us and destroy us.

Maybe we have not stopped leaving Eden.

What if everyone one of us, in our own way, is destined to leave Eden? We all begin like Adam. We are born innocent knowing neither good nor evil. We live in our garden-state for years protected by our parental covering. But eventually at some point childhood leads to adolescence. Eventually, we begin to understand the difference between good and evil. Consequently, where we are knowledgeable we are responsible. We eat from the tree so to speak. And as we eat from that tree more and more we lose our innocence and leave our garden state of Eden. God lives in the garden. When we leave the garden, the place of innocence,  we leave God behind. We choose a broad path that leads to destruction and damnation. So we live our lives on this broad road of destruction without the garden anywhere in sight while the world is worse for it.

Why did God allow this? After all, he made the garden. He planted two alluring trees in the middle of the garden each of them offering up a taste of their own potential future. Why two trees and not just one? I think he wanted to give us the choice. Love grows in the soil of free will. Adam’s love was weak and he chose evil and to leave God and walk in darkness. By contrast, after Adam’s fall, we see God’s love was strong as he chose Adam and pursued him in his darkness as the rest of the biblical narrative unfolds.

What if God thought that there was a better way for us to make choices than out of the ignorance of our innocence? What if having knowledge of the path of darkness and still choosing light is a more noble choice? What if righteousness is more valuable than innocence? In other words, what if knowing the right thing ( in contrast to the wrong thing) to do and doing it is better than knowing neither. Love is not understood in a vacuum unto itself. Love, truth, good, evil, all of these realities and more are understood in juxtaposition to their opposites. It’s as if our free will glues them adjacently together revealing their fierce dichotomy; the metaphorical fork in the road.

What if God allowed two trees in the garden so when given choice we could find out what is truly inside of us compared to just living in a childlike garden- innocent with no temptation to choose between good and evil. Is it not more virtuous to choose good when tempted with evil than to never know the difference between either? Babies are innocent. But no one would call a child righteous because that would imply that the child knows right from wrong. The moment a child knows right from wrong, in theological terms, is called the age of accountability. It is their moment in the hero’s journey where they eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They can now see the crossroads between the paths of light and darkness.

Humans live in our post- garden state, armed with the knowledge of good and evil, trampling along our dark paths leaving mayhem and destruction everywhere we go. Yet, we are capable of being redeemed. We have walked in paths of darkness yet, God, in his wisdom, believes he can chase us with his love so thoroughly that we would choose to leave our dark paths and follow him into his paths of light.

For love to be found true it must be tested. You cannot be tested unless you are presented with choices. So man chose sin and left the garden in his fallen state. But God would choose man.I think God thought that a love that could voluntarily choose to leave or stay was infinitely better than a love that never knew there was an exit door in the garden.Even with all of the darkness and violence that besets the world by so many humans that have left the garden, God thought it an infinitely more beautiful story that those who had left would one day return to him rather than a people who stayed because they never knew they could leave. The human path is always leaving Eden. God’s path is always back towards Eden. To the place of intimacy and companionship between humanity and the divine. Even though we wander down our paths of darkness, his voice calls out to us, hidden in the whispers of the wind. In the gentle promptings of everyday life. What if it is time to return to the garden?


Home. It’s the place where you grew up and the place where you belong. It’s the place where you are always welcome even if you don’t show up very often. What if Eden is our home? What if the garden is where we belong? What if the redemption we are longing for is in a place where we belong with whom we belong? What if instead of leaving Eden it’s time we return. What if our hero’s journey from innocence to adolescence to sojourner doesn’t end with us victorious on a mountain top but instead we follow the voice that has been calling us to return to where it all began?
Maybe it is time to return to Eden. Maybe it’s time to return to God.

Love is patient. Patience is not about waiting, it’s about not being offended. Most of us are offended when we have to wait. In our pride we think we deserve the things we want when we want them. When I’m not being patient, I’m not being loving. When I’m offended I am no longer in love. In regards to prayer, patience is of utmost importance. Not in just waiting for our prayers to be answered circumstantially, or waiting for God to respond, but in waiting for him. True love waits. The Lord desires that we would wait upon him.

He is the answer to our prayers. His answer is not the answer, he is the answer. All of our religious bloviating ends when he enters the room. All of our prayer lists become unnecessary. All of our ritualistic fervor becomes so superfluous when we realize he is all we really want.

To wait upon the Lord is to rest in him knowing that he is the one who desires to meet with us. To wait upon the Lord is to yield to the end of our self-effort. To wait upon the Lord is to wait in stillness. In silence. Knowing that he will come as surely as the dawn. Knowing that  it is not self-effort that draws us closer to God but his very longing for us magnetizes us toward him. So we wait patiently. Knowing that he will come as surely as his word is true. Knowing that the presence of his person is why we pray to begin with. When we wait for him, we show that we trust him. We dare not pray without him. When we wait upon the Lord in prayer, resting in stillness and silence, we remind ourselves that prayer is not about the words we speak but to whom we are speaking. We pray not to hear our own words but to come closer to a living being. We pray to draw close, but we wait so he will draw close.

Yet, the hour of his arrival is unknown. Sometimes it defies our own self created expectation. As we wait upon the lord our hearts are tested. Do we yield to patience and stay unoffended? Do we believe that he will come and his presence will be felt in our hearts? This is the place of growth for the one who dares to enter the endless realm of prayer. Will we believe him as we wait for him? Or will our hearts grow cold in the waiting? Will our faith wane dim as we wait in prayer with our conscience permeated by silence? Will we fill in the gaps of silence with our own unbelief or will our hearts rest in the posture of gentle trust as we patiently wait for him to meet with us?

It is in this place-this middle ground between the beginning and the end- that our hearts will either falter or grow into mature love. The Lord allows this waiting to test our hearts. But make no mistake his invitation to wait upon him is so that we can be ready when he arrives. We must resist the temptation to check out or leave early in the place of prayer. We must be patient and at rest but also watchful and alert. He longs to be with us and as we wait for him… we realize that we long to be with him.

The goal of prayer is not prayer. The goal of prayer is communion with God. Communion leads to union. Prayer without God is just talking. When we pray, we must wait upon him with patient hearts knowing that he will come and meet with us. Only then can the conversation truly begin.

“I am not who I want to be.”

The words slipped out of my mouth like an accident. An honest answer that came when I didn’t even know I was asking the question. I was just sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when suddenly I heard the words that came from my mouth that sounded as if there was a foreigner living inside of me.

But it was true and now I had to deal with the consequences of that truth. The truth is always better than the lie anyway. Lies wrap you up in a fake veneer of self that you can sell yourself when you look in the mirror but deep down you know it’s just fantasy. No fantasy today. No false reality. Just cold, harsh, winter truth.

I was not who I wanted to be. There was a person that I wanted to be and I was not that person. There was the person that I saw myself becoming in the future and I had failed to become that person. All that was left was me. The real me. And I didn’t like this real me. This real me was not as good as the other me, that future me that I had envisioned. This real me was still quite flawed and in progress and much more behind on the journey than that other guy who I was supposed to be. He was much less complete, far more broken, and not nearly as mature in thought or deed as that person I wanted to be. That was the truth. And the difference between who I wanted to be and who I am is where all the pain came from.

“I am.” Those two words spoken together are the most powerful words in the cosmos. Every time you say, “I am” you speak to your spirit. You speak to who you really are. You create, define and release identity every time you say it. The only words as important as “I am” are the words that follow it. So can you imagine what happens when you say, “I am” followed by “not who I want to be.” Something was deeply amiss in the state of my heart and my words had suddenly given it away. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A spiritual stethoscope was needed. Was my heart out of rhythm? Were there blockages? Had my life source been contaminated? In that moment I did not know what it was but I knew something was wrong and I had a mystery to unravel.

It was time to do a spiritual heart check. The present moment had caught up to the perceived future reality and there was a disconnect between what I had wanted it to be and what it was. From that place I spoke words that alerted me something was wrong. Language articulates emotion. The words were the symptom that emanated from my heart, but what was the cause? What was hurting on the inside?

Disappointment. That’s what it was. But it was deep. The life-perspective kind of type. I had not felt this degree of disappointment in years.

When was the last time that happened? The memories flooded back to my mind. Flashback eleven years to my eighteenth birthday and I feel that same disappointment. This was the first time the present had caught up to the future way too fast and my heart was not ready.

I was eighteen years old and I was supposed to be celebrating, instead I was sad. I wasn’t ready to be eighteen. I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t feel mature. I didn’t have that self-assuredness that I thought an eighteen year old adult is supposed to have. I didn’t know where I was going and I didnt feel confident. Many of my peers had already been accepted into colleges and I was just trying to survive my science classes. I felt behind in life. And that is a very disappointing feeling when you want to feel ahead in life.

Perception is powerful. Our life runs in the direction of our eyes. Yet, what happens when we reach the destination that we have been running towards and find it to be not at all what we thought it was from far away? We come away with pain and sadness where we thought we would find joy and satisfaction. Expectation is the root of all heartache according to Shakespeare and I have found it to be true myself.

I see people through a prophetic lens. It’s as if the future is superimposed over the present and I don’t just see who people are but who they are becoming. I see where they are in life but also where they are going, sometimes even if they don’t see it themselves. This is also true of how I see myself. I know who I am but I also know who I am becoming. I am not in a stagnant state of being, I am journeying into another realm called the future. Deep down in my soul there is a longing to be more than I already am, to be transformed over time into the best possible version of myself.

So when I get to the future and I am not who I want to be, it hurts. It hurts because I failed. It hurts because it is the death of a dream. Dreams live in the future but they die in the present.
It hurts because I failed to live up to my own self-imposed performance based metric of personal success. And that was the problem.

In the months that followed the utterance of my dream-killing oracle I underwent much contemplation. I discovered that I harbored a deep inward resentment.  I was at war with myself. The perceived perfect had failed to be achieved and I was left with just my imperfect self staring back at me in the mirror. I didn’t like that person.

That’s not very kind is it? You see, I was the judge but I was also holding myself on trial. I didn’t relate to myself as I would a friend.I am both the perpetrator and the judge and I swing my gavel in order to punish myself into conformity to the standard. No matter how painful or costly I want to give myself what I deserve. Yet, truth be told, that is not the best way to live with oneself.

You should treat yourself like someone you love. My heart is bent towards justice. I’m not prone to give mercy easily. If you break the rules you experience the consequences of your actions. This is righteous and holy and good. But what I have discovered is that it is difficult for me to give mercy to others because I almost never give mercy to myself. You can only give away what you already have. Because I am prone towards justice I rendered judgement against myself and my judgement was condemnation. What I have learned about condemnation is that you can’t punish yourself into being a good person. You can’t punish yourself into doing the right thing.

There is a better way of living and it’s called mercy. Instead of condemnation I should have given forgiveness. You see, the thing about mercy is you don’t deserve it. Mercy operates beyond the realm of justice and it’s a sweet, sweet gift to receive. Mercy changes you when you receive it.

As much as it is beautiful to render mercy instead of condemnation I realized there was a greater truth to be discovered.

Why was I the judge in the first place?

Judges deal with performance. Judges deal with what people do not with who people are. I had created in my heart a structure that was designed to receive love based on my own performance instead of who I was. I had subconsciously created a performanced based relationship with myself where my works were always at the forefront of how I saw myself which would always lead to a judgement of approval or disapproval based upon the perceived expected outcome.

What I should have given myself is the gift of acceptance. I should have accepted myself with all my flaws and shortcomings instead of comparing myself to a perceived version of myself that doesn’t even exist. I should have loved myself for who I am instead of what I had been doing. What if I refused to define myself by either my successes or failures and just loved me for me?
What if I freed myself from my own self-created prison of performance that necessitated a judge to keep me in line and I just treated myself like a good friend. You know, like the really good ones who love you just for who you are and not what you can do for them.

So that is what I have decided to do. I have abdicated my gavel and my seat as the judge of my life. I do not deserve that role. God is my judge and he will judge me. It is arrogance on my part to think I can do a better job than him. I trust him to render just verdicts upon me and I will yield to them. I yield my right to say, “I am not who I want to be” because I am who he made me to be and he loves who I am. With all my shortcomings and my failures and my sin he desperately loves me. So I will agree with him and love me for who I am and not based upon my own works or performance.

The words, “I am” are powerful and I speak to my spirit with the words that follow them.

I am… loved. That is the verdict. So because I am loved I will choose to love. I will love myself and others. In that order. I will receive love and I will give love. No longer will I be the judge of my own heart for my heart needs a friend. The beauty of this is I truly believe that from that place of friendship I will become who I want to be.