1. The other night we went out to dinner for the first time in months. I was nervous because cases continue to rise in Alabama. But the more I thought about it, the risk was not much more than going to the store. And Emma (17) had been begging to go get Mexican for her birthday which was almost a month ago. So we sat outside on the restaurant’s patio in the dusk’s sun and drank mango margarita’s (non-alcoholic for Emma) and had chips and queso and salsa and I had shrimp tacos and a guy in a trucker hat sang Bob Seger and Alan Jackson songs while bronzed women with fading tattoos sang along. I sang along with them. And I gotta tell you, it was good for my soul and I don’t even really like Bob Seger and Alan Jackson. Still felt a little risky, though.

2. Assume the best of everyone. It is less exhausting and the path of peace.

3. I was given an Amazon gift card as an end of the year teacher gift and I figured I should be responsible with it, so I bought records and books.

4. Elgar’s Violin Concerto by Nicola Benedetti is worth your time.

5. If you go back and read the Gospels and look for how Jesus is trying to get people to see that the unseen realities are the highest realities, his teaching will make more sense to you.

6.  While I understand the statement, “I don’t wear a mask because I trust God will protect me,” there are problems with that line of thinking. The main problem is wearing a mask is a way to love your neighbor, which is a primary way in which we trust God. We place our confidence in his teaching to love our neighbors sacrificially when we willingly lay down our “rights” and “privileges” to care for others knowing it is the best way to live because God knows what he is talking about.

7. I’ve been listening to a lot of U2 lately. Although, it seems even when I am not listening to their music, I am still listening to them. Those songs are in me in a way no other artist’s are. 32 years I’ve been listening to them and they’ve informed and challenged my faith in a way few have. I don’t always understand it. But I’m always thankful.

8. There is a third way. There is a third way between the Scylla of Nationalistic God-and-Country bravado and the Charybdis of grievance-and-victim Progressivism. Both see everything through a lens of news-driven politics. And their preferred political party is the answer to whatever question and problem. And the other side is evil and dangerous.  Each feed on a toxic mix of fear and anger. There is a third way, though. However, you must put a premium on the gospel of the unseen reality of the King and his Kingdom. You must seek it first. And you need to know its modus operandi is love.

9. I am reading Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain again. At one point, he is shocked because a professor, who is Thomist, recommends Augustine to him because he sees so much Augustinian thought in him. That shocked him because he did not expect someone from one line of Catholic philosophy to recommend and celebrate another. It was rare for Catholics to do so. Merton thought is was great. You don’t need to understand that scenario at all to understand the need the evangelical church has of this.

10.  I feel sorry for everyone who has not been quarantined with my wife, Bethany.

1. What if we all lived as if Paul was serious in Colossians 3? What if we lived as if we had died the only death that matters? What if we had not only died but actually been raised from that death? What if now our lives were eternal lives? What if our lives were now hid with Christ in God?

2. I’ve been reading Psalm 1 and it just dawned on me this past week how profound it is.  When the Psalmist says the one who delights in the Lord’s instruction is like a tree bearing fruit in its season with leaves that do not whither, he is saying that just as a tree is what it is created to be when it does what it is created to do, we are who we are created to be when we do what we are created to do. God’s instruction makes us more holy because it makes us more human. Movement toward holiness is movement toward humanity.

3. It has always confused me as to why Jesus kept drawing away from the crowds and telling people to keep things quiet. But I think I now understand. Celebrity is the world’s power. A power offered to him in the wilderness, by the way. The world sees that kind of power as only good. It is the power of the seen and a denial of the power of the unseen. And it is a deadly power.

4. There was a long stretch of history in which entertainment by entertainers was not part of the daily life of normal people. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

5. Convictions are not emotional jewelry.

6. Setting your mind on “things above” and not the things of this world is not resignation, it is relentless engagement in the highest realities.

7. “God and Country” almost always becomes “Country” with a rumor of God.

8. I do miss baseball.

9. Joy may be the best and most helpful marker of confidence in God during this time, when walking into the grocery store feels like walking into a funeral home.

10. I have stopped saying “amen” at the end of my morning prayers. I realized I was “signing off” psychologically – hanging up the phone as it were. Saying goodbye.  So instead I now ask, “What are we going to do today?” That may sound cheesy to some. Whatever. But I assume the disciples often asked that of Jesus in the morning. I assume they asked sometimes with eager anticipation. Sometimes with fear. And often with joyful wonder, I suppose.

1. Been reading about David. And I’ve told my students and anyone listening that we do not read the OT stories with all those crazy characters to learn about how to live on this great big earth they also walked on. We read the OT to see Jesus before he could be seen. But that’s only part true. Because he walked on the same earth they did. And we walk on the same earth. And if we see him in them, then we are catching even more glimpses of how to live outside those four gospels we love so much. Maybe we can get the same dust on our feet.

2. I bet the elder brother always wore a tie.

3. I often feel what I can only call “treasuring” (not in the Matthew 6 sense) books and music. It’s a longing for what I already have. Something to be held onto tight. Things to be handed down. Kept alive. Cared for. That transmission of creativity within those things that are bigger than their physical existence is something large. Bigger than myself though I can hold them in my hand.

4. I don’t know anything about injecting disinfectant. But I know injecting the newsmen into your veins is bad. Bad mojo. It’ll get in your heart and eat all the joy away. Chew it up. You gotta detox from that poison. Get it out of you. Call poison control and tell them you drank too much news and ate the beautiful things of this world but they were sprinkled with the poison of nonstop news. They will think you are crazy. The world will think you are crazy. But that is only because while they are listening to you they are drinking it in too.

5. I got a neighbor that cuts his yard every few days like it’s a monster he has to feed or it will rear up and take over. I hope it’s a dragon.

6. I’ve read five books about Bob Dylan and listened to countless albums of his during these weeks of contemplation and rest and I still do not feel like I know the man. But I know much more about myself and this world and the next. And you too.

7. When Christian institutions make decisions without considering the realities of God and his kingdom rule, the gospel is just PR. Spin. Optics. Sold out of the back of a horse-cart like snake-oil.

8. During this weird world event when everyone has a wild opinion on what to do and not do, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know,” and then just go along your merry way and be nice to people as much as you can. Forgiveness helps too.

9. Laughter creates worlds previously unknown.

10. “In the Middle”

In the middle of pandemic Spring
I started Jane Kenyon’s poems
at the end, which is really how
we get to know everyone we want to know.

We start at the end and then work
our way backwards to the beginning.
And then we realize later we were
in the middle all along the way.

1.  Those who follow Jesus are always safe.

2. Sarcasm should only be used sparingly as a shotgun, never a rifle.

3. Everyone needs a place where they are not marketed.

4. Maybe we will learn the substance again without the event.

5. The lesson of Paul in prison is actual freedom has nothing to do with circumstances.

6. We want to blame someone because it feels like control.

7. Most, when challenged, do not stop and think, they only react in defense.

8. This world is full of the wonders of God for those with eyes to see.

9. Resist the predictable conclusions.

10. The Bible is already mind-bending when we don’t add to it.