jesus

  • Cold

    Cold

    Saturday. Thirty degrees.The cold makes staying in beda theological act.Winter remembers itself here, briefly, in the mountainslike a ghost that forgotto leave completely. The heater hums a midnight hymn.I lower the dial to fifty,a small rebellion against the dark.Still, I waketo its murmur—faithful,fighting a chill I cannot name. They promise warmth next week.Santa Anas will

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  • I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    I Believe; Help My Unbelief

    November 9, 2025 Father, I believe; help me with my unbelief. Most honest thing anyone ever said to God. This father with a sick kid, desperate, saying yes and no in the same breath. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. The story’s simple enough. God comes down, walks around, dies, comes back. Believe it and

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  • Cardboard Gospel

    Cardboard Gospel

    Jesus loves you, the sign read. A crooked heart leaned against the words—hand-drawn, imperfect, but certain. A King’s promise sketched onto cardboard, lifted above the choking traffic of the 101. The valley swallowed me whole. I was just another cell in the city’s concrete artery, staring toward the San Gabriels where the light still knew

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  • “Between Markets and Metaphors”

    It’s Wednesday. The world’s on hold—Wall Street holds its breath like a priest before confession,waiting on the Fed to whisper its gospel of rates.The headlines scroll with conflict:dust devils of sand and sorrow between Iran and Israel,while a man in a white hat chants a forgotten hymnabout greatness, past tense. And me?I’m at Rosebuds, beneath

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  • Simon and the Fish

    Simon and the Fish

    It was always somethinguntil there was nothing. Simon lived the only life he knew—a dockworker with more days off than on,meeting ends in a mannernot unlike a politician:smiles,handshakes,promises made in passing,rarely kept. But he worked. He didn’t question,not even when he probably should’ve—like when Mable,his neighbor in the trailer park,asked for his last dime.She had

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  • Good Friday, Again

    Good Friday, Again

    I woke with a hymnhalf-formed on my tongue—Stricken, smitten, and afflicted—the kind of song that burrowsinto the folds of a child’s memory,etched deeper by dim lights and heavy ritualsin a Lutheran church that never smiled on Good Friday. We sang it every year,never once on any other day.And though it sounded like mourning,we were expected

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  • Surrender

    Surrender

    If you were to choose a tattoo for yourself, what would it be, and where would you place it? For me, I’ve already found meaning in the two tattoos gracing my fingers. One is a King of Hearts, with a crucifix at its center—a symbol of Christ’s sovereignty and sacrifice. The other simply reads “surrender.”

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  • Running with His Pleasure: Chariots of Fire

    What movie or TV series have I watched more than five times? There are likely a few contenders, but one stands above the rest: Chariots of Fire. This film entered my life in the 1980s, a golden era when I was in the prime of my youth—running track and cross country, chasing fleeting romances, and

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  • happy birthday

    happy birthday

    Daily Prompt: A Letter to My Hundred-Year-Old Self Dearest Me, Happy Birthday! Today, you turn 100—a century of breaths, heartbeats, and steps guided by a hand greater than our own. As I sit here, almost 50 years behind you on March 10, 2025, I can only marvel at the life we’ve lived. Half a century

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  • bobbing on a boat because..,

    Ever feel like Noah? Some voice from on high says, “Get to work,” and there you are, hammering planks together without a clue why, while everyone else is sipping coffee and flipping through their phones. You do it anyway, nod to the sky, and next thing you know, you’re floating—flood all around, nobody in sight,

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