There's a lot happening during the holiday season. It's easy to be overwhelmed this time of the year. That's why I think I was drawn to David's prayer today.

Notice what he does before he begins to pray. The text says he went and sat in the Lord's presence. Before he says or asks anything, he slows down just enough to be present. And isn't presence what we celebrate at Christmas?

Then David says, "Who am I, Lord God, and what significance is my family, that you have brought me this far?" Now, that may sound strange or a bit like false humility. He's King David, after all. That's who you are! But that's just a reminder that no matter what our accomplishments are or what we've made of our lives, we are still creatures standing before God in need of grace.

So, let's use his question to reflect on our lives. When we slow down enough to look back, we can see how much of our story is undeserved goodness. Doors that opened. Strength that showed up on time. People who carried us when we couldn't carry ourselves. And David's prayer didn't talk about what he had done. Instead, he points to God. God's faithfulness, generosity, and unmatched grace.

When everything slows down and we look around at the blessings we have, gratitude often wakes up our initiative. We feel blessed, secure, and at rest. When we do, something in us wants to do something for God in return. Now, that feeling isn't wrong. It's often a prompting of the Spirit. But it can also move us from thanksgiving to assumption.

King David looked at his cedar palace and assumed that God must have wanted something similar, and he was the one who was meant to build it. The faith lesson isn't that he had bad intentions. Good intentions say, "This seems right." And, sometimes, that's the best way we know to move forward. But, when we learn to be still before God, another question emerges: "Has God actually asked for this?"

That question matters because many of us stay busy for God because stillness feels unfaithful. Waiting can feel like wasted time. But Scripture reminds us that obedience isn’t measured by activity. It's measured by fruit and by faithfulness. God does not need our busyness as much as God desires our trust.

God will say no to David's idea, not because it was wrong. But because God had a larger promise unfolding, one that David could not yet see. God’s no set up a yes that would come later, through another generation, in another way.

This weekend, I'm going to become someone's in-law. So, today's reading has a little bit more connection for me.

When Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, the story moves along quickly. Almost too quickly. He touches her hand, the fever leaves, and Matthew tells us, “She got up and began to serve him.”

I remember reading that the first time and feeling a little bad for her. At first glance, it can sound like Jesus healed her so she could get back to work. But Matthew isn’t describing an obligation she had, but a restoration Jesus gave her.

Before the fever hit, she had a role. She had a place everyone knew and loved. A way of loving others through hospitality. So, as she lay in bed with a fever, her illness didn’t just take her strength. It took away her ability to participate in the life of her household. When Jesus heals her, he doesn’t simply make her comfortable again. He gives her life back. Service here is not some burden she must now get back to endure. Her service is a sign of joy regained.

Today, I'm reflecting on Jude's admonishment to "build each other up on the foundation of your most holy faith." It's got me thinking about the people I've known who have wanted to grow in faith, but didn't know how. Most of them have been new to faith in Jesus.

They wondered what they were supposed to do. How were they supposed to grow something they knew next to nothing about?

Of course, there are things I can do that grow my faith. I learn how to read and study scripture, pray, fast, and serve. Worship is another way to increase our sense of faith in God. And that's saying nothing about learning to be generous, more patient, or humble. Do those things with and for yourself. 

But also understand that faith was never intended to be a solo venture.

Notice Jude didn't say, "Build yourself up and move on." Instead, the call is to build each other up. That means our words, attitudes, and assumptions matter. Tearing down people is fast and loud. And normal! Building up can be slow and require patience. And that's a witness! Plus, this kind of encouragement we're talking about isn't mere sentimentality. We're building something. So, that's structural. Every conversation adds weight and strength. Every interaction either supports or weakens the frame.

The reality is that everyone is building something, whether we realize it or not. Even our silence can impact the structure. Our disengagement compromises the building. There is no neutral space in community life. The question isn't whether you're a builder. You are. The question is what your presence is helping create.

Recently, I heard The Bible Project discuss a paradox reflected in Psalm 42. It's the idea that in God we have everything we need. God is enough. But as we seek God, we long for more. I know I want a strong faith. I want to feel that my faith in God is full, confident, and that in Christ I am satisfied. Psalm 42 opens with another equally important image. It's not one of fullness, but of thirst. The psalmist describes a deep longing for God, even though he already knows the Lord as his solid rock.

That reminds me that our faith isn't a final resting place. It is an ongoing thirst for God. And that thirst is not a weakness, as if to imply you're lacking something. Only living things get thirsty. Living faith longs for more.

Do you have a spiritual hunger? I'd be worried if I didn't. That hunger doesn't mean something is wrong. It means something is awake in you. There's an ache for God that doesn't show an absence of faith but a place to hold something more than you already have.

But notice that the psalmist doesn't cry out for answers. He's not looking just for relief or quick fixes. He longs for God. For the psalmist, the Lord is not a tool for solving problems. God is the desire. God is the blessing.

There's a kind of happiness the world can't give. As the song says, the world can't take it away from you either. Psalm 146 describes a happiness that doesn't depend on a perfect morning, an easy week, or everything going the way you planned. This happiness is a blessed assurance that you are held by God, who keeps faith forever.

The psalm opens with praise and circles back to it at the end. It's like the psalmist knew how easily we can drift. We start with good intentions, but life has a way of distracting us. Our problems get loud. Our worries push their way to the forefront of our lives. Before we realize it, our trust has slipped into whatever feels most accessible right now.

That's why the psalmist points us toward praise. Praise doesn't ignore reality; it helps us regain perspective. Praise reminds us of what stays true about God. We can see God again and realize that what frightens us doesn't frighten God. And when we praise, we recenter ourselves in the One who has been faithful to generations before us and promises to always be faithful.

The modern worship song many of us know, based on the line from Ruth 1, is about following where God leads. To be sure, that is an important idea to think about, how willing we are to follow where the Holy Spirit leads us. Sometimes, it's through the valleys and other times it's beside the still waters.

But Ruth has something else in mind. In fact, Ruth would not have thought about following God the way we do.

When Ruth makes her vow to Naomi, she is doing more than offering companionship. Listen again: Your people will be my people, and your God my God. She is stepping into Naomi's grief and letting it shape her own life. Ruth doesn't try to fix Naomi's pain, explain it away, or lighten it with easy, awkward words. Instead, she does something more powerful. She shares it.

Think about the beauty of that kind of faithfulness toward another person. Scripture speaks of bearing one another's burdens, but this is a vivid illustration of it lived out. Naomi has lost her husband and both her sons. Her world has collapsed. Orpah, her other daughter-in-law, understandably returns home. No one would blame Ruth if she did, too. But she chooses the road of shared sorrow, shared struggle, and shared hope. This wasn't anything strategic on her part. It was relational, brave, and costly.

That makes me think that we often underestimate the sacredness of our presence. Sometimes, the greatest gift we can give is not answers, solutions, or spiritual clichés. It's ourselves, and a willingness to say, "I don't know how this ends up, but I'm not going anywhere."

Our culture prefers to move quickly past discomfort. Ruth's story teaches us the holy work of staying even if it is uncomfortable or inconvenient.

If talk is cheap, words must be a dime a dozen. But not according to Jesus.

In one sense, the Lord reminds us there is accountability for the words we use. Do we use idle or useless words? Jesus has a word for that. In a world full of Twitter rants, comment sections, and hot takes, we'd do well to reflect more on what we say. Even throwaway comments can wound or heal long after we forget them.

Now, Jesus isn't demanding flawlessness or perfect speech. But he is connecting our speech to relationship and faithfulness. Careless words reveal the deeper currents of our heart.

When Jesus said we will have to answer for every useless word, he was speaking to a group of Pharisees. They had just said he was performing miracles by the authority of Beelzebul. In particular, he had just healed someone who was blind and unable to speak. Imagine the power of his words after meeting Jesus. And then the religious leaders use their words to discredit what God was doing through him. In other words, they weren't able or willing to see what God was doing.

There's a personal pet peeve that our social media focused culture keeps in the forefront of how many of us are used to doing church. It's when churches use advertising to promote themselves. I don't mean when we announce our activities online or in print. I mean when we take what we've seen and heard from commercials and try to impress upon people how good we are. In a sense, we're trying to sell our church.

I'm thinking about that today for a good reason. Romans 15:17 says, "So in Christ Jesus I brag about things that have to do with God." Now, we might assume everything we do as a church has to do with God. If only that would always be true.

Many times, we're focused on what we want to do and how we want to do it. We may not even recognize how we're even focused on certain kind of people when we promote ourselves.

As churches, maybe we can learn to be better reminder-ers than sellers. That is, let's constantly remind each other of what God's grace is and what it looks like within our community. Remind one another of the hope Christ has given us, and of the truth we have in Jesus. There's nothing in there you have to sell to anyone. In fact, that's all something you experience.

In Isaiah 24, the prophet paints a picture of the world being emptied out. Every part of life is impacted. It sounds dramatic because it's supposed to be. Anyone who has lived through loss, severe illness, conflict, or change knows what it feels like when the life you knew begins to crumble. Something happens that teaches us how little control we truly have.

For the people Isaiah spoke to, this disruption would be felt by everyone. There would be no escaping the emptiness brought on by the people's failing to keep their covenant with God. But even that dramatic scene would not be the end of God's work. The devastation Isaiah envisioned was also an invitation.

The prophet reminds us that there are things God longs to empty from us. There is our fear that keeps us from knowing the abundance of God. Our pride keeps us distant from God's grace. We have habits that dull our compassion and numb our awareness of God's presence. We hold on to things that keep us from growing.

When these things begin to shake, it can feel like punishment. Sometimes, it may be. But often it's grace in disguise. God is clearing space in our hearts and lives for something truer.

And what God does in individuals, God also does in our faith communities. Churches can cling to things that have stopped giving life. Sometimes, the Spirit disrupts our normal so we can see what our normal has been hiding. When God empties a community, it's not to leave us forsaken. It's to free us from whatever keeps us from loving well.

An alarm this week reminded me of something personally meaningful.

As of today, I have written 1,500 of these daily devotionals. Now, there are many other more thoughtful and wise preachers and thinkers who have written many more important things. But I'm grateful to have taken this opportunity to share these few minutes every day with you.

These are a fruit of my daily reflection, prayer, and Bible reading. It is rare that I use anything from one of these writings as preparation for a weekly sermon or use a sermon to fill one of these daily thoughts. I will say, with as much writing as I have to do for school, don't be surprised if in the middle of a semester a few of them sound a little more academic than usual.

I share this with you as a thank you for your reading, reflection, and encouragement. Another Note began as a daily devotional back in 2019. Not only did I want to try to share time with you, but I also wanted something I could use to hold me accountable to my daily practice. Discipline over motivation!

What I hope has happened is that these notes have been a part of God's voice to you. That is, I pray these are a way God's Spirit strengthens your discipleship.

I had been reading and reflecting on the image of God's Spirit as breath. God breathed life into humanity. God's Spirit breathed new life in Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. One of Job's friends said it this way: the breath of the Almighty gives me life (Job 33:4).

And that idea is not just in the Old Testament. The Spirit is at work in the life of Jesus and fills the early church with power and renewal.

That same Spirit is with us, too!

Maybe that's why one word stood out to me during a recent men's Bible study. We were reflecting on Jesus' parable of the farmer who sowed seed in the field. Different obstacles kept three out of the four seeds from bearing fruit. Only one seed grew as the farmer would have wanted. The word that caught my attention was choke. Jesus said the cares of the world choked some of the seed.

And there's the tension of our life with God. God is always breathing life into us. But we let other things choke it out.

Again, I don't think I can say it enough: God is still breathing life into God's people. The question is whether we're making room for that breath. If you were choking at the dinner table, you'd want to someone to clear your airway so you can breathe again. Well, let this be a chance for you to pay attention to your spiritual breathing.

In a patriarchal society, barrenness carried deep shame, a failure to continue the husband's family name. It was also seen as a kind of divine punishment. Today, most of us don't think of barrenness in the same way. But that doesn't mean we haven't found new ways for shame to mark our lives, name us, and follow us around.

You may not relate to the Bible's concept of barrenness, chances are, though, you know shame. In Isaiah 54, the barrenness of the people was their exile. It was their suffering, their displacement, and being cut off. As a pastor, I can tell you many of us feel like the things we go through are too embarrassing, too heavy, or too complicated to share. So, yes, we know shame well.

That's why God's promise in Isaiah 54 remains such a beautiful reflection point. God told the people that their past humiliation would not define their future. At one point in the chapter, God says "You will forget the shame of your youth." Even in their confinement, God was building and preparing a new home for them, and gave them permission to envision a new life. And that gives us permission to rethink our shame as well.

When we're in the hard moments, everything feels bigger than it really is. That doesn't mean what we're facing isn't real. It's just that our perspective about it is often skewed by the urgency of what's happening. Our worldview shrinks to the size of whatever's in front of us.

That's why faithful hindsight is important.

For many of us, it's after we've gone through it all that we are able to say that we were not abandoned. We may have been overwhelmed, but we were not left alone. That hindsight helps us reinterpret the stories we may have misread in the moment.

Have you noticed how quick we are to usually focus on all that went wrong? Psalm 124 teaches us to pay attention to what didn't happen. The trap didn't hold us. The waters didn't sweep us away. Sometimes God's greatest mercies are the troubles we never had to face.

And when the dust settles, God's deliverance becomes clearer. Fear or adrenaline may get the best of us in a crisis, but looking back helps our faith grow as we notice where God was at work for our good. Then we can say with the psalmist, "If the Lord hadn't been for us!"

I'm not sure I've ever thought too much about Noah's raven. Most of us remember the dove and the olive leaf. After sending the dove out again, it never came back. That was the sign the great flood was over, for sure.

But before that, Noah initially sent out a raven.

Now, there's no consensus on why there are two birds in the story. That's often a part of Bible study. We don't get answers to every question. There is much we are left to reflect on and wonder about and muse over.

Today, I'm reflecting on the idea that ravens are known to be scavengers. Maybe Noah expects the raven to return with a piece of carcass, suggesting where he was wasn't going to be a good place for him to live after leaving the ark. But a dove brings back an olive leaf. And that was a small enough sign of life.

Ravens can live off what's dead. They hover over old losses and old wreckage. I wonder if we sometimes do the same. We circle old pain and replay old hurts, expecting something good to come out of it. Often, that only leads to resentment, bitterness, hostility, or prolonged grief. It's understandable why we do it, but it's not healing and it traps us to the pain of yesterday.

Genesis 6 has one of those stories that most of us would probably rather skip. "Sons of God" and Nephilim read like a strange ancient myth tangled in God's word we're not ready for.

One common interpretation of the "sons of God" says that they were angelic beings who crossed boundaries with women they were never meant to cross. That added to the wickedness God saw in humanity that preludes the story of Noah. And that idea works, in part, because it's distant and dramatic, nothing like our everyday lives.

But another perspective says the "sons of God" were sons of the powerful, men in authority taking advantage of women because no one could stop them. Now, that reading isn't as outlandish or otherworldly. And maybe that's why it's harder.

It's easy to condemn things we'll never be tempted by. We shake our heads at the extremes of violence, drugs, scandals, and corruption in far-off places. But what about the quiet injustices that hide inside our policies, our systems, our workplaces, or our communities? What about the legal things we do that still cause others harm? What about the decisions powerful people make every day that leave someone else struggling?

Why is it harder to call those out?

It's easy to see how divided our world can be. People separate themselves into categories, labels, and sides. We draw lines that distinguish ourselves from others in subtle and bold ways. And then we defend those lines with all our strength.

So, let's reflect on something God desires for our world.

Listen again to the psalmist say, "Praise the Lord, all you nations! Worship him, all you people!"

Everyone is included in the call to worship.

This short psalm refuses to let us shrivel God down to fit inside our boundaries. We can't read it and assume God’s love is only for people who look like us, think like us, vote like us, worship like us, or agree with us. Instead, it widens the circle until we can’t see the edges anymore.

Recently, Pope Leo XIV released an apostolic letter titled "In the Unity of Faith" to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. He emphasized that the creed isn't just about rules or doctrine but about one God who draws near to all people. Now, in his letter, the pope omitted the filioque clause. Ask Google if you're not sure what that is. I'll say that he wasn't pretending doctrinal convictions don't exist. But symbolically, he was prioritizing what unites Christians worldwide over what divides them. It's was a small gesture that reflects the inclusive spirit of Psalm 117.

It amazes me how other people can reflect theologically on things that I would not have considered on my own. There are endless ideas to explore when it comes to understanding theology, biblical studies, and religious studies. For me, studying these kinds of things is a form of worship of the loving God who gives us insight and wisdom. And I always encourage others to learn how to think through them, too.

At the same time, I've also learned we can overcomplicate faith. Or at least, we make it harder than it needs to be. We pile on expectations, rules, church politics, spiritual checklists, and the pressure to "get it right." Of course, those have their place, usually a good place, but they can also distract us.

Then two simple verses remind us that the foundations of faith don't have to be complicated. Psalm 117 is just 17 words in Hebrew. Those few words, though, hold what we need to know about God and our relation to God.

The psalm is a call to worship and a simple explanation of why we worship. God is steadfast love, and so we praise God. There is certainly more to say about faith and discipleship. But so much of it hinges on who we understand God to be and what our lives are in response. So, Psalm 117 brings us back to that center.

Don't we all have some picture of what the future looks like? And what fills our vision of the future might be something like longing for a day when life becomes a little easier, relationships become healthier, or things at least become a little less chaotic. You might also imagine a day when you feel more whole and at peace.

The book of Revelation is a future vision. Not in a predictive way, laying out a cosmic schedule of events that will take place. Revelation is not a crystal ball view of the future. But it is a vision meant to inspire us and pull us forward to God's future.

For all its enigmatic qualities, Revelation shows us a day when light doesn't come from temporary sources. Instead, it shines from God, radiating with goodness. There will be no locked gates or fear of who might come in. There will be no systems of power that dominate or harm people. The revelation of Christ shows us a day when humanity finally lives the way we were meant to: open, healed, and unafraid.

That's more than the survival mode that wears on us today. And it's something we can all long for. A world not run by fear or pretense.

Revelation gives us that kind of picture, not as an escape from reality, but to reshape how we live in it today. A hopeful future doesn’t make us passive. It makes us courageous. It steadies our souls, and it invites us to live today as if tomorrow really can be better.