List five things you do for fun.
In the background, mentally and spiritually:
Clarity is knowing that you know and that nothing is outside of God’s goodness net. Sometimes we find an expression that evokes a sigh or a bewilderment so profound one asks “says who?”
Qur’an, Hud (11:56) إِنِّى تَوَكَّلْتُ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ رَبِّى وَرَبِّكُم ۚ مَّا مِن دَآبَّةٍ إِلَّا هُوَ ءَاخِذٌۢ بِنَاصِيَتِهَآ ۚ إِنَّ رَبِّى عَلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍۢ مُّسْتَقِيمٍۢ ٥٦I
The God of the Bible has his ways, entirely different to ours. His thoughts are not our thoughts, and yet what he shares with us is consistent with his ways and his primary thoughts towards us. He makes paths for us to walk, and he allows us to make paths for our feet, crooked or straight. We should not however confuse unbending with constricted, straight with strait.
‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Why the Islamic deity is on a straight path is beyond me.
Indeed, I have relied upon Allāh, my Lord and your Lord. There is no creature but that He holds it by its forelock [i.e., controls it]. Indeed, my Lord is on a path [that is] straight.— Saheeh International
The straight path in both the Law and the Gospel is the path assigned for humanity. Even when the Word of God was made flesh, he was not on the same path as those that were following him. The confusion is deafening, and that does not even address who the speaker is in that verse.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
On the roads we tread, long, short, winding, upwards or downwards God says he has us. On the mountain or in the valley, our God has us.
The most beautiful things on the planet are not lasting, like a flower, and Peter the Apostle of Jesus Christ was onto this. He was not the first to have seen this surprising fact.
Here is Job saying. “Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. (Job 14:2)
Here’s the famous songwriter David singing it. As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. (Psalms 103:15)
Here is the prophet Isaiah making the glory of men like a flower. Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, And to the fading flower of its glorious beauty, Which is at the head of the fertile valley Of those who are overcome with wine! (Isaiah 28:1)
Where is James, a contemporary of peter, saying the same thing. and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away. (James 1:10)
Pretty flowers, attractive humans, amazing cities and high-priced purchases kick the bucket. So what is really important in life? God’s word, and for most spiritual seekers that means secret writings that have been treated as reliable for Millenia.
For, “All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off, (1 Peter 1:24)
What are you going to do without God’s word. That is like a baby surviving without mother’s milk.
Do you know the story of this picture below?
Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. (John 19:30)
Jeremiah 15:1
Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.
Some people think they can just spin up a prophet and all of a sudden have God’s favour. The people of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel thought they could. The outcome is an open secret.
Others try to create the impression but they are committed to toeing the line, convince themselves that they have climbed the highest hill, and are thriving in the lowest valley, while in fact everything about them is mediocre. Know a guy like that? Know some folks like that?
God impressed Jeremiah that even if the greatest prophets of Israel’s history, Moses and Samuel, were mediators on behalf of Jeremiah’s people, there would be no favour. God’s response would be, “Out of my sight; get them out of here”. I do not know that either Moses or Samuel stood before Yahweh as mediators, but I do know that twice they were “out of there” and “out of sight”
Jan 7, 2026
If you thought you could confidently scan the news without being led down a rabbit hole I caution you to think again. The DOJ of the United States of America is rapidly throwing off the demands of truth, impartiality and service to the people. Departments of Justice in Islamic-majority nations have been touting the effectiveness of harsh and unequal justice as the best examples of civic society. The global climate crisis is a near perfect parallel to the descent into undisguised bigotry, intelligence famine, and sheer roguishness. How safe the world is when felons and indicted despots are in charge of our consumption of news has to be
You can be sure that the goal of apprehending criminals has taken a nosedive when a band of brats are pardoned by the head of state, but you will be wringing your hands when you realize that rich criminal enterprise is now legal. Where on earth does a convicted felon buy election to the highest office and where do criminals come in legal and illegal versions. You got it: Kristi Noem’s spacious skies.
The US DOJ is headed by a person who says that the department is committed to pursuing (my word) illegal criminals. This was last heard – by me and I assume millions of news consumers – at a news conference where the department was briefing the public about the fatal shooting of a presumed unarmed motorist. My mind tried immediately to grasp the full implication of “illegal criminals”. Of all the things that criminals could be I had to be sure.
It is quite obvious that Americans believe in legal crime. Armed and hooded bands have terrorized people for centuries. Prospective homeowners have been denied access to homes and property by the use of secret codes, and the Supreme Court has put the president above the law with its ruling that he cannot be charged with a crime for the (presumed) exercise of official duties. The current occupant of the executive mansion interprets that to mean “I can do whatever I want”. The people seem to have bought the wink and nudge. They elected a convicted felon as president. Illegal criminals are, for now, (1) poor people who pay more taxes than the rich, migrant workers, (2) religious leaders who scam and steal from the public, and (3) politicians who tell the truth about the American constitution and dreams of the Founding Fathers.
We can all see that there is a legal criminal in the executive mansion, a band of legal criminals trying to keep a fatally wounded Republican Party alive with leeches, tourniquets, spells and incantations. We all can see that it is now legal for anyone to broadcast lies and hide behind the right of free speech. There are a lot of legal criminals in the world today. Look at the friends of the current American administration and you will get the picture, in black and white, in New and Gentile, in despots and liberators, and in God and idols. Added to the hazard of news and information consumption is the explicit muzzling of news organizations and individual agents who the public have trusted for decades.
When people have to filter what they want to say through what the government line is they are definitely applying to be legal criminals. Think before you illegally steal your right to reject MAGA, and all the religions of our brief stay on earth.
Some valleys roar.
Some valleys whisper.
Day 8 is the valley that whispers prophecy — the valley where obscurity becomes destiny.
After angels and shepherds,
after Magi and warnings,
after Egypt and return — the story settles into Nazareth.
A small town with a smaller reputation.
A place people mock.
A place people overlook.
A place stamped with a verdict:
It’s not a joke. It’s a cultural sneer. A dismissal baked into the soil.
And yet this is where the Messiah grows.
Matthew says Jesus lived in Nazareth
“so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled:
He shall be called a Nazarene.”
Not one prophet — prophets.
A chorus.
A constellation of echoes.
Isaiah’s Servant is:
Nazareth was despised.
To call someone a “Nazarene” was to call them a nobody.
Matthew is saying:
The Messiah will be the One the world writes off —
and Nazareth is the perfect address for that prophecy.
“A shoot will come from the stump of Jesse,
a netzer (branch) from his roots will bear fruit.”
Netzer — branch.
Natzrat — Nazareth.
Natzri — Nazarene.
The Branch grows from a cut down stump.
The Messiah grows from a cut down town.
The stone the builders rejected
becomes the cornerstone.
Nazareth is the rejected stone.
Jesus is the cornerstone rising from it.
Lowly.
Riding on a donkey.
Not entering from Jerusalem’s heights
but from Galilee’s margins.
Nazareth fits the humility of the King.
God chooses:
Nazareth is the emblem of God’s upside down kingdom.
And in this overlooked town,
the Incarnate One begins to meet the world He came to heal.
Nazareth is full of fevers, injuries, infections, and chronic pain.
Jesus grows up breathing the air of a world that needs healing.
Before He heals the sick,
He lives among them.
Funerals pass by the carpenter’s shop.
He watches graves dug into the hillside.
He hears the wails of neighbors.
Before He raises the dead,
He walks behind their coffins.
Nazareth is weary.
People argue, cheat, despair, give up.
Before He breaks the darkness,
He sits in its shadows.
Children wander.
Families fracture.
Dreams collapse.
Before He gathers the lost,
He grows up beside them.
This is the valley where God learns our world from the inside.
Where compassion becomes muscle.
Where empathy becomes flesh.
Where the mission becomes personal.
The world says,
“Nothing good can come from Nazareth.”
God says,
“Watch Me.”
The glory is coming —
but the Healer has already begun His rounds.
Come to Bethlehem.
Not the Bethlehem of postcards,
but the Bethlehem of Scripture —
dusty, crowded, overlooked,
the place where heaven slipped into the world
without asking permission.
Come to the manger,
where the Ancient of Days
rests in the arms of a teenage girl
who stitched revelation into resilience.
Come to the Child,
laid in a feeding trough —
not because He is small,
but because the world is,
and the world is His.
Come to the valley,
where Rachel weeps
and Mary carries hope through her tears.
Where the Physician breathes the air of the sick,
the Lifegiver walks behind the dead,
the Light sits in the shadows,
and the Shepherd grows up among the lost.
Come to Nazareth,
the town the world dismissed —
“Can anything good come from there?”
And watch God answer –
with a life that will heal the nations.
Come to the mountain,
where shepherds proclaim,
Joseph obeys,
Mary ponders,
Magi bow,
angels shout,
and elders bless.
Come to the Child
who is Savior,
Christ,
Lord,
Immanuel —
God with us in every valley,
God with us on every mountain,
God with us in every hidden place.
Come to Bethlehem.
Taste and see the grace of God.
The glory is coming,
but the grace is already here.
And may the One who entered our world in humility
enter your heart with peace,
your home with light,
your days with strength,
and your valleys with His presence.
Amen.
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 