On a whim…

I have a long-standing distrust of people who announce their piety. It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose. As a minister, I’ve spent decades observing the “holy,” and I’ve noticed that those who ring their own bells the loudest are often the ones with the least inside.

I knew a murderer once. He was as pious as they come. He had the outward “priorities” of a saint and the interior of a storm cellar. It taught me early on that if you want the truth, you should usually head for the back of the room and sit with the real sinners. They’re much better company, and they rarely feel the need to straighten your tie or offer a scripted blessing.

I was trying to explain this very concept to my phone recently—dictating a thought about the dangers of performative piety.

My phone, acting as the ultimate digital Pharisee, refused to even recognize the word. It transcribed it as priority. Every time I said “piety,” Siri gave me “priority.”

It’s a hilarious, unintentional prophecy. The world we live in doesn’t have much room for the soul’s piety anymore; it only cares about your priorities. It wants to know if you’ve cleared your inbox, checked your pulse, and updated your calendar. It doesn’t want you to be holy; it just wants you to be efficient. My phone isn’t just a narcissist; it’s a productivity coach with a messiah complex, trying to “fix” my vocabulary to match its own shallow worldview.

But I’m sticking with the sinners. Somewhere between the murderer on the front row and the honest sinners in the back, you’ll find the rest of us. On my best days, I have to remind myself that I don’t belong in the middle, and I certainly don’t belong in the front.

We might not have our priorities straight—and heaven knows we aren’t “pious” by Siri’s standards—but at least we know the difference between a well-kept calendar and a well-kept soul.

1 Corinthians 13:8 NRSV

“Love never ends.”

There is a photograph.

Four girls in Easter dresses. Three little ones and an older sister. Bonnets. White gloves. Small purses. Careful posture. They are cute.

That is what I saw when Rosanne first shared it with me in 2006.

Recently I looked again. And this time I saw her face.

It is the face I knew through most of the days we had together. Not presented. Not performed. Simply there. The face of a young teenager—she is perhaps thirteen—and it is already, unmistakably, the face I loved.

That broke me. Because she is gone.

Easter does not give her back to me.

But then I looked a third time.

And I saw something else. Not grief. Not even love, exactly. I saw intent.

The baby in her lap. The sisters around her. Her parents beyond the frame.

The question she is already answering without being asked:

How shall I care for them.

Not how. Simply that she will. And nothing will deflect her.

That is who she was. I have written three books trying to say it. And here it is in the face of a thirteen year old girl in an Easter dress.

Love never ends.

Not because I can prove it.

Because I have seen what love looks like

when it has fully decided what it is for.

Prayer

God, when I cannot resolve what I have lost, keep me from believing that what was given in love has been lost with it.