Archive for the ‘grace’ Category
Unless I Touch
John 20:27 NRSV
“Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
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Thomas is not there the first time.
He misses the moment the others describe—the presence, the voice, the showing of hands. By the time he hears it, it has already become testimony. Something reported. Something he is expected to accept.
He does not.
Unless I see… unless I touch…
It sounds like doubt.
It is something else.
Thomas refuses to say more than he can sustain as true. He will not borrow certainty from someone else’s experience. If this is real, it must be real in a way he can trust.
I understand that instinct.
I cannot insist that I feel her presence. It does not come when I ask for it. It does not remain when I try to hold it. Most mornings, I weep if I do not distract myself. That is what I can say with certainty.
And still, I cannot say she is gone.
Absence does not behave cleanly. It does not remain contained. Something in my experience resists that conclusion. Not enough to prove. Not enough to name. Enough that I cannot call it absence.
So I do not say that I know.
I say that I hold.
Thomas stands in a different place.
He will not hold what he has not encountered. He will not say that something is real until it meets him in a way he can trust.
And Jesus does not refuse him.
He does not correct him. He does not shame him for asking. He offers what Thomas requires.
Reach out your hand.
Touch.
The wounds remain.
Not erased. Not explained. Still present in the body that stands before him.
And Thomas answers.
My Lord and my God.
We often hear what comes next as a correction.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
But it may not be a rebuke.
It may be a description.
There are those who encounter and those who are asked to live without that kind of certainty. Those who are given something they can touch, and those who must remain inside something they cannot hold.
I find myself there.
Not seeing.
Not touching.
Not able to insist.
And yet, unable to say that nothing remains.
To live inside resurrection is not to feel presence consistently, or to prove it.
It is to discover that absence is no longer a sufficient explanation.
Thomas needed to touch in order to trust.
I am learning to trust what I cannot touch—and to admit how difficult that is.
God meets him in what he needs.
God meets me in what I cannot hold.
I do not yet know how both can be true.
But I will not reduce either one.
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Prayer
God, meet me in what I can touch and in what I cannot, and give me the courage to remain without resolving either.
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The Body Handed Over
Mark 15:24 NRSV: “Then they crucified him.”
There is no metaphor left.
The body that was named on Thursday is now handled.
Struck.
Spat upon.
Measured.
Nailed.
The crowd is smaller now. The noise less triumphant. The sky darker than expected.
Good Friday resists explanation. We have written volumes trying to make sense of it — sacrifice, atonement, substitution, victory. Some of those words are necessary. None of them remove the wood.
Then they crucified him.
The body does not symbolize suffering. It endures it.
I have watched a body endure more than it should. I have seen strength leave it slowly. I have felt how helpless love can be when flesh fails.
There is a particular violence in watching and not being able to stop what is happening.
At the cross, even the faithful stand at a distance.
The temptation on Good Friday is to hurry toward Sunday. To speak of what will come. To soften the finality of the sentence.
But Lent forbids that.
The body hangs.
Breath shortens.
The words grow fewer.
It is finished.
And for a moment, it looks like death has the last word.
Prayer
God, stay with me when the cross is more real than hope.
What the Day Allows
Matthew 6:34 NRSV “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
By then, days were no longer measured by intention.
They were measured by allowance.
What could be done without consequence. What would cost too much. What needed to wait. The body made these decisions before the mind could argue with them.
Getting out of bed was not assumed. Standing required a pause. Walking came with calculation. Even conversation had limits—how long, how much, when to stop.
This was not weakness revealing itself.
It was information.
The day did not ask for ambition. It asked for accuracy. To notice what was possible and stay within it. To stop before depletion. To rest without apology.
Jesus’ words are often misheard as reassurance. They are closer to instruction. Each day has enough—not more than can be borne, not less than is real. The work is not to overcome the day, but to live truthfully inside it.
There was no sense of improvement yet. No upward curve. Only the slow learning of how to inhabit a smaller life without contempt.
What the day allowed had to be enough.
Prayer God, help me attend to what this day allows, and not demand more.
Enough for Today
Matthew 6:11 NRSV “Give us today our daily bread.”
By then, time had lost its markers.
Days were no longer distinguished by plans or progress, only by light and dark. Morning arrived without promise. Night came without relief. The body existed inside a narrow range of possibility, and even that had to be negotiated.
Breathing took effort. Sitting up required calculation. Food was no longer something to enjoy, only something to attempt. A few spoonfuls of broth were an achievement. Not a metaphor. An achievement.
This was not the moment for courage or clarity. It was the long middle, where survival does not feel noble and faith is reduced to what can be managed. The body learned to ask a smaller question.
Not How will this end?
But What is possible now?
Scripture knows this reduction. “Daily bread” is not abundance. It is enough. Enough to remain. Enough to get through the next hour without collapse. Enough to keep the body tethered to the day.
In that room, far from home, nothing was resolved. No meaning announced itself. There was only the discipline of accepting what could be received and refusing what could not. Rest when rest was required. Effort when effort was possible. Waiting without a clock.
This is not resignation.
It is endurance.
Faith, in such moments, does not look upward. It stays close to the body. It learns the measure of what can be held and does not ask for more.
Enough for today had to be enough.
Prayer
God, help me trust that what is enough today is enough.
On Invisibility and Malted Milk Balls
Yesterday I was in a small country store studying chocolate labels like a pharmacist—dark chocolate, no salt—because loving someone long enough means you know exactly what they can and can’t enjoy.
While I was at the counter, the owner, the finest example of a grumpy old man that I know, and I—an apprentice grump—were grumping about feeling invisible.
You reach a certain age and the world doesn’t quite look at you the same way.
Then I glanced at the two women behind the counter and said, “You know who else feels invisible? Women.”
They smiled. Not bitterly. Just knowingly.
And I said, “When you become an old man, you finally learn what it’s like to feel like a woman.”
I gathered my purchases, turned toward the door, and announced to the entire store:
“Wait. Where are my balls?”
Malted milk balls.
Today, on Valentine’s Eve, I’ve discovered a new problem.
I now have to hide my balls from my wife.
Marriage is humbling.
On a whim... 