If you lived in his neighborhood, it would be hard not to be at least a little jealous. He has everything any ordinary man on the street would want — a large property with a beautiful home, a successful business and lots of employees, every earthly comfort and luxury a man could want.

He was born into a wealthy family, and so has never really known need. He was rich before he could talk. And if the inheritance weren’t enough, the family business is still thriving. He’s achieved a level of prosperity many men sweat and grind their whole lives to have, but never taste. If you could see inside his garage, he’d probably have cars worth the price of a small house.

On top of all that, he married an amazing woman — wise, beautiful, delightful, rare. The more you’re around her, the more you want to be around her. She knows what to say (and what not to say). She leaves people wondering how any man snared a diamond like her. Their life is the kind of life millions would want to stream on Netflix. Many would see him from afar and assume he’s the picture of a blessed husband.

But when God looks at that same man, he calls him worthless.

Man Against God’s Heart

When we meet Nabal (the name literally means “fool,” which raises some real questions about his upbringing), David has landed in his fields while fleeing from King Saul. David and his men are hungry, and so the anointed leader bows to ask for food. Notice how humbly and respectfully he makes his request:

Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David. (1 Samuel 25:6–8)

Nabal’s men later confirm David’s story: “The men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day” (1 Samuel 25:15–16). Not only did David’s men not harm Nabal’s shepherds, but they actually shielded and blessed them. His own men think he should feed these guys.

In response, Nabal lives up to his name:

Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where? (1 Samuel 25:10–11)

He knows exactly who David is. Why else would he call him “the son of Jesse” (a name Saul spitefully uses again and again, 1 Samuel 20:27, 30–31; 22:13)? While David kneels with empty hands, Nabal spits in his face and sends him away. And if it wasn’t for his remarkable wife, Abigail, it would have cost him his life right then and there (1 Samuel 25:13).

Five Marks of a Foolish Husband

What might Christian husbands learn from Nabal? We learn at least five ways to be a bad man and a foolish husband.

Strength Without Love

Nabal had the kind of strength that might impress and intimidate weaker men. He was a man of the field and worked with his hands, sheering sheep. He used his strength, however, in despicable ways. When Scripture introduces the couple, its writer says, “The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved” (1 Samuel 25:3). That one word — harsh — sums up his failures as a man. He used his God-given strength to wound, rather than heal; to threaten, rather than protect. He relied on force to do what love should do. He was cruel.

His strength was not the problem. No, godly husbands are strong men — they must be to do what God calls them to do, bear what God calls them to bear, and confront what God calls them to confront. In Christ, men put off laziness, timidity, and fragility. We put on the armor of God to fight the battles of God in the strength of God. And as we exercise that strength, those in our homes and churches (unlike those closest to Nabal) are cared for and safe. Any discerning wife loves being led by a strong man who loves well.

Courage Without Wisdom

You can’t read a story like this and question Nabal’s nerve. When the Lord’s anointed, armed and dangerous, stood in his front yard and asked for food for his small army of soldiers, the man sends them away. “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse?” He basically drew a flaming arrow and aimed it at a hungry warrior’s chest, spurning caution and inviting violence. He had the backbone to stand his ground, but he’d chosen the wrong place to stand. He planted his flag on foolishness, and risked everything for pride.

Again, courage was not his problem. Godly men are more willing than most to sacrifice themselves for the good of others. They wear promises like Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And because God, not self, is the source and aim of their bravery, they don’t pick dumb fights (especially with their wives). They don’t endanger those they’re called to protect for the sake of their ego. They risk themselves wisely and in love. They know when to step in and stand their ground — for their families, for the church, for their God — and when to turn the other cheek.

Wealth Without Generosity

For all the evil Nabal could and did do, God still allowed him to prosper for a time. He had the kind of barns that could comfortably feed a small army. He wasn’t just rich. “The man was very rich,” God tells us. “He had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats” (1 Samuel 25:2). We’re meant to feel the weight of this man’s wealth — and just how badly he handles it. He could feed David and his men, with no significant loss, but he wouldn’t. He could have met a hundred needs, but he chose to spend what he had on what he wanted instead. He was selfish and stingy toward every appetite but his own.

Nabal had built the bigger barns. He embodied the fool’s anthem: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19). And what does God say to that man? “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (v. 20). To which Jesus adds, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (v. 21). And being rich toward God typically means being generous toward someone else. It means laying up treasure for others, meeting their needs at our (sometimes significant) expense. Godly husbands are givers, like our Father, not keepers or takers.

Success Without Gratitude

Nabal was running a booming company. His stock was rising. His board was well-pleased with the profits. By all accounts, this man’s career was a wild success. That is, by all accounts but one. God looked at all Nabal had achieved and earned, and he saw failure. He saw bankruptcy. He called the whole enterprise worthless. How many men, even in our churches, are killing it in the office and yet losing everywhere else? How many are esteemed by their colleagues and competitors and yet barely tolerated at home? How many of us have endless ambition outside our family and church, but little leftover to give where it matters most?

Godly men work hard, whatever work they do, as for their Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23). Christian men do their work with unusual excellence — and unusual gratitude. Notice how Nabal talks: “Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” God gave him everything, and got credit for nothing. And then, when God guarded his servants and sheep, he returned that kindness with evil (1 Samuel 25:21). Good husbands are relentlessly humble and grateful, even in the little gains and successes. And because they’re faithful in the little, God often gives them more (Luke 19:17, 24–26).

Hunger Without Self-Control

Lastly, Nabal was a man mastered by his cravings. The passions of his flesh waged war on his soul, and his soul all too quickly waved the white flag. When Abigail came to find him, “he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk” (1 Samuel 25:36). Even with men of war waiting outside, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. When the people under his roof needed him to rise and play the man, he instead chose to enjoy some mindless, silly, numbing pleasures. He gratified himself and abandoned everyone else.

Before we despise him too quickly, don’t we sometimes do the same, even if in subtler ways? Do we too easily check out and desert our posts as husbands and fathers? What indulgence in our lives tends to numb our sense of spiritual and relational urgency and responsibility?

When the apostle Paul comes to older men in the church, he charges them, “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (Titus 2:2). When he comes to the younger men a few verses later, he says, simply, “Urge the younger men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:6). Not joyless. Godly husbands are happy men, but not in cheap, easy, superficial ways.

Men mastered by grace are men who master themselves. We’re not, like many men, relying on football games, smoked meat, video games, or craft cocktails for relief and exhilaration. We’re thrilled to be the chosen sons of God, the blood-bought brothers of Christ, the future kings of the universe. And we enjoy every other earthly gift — food and drink, marriage and sex, football and Netflix — in moderation, to preserve the highest, fullest, strongest pleasure, namely God.

Worth of Worthy Men

Nabal, like a number of other husbands in Scripture, teaches husbands what not to be and do. His failures, however, lay out something of a constructive map for us. They teach us that men will be measured, in large part, by how we treat what (and whom) God has entrusted to us.

We’ll be measured by how we treat our stuff — our sheep and goats and monthly paychecks. Are we selfless and self-controlled, or selfish and indulgent? Do the time, money, and gifts we’ve been given consistently meet real needs around us? For men in the world, what they have is their god, and so they receive and spend it horribly. Those whose God is in heaven, though, don’t demand divinity of their prosperity, and so they hold their possessions loosely and give them away freely. They know that, in God, they have “a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34).

We’ll also be measured by how we treat the people in our lives — the wife beside us, the children behind us, the neighbors next to us, the church family around us, the people who look up to (and maybe even report to) us. Men don’t often die wishing they had put in a lot more hours at the office or made a harder run at that promotion. They very often die wishing they had prioritized the people who were waiting at home or sitting in the next pew. Strive, by the grace of God, to be your most fruitful where it matters most. Don’t be known first and foremost by how you work and what you have, but by how you love and what you give.

Ultimately, though, we’ll be measured by how we treat God’s anointed. Nabal sent the chosen king away hungry, and then added insult to that injury. Since then, God has sent a new and greater David. He’s sent his own Son into our world, into our city, even to our front door. So how will we receive him? And not just on Sunday mornings, but on Monday afternoons and Friday evenings too. Will we give him more attention than Nabal gave David that day? Will we run to him, prioritize him, praise him, and share him?

In the end, then, what separates good husbands from bad ones, the faithful from the unfaithful, is how we treat Jesus.

If you desire to serve as a pastor, you desire a noble task (1 Timothy 3:1) — literally, a good work. When God surveys the mountain range of your desire, he sees wisdom, beauty, and honor. The worldly may pity the pastor. They see anything but nobility. But not you. When you look at the real costs and inconveniences of ministry, you see glory and eternity and gain. Whether anyone ever paid you to pastor or not, you couldn’t be content to devote your short life any other way.

And yet, for some of you, you’re still not a pastor. As much as your desire to pastor may please God, it has not yet pleased him to open a door for you to actually pastor. The waiting can be as disorienting as longing to be married but struggling to find a date, or aching to have children while amassing pregnancy tests. If God loves this work, and if churches need this work, and if you want this work, why would God withhold it from you, sometimes for years?

Because God often does as much through our waiting as he does through our serving. Sometimes God makes us wait for doors to open in ministry because unwanted waiting is some of the best preparation for ministry. That means closed doors really can become spiritual gifts to those who will humbly kneel before them.

But what can we do while we wait? How do we keep ourselves from wasting the years before we enter formal ministry? How do we squeeze as much good as possible from a closed door? Over the last decade, I’ve learned at least seven practical lessons while waiting outside doors of my own.

1. Purify Your Ambition

One reason God withholds ministry from those aspiring to ministry is because the aspiration itself needs refining. That the task is noble does not necessarily mean that our desire has risen to such nobility. People seek out positions of leadership for all kinds of reasons (and sometimes, honorable motives are deeply mixed with dishonorable ones). We may want to glorify Christ and love his people, but deep down, we also want recognition, or influence, or power and authority. Our ambition needs purifying.

Sometimes this selfishness lies across the path to ministry like a fallen tree after a storm. We can’t always see our own selfishness, but God is kind to help us remove it. A season of waiting can be a season for better aspiring. In these times, it’s especially good to pray prayers like Psalm 139:23–24,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!     Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me,     and lead me in the way everlasting!

In his classic book, The Christian Ministry, Charles Bridges presses home three qualities of a godly desire to pastor. First, godly desire is a constraining desire, one that persists and intensifies over time. Waiting helps us test the strength and stamina of our desire. Second, godly desire is a considerate desire, meaning we have sufficiently counted the cost. Waiting gives us time to begin serving and to seek out the stories and counsel of those further along in ministry. Lastly, godly desire is an unselfish desire, meaning it’s not focused on self — praise, power, esteem — but on the glory of Christ and the good of his bride. Waiting proves and strengthens our readiness to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him.

2. Strengthen Your Character

The qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9 touch on various areas of a man’s life — how he speaks, how he drinks, how he spends his money, how he responds to conflict, what kind of husband and father he is — but they’re really all about who he is. The qualifications are searching for outer evidence of inner character — not perfect evidence, but real and persistent evidence.

So, God might be withholding ministry to give your character time and space to mature. Therefore, in your season of waiting, “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10).

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5–8)

This stage of pastoral preparation is not unlike premarital counseling. No couple can address every character flaw or potential area of conflict in three or four or five sessions with a counselor. It’s impossible. But that doesn’t mean premarital counseling is futile. Everything you can address (or at least begin to address) in premarital will have some good effect in marriage. The same is true in preparation for pastoral ministry.

So, which areas of your life and character could use more prayerful attention and consistent accountability? You cannot imagine all the future fruit your church might receive from your diligently sowing godliness now.

3. Pastor Your Home Better

When you read through the qualifications for eldership, which one feels the most daunting to you? Someone could certainly make an argument for “able to teach” (“I sweat even thinking about public speaking”), or “hospitable” (“Do you know what my house is like with small kids?”), or “well thought of by outsiders” (“You don’t know my neighbors”). I would argue for a different one though: “He must manage his own household well” (1 Timothy 3:4). In other words, we know how well a man will lead a church by how well he has led his home.

In most cases, this will be the qualification that requires the most forethought, sacrifice, and follow-through. If God has given you a wife and children, they are the first proving grounds for your qualification and preparation for church office. No man who fails here should be entrusted with the people of God. “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5).

And yet every man, even the most qualified, can stand to grow here. So, if God gives you a season without formal responsibility in the church, receive it as a golden opportunity to lead even better in the high and holy responsibilities you have at home. Initiate more time in the word of God. Lead your family in singing to him. Spend more time on your knees, with them and alone. Brainstorm how you might be more hospitable together and share the gospel with neighbors. Before you begin formal ministry, use the precious time and energy you have now to fortify the spiritual foundation of your home.

4. Refine Your Abilities

If God has given you gifts that others believe would be useful as a pastor, a season of waiting can be a great time to identify and nurture those gifts. You don’t have to wait until you’re preaching regularly to develop your ability to teach. You don’t have to have formal office hours for counseling to begin helping other believers through conflict and crisis. In fact, you don’t have to have a title to meet most of the needs in your church. How, then, might you use your gifts now to be a blessing to others?

Bobby Jamieson, in his excellent book for those aspiring to ministry, wisely counsels younger men, “Aim to be mistaken for an elder before you are appointed an elder” (The Path to Being a Pastor, 67). You cannot be a pastor until a church calls you to pastor, but you do not need to be a pastor to begin serving, teaching, leading, and loving like one. In fact, as Jamieson says, no man should be called to pastoral ministry who is not already doing some, if not much, of the work of pastors.

The apostle Paul urges his protégé Timothy, “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:14–15). He returns to the same point in his second letter: “Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6). So, if others have seen abilities of teaching and counsel in you, what could you do to fan the flame of those abilities? How might you immerse yourself in ministering the word? What opportunities has God given you now, however modest, to teach and meet needs in your church?

5. Count the Cost

Many men who aspire to pastoral ministry really aspire to the more fulfilling facets of ministry — studying God’s word, helping the congregation see what’s there, watching people become liberated from sin and reconciled to one another, winning souls to Christ. Fewer aspire to the costs. Some are almost completely ignorant of the costs. And there are serious, sometimes overwhelming costs to ministry.

Jesus says to the great crowds who seem so eager to follow him,

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” (Luke 14:27–30)

The warning applies all the more to pastors. Have you given yourself time to look beyond the appealing aspects of ministry to its darker, more discouraging sides? One way to count the cost in a season of waiting would be to spend regular time with a veteran pastor or two. Find a man willing to be vulnerable about how hard pastoring can be. Ask him to paint a wider, fuller picture of the warfare he faces than you can imagine on your own.

6. Discern the Right Door

God may have withheld some opportunities from you simply because he has a particular opportunity in mind for you. There are real spiritual dimensions to any ministry job search. Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, “We endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you . . . but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:17–18). Paul wanted to minister there, and that desire was a noble desire — and the church wanted him to come — and yet Satan hindered him. Ministry did not happen because evil was allowed to intervene (at least for a time). A door was closed, and God had a good reason for leaving it closed.

Elsewhere, Paul highlights other spiritual dynamics: “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 2:12–13). The door was open in Troas, and Paul wanted to be there, but he didn’t feel peace about staying there. He took Titus’s unexpected absence as a reason to leave for now and walk through a door in Macedonia instead. So, for various reasons, even some open doors may not be the right doors.

And some right doors may not immediately seem open. Look closely at how Paul talks about an opportunity he took in a different city: “I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Corinthians 16:8–9). He saw a wide-open door even though the enemies were many. While many might have interpreted intense opposition as a closed door, he saw the opposite. So, just because a particular ministry opportunity looks challenging, even very challenging, it still might be the right door.

All to say, a season of unwanted waiting may be necessary to make sure you land where God wants you. You may knock on closed door after closed door because you haven’t reached the door he has opened wide for you. So, pray with Paul that God may open to you the right “door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3) — and that you’d recognize it when he does.

7. Care for Souls

Lastly, and most fundamentally, the call to pastor is a call to shepherd, to live and die for the good of the sheep. When Jesus, the Good Shepherd, restores and commissions Peter after his betrayal, he charges him three times (mercifully, once for each denial) in John 21:15–17,

“Feed my lambs.”

“Tend my sheep.”

“Feed my sheep.”

This is pastoral ministry in five words: “Feed and tend my sheep.” Sheep-work is rarely thrilling, glorious, or fragrant. It’s simple. It’s repetitive. It can be messy. It’s often thankless. But if these sheep belong to Jesus, and one day will be washed clean and made like him, there’s no more important work in the world. If God has called you to ministry, you see that filthy wool and those wandering feet, and your heart strangely rises with love and devotion. You want to give yourself to the word, so that one day you might help present them to Christ.

So, spend time with the sheep. Tend the sheep. Love the sheep. Embrace a season of waiting and serving in the church with a graduate-level degree in shepherding. Do what good pastors do, and begin to make yourself at home in the pasture.

As I get older, decisions in life don’t seem to get smaller and easier, but bigger, harder, and more frequent.

In the moment, we often think the hardest decision we’ll ever face is whichever one we have to make right now. If we look back in ten years, though, this whale of a decision may begin to look a little more like a dolphin or a penguin.

When I was in my early twenties, the most difficult decision I had made was whether to stay near home for college (with my friends) or wander outside the safety of southern Ohio. Tears were shed. By my mid-thirties, however, I had made a dozen decisions bigger than that one. Where will I live? Where will I go to church? What will I do for a living, and who will pay me to do that? Whom will I marry? When will we try to have kids? Will I stay in this job? What school will we send our kids to? How will we pay for that? And those are just the big decisions most people have to make at some point. You have question marks of your own.

This year brought some new whales into our family’s harbor, and so we’ve been in need of fresh wisdom and clarity. As we wrestled through these weighty decisions, I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia with my six-year-old. On one of our hikes through its forests, my son and I came to a crossroads (as one often does in Narnia). And it was one of those crossroads that unveils the magic of Lewis’s world.

While standing there beside a dwarf (Trumpkin) and looking out over a gorge separating the four Pevensie children from Prince Caspian’s army, I suddenly wasn’t looking at a dwarf anymore, or a gorge, or even a book. I was looking at my life, at the hard decisions I needed to make. I was looking at myself. It was as if Lewis himself had decided to stop over from mid-twentieth-century Oxford to help me choose between the paths before me.

A Godless Calculus

Where we were reading, King Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are hiking with Trumpkin, trying to find the Great River. After arduous days, they’re questioning whether they’ve gone the wrong way when they suddenly come to a gorge. The chasm is too wide to cross, so they must either follow the gorge downstream, hoping it meets the river, or climb upstream, looking for a place to cross. Trumpkin’s convinced that the gorge must fall into the river somewhere below, and Peter quickly approves. “Come on, then. Down this side of the gorge” (Prince Caspian, 131). At that moment, though, young Lucy sees an old, majestic friend.

“Look! Look! Look!” cried Lucy.

“Where? What?” asked everyone.

“The Lion,” said Lucy. “Aslan himself. Didn’t you see?” Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.

The other children, not able to see Aslan themselves, immediately suspect she’s seeing things. Lucy won’t back down, though. As they search and search and see nothing, they ask where exactly she saw the lion.

Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was — up there. (132)

“Anyone who regularly reads the Bible, by the Spirit, sees the lion every day.”

As Lucy insists, the dwarf resists. “I know nothing about Aslan. But I do know that if we turn left and follow the gorge up, it might lead us all day before we found a place where we could cross it. Whereas if we turn right and go down, we’re bound to reach the Great River in about a couple of hours. And if there are any real lions about, we want to go away from them, not towards them” (133). He’s the voice of conventional wisdom. He can calculate only what he can see.

In this case, his small, narrow eyes win the day, so the company turns right and goes down.

Unconventional Wisdom

First, the way turns out to be not as “conventional” as it had seemed: “To keep along the edge of the gorge was not so easy as it had looked” (135). They fight through dense woods until they can’t anymore and have to back out and go around the trees. When they find the gorge again, the hike down is slower and more treacherous than they expected.

As they finally near the bottom, they take another turn like so many before, and suddenly the Great River stretches out before them. Their spirits surge, lifting their sore feet and tired legs. The children are busy talking again — and then the arrows come. The evil King Miraz had posted soldiers near the river, who chase the children, sending them back to where they started.

“I suppose we’ll have to go right up the gorge again now,” says Lucy (142).

When they get all the way back to the top, they stop and make camp for the night. The dwarf prepares a great meal for the crew, and they all fall into a deep sleep. In the middle of the night, Aslan wakes Lucy and tells her to wake the others. The older kids still don’t believe her, but with the hissing sound of arrows still ringing in their ears, they decide to follow anyway. As they walk together through the dark, the lion shows them a path down into the gorge they never would have noticed. And before morning comes, they have found King Caspian and the others.

Meeting God in the Forest

Now, what might Lucy’s childlike wisdom mean for our crossroads? When it comes to complicated and heavy decisions, do we just follow whatever inner impulse we have? No, that’s not how God — or Aslan — leads. Lucy wasn’t following some inner impulse. She really saw a lion, with fur and paws and teeth. She wasn’t following a hunch or intuition; this was reverence and obedience. He showed her the way to go, and expected her to go, even if the others couldn’t see what she saw yet.

What do we do, though, when we wrestle and pray and labor over a decision, and a lion hasn’t come yet? How might God come and stand on a path for us?

The most important thing to say is that anyone who regularly reads the Bible, by the Spirit, sees the lion every day. The word of God is the one inspired, infallible path he has given us for life. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:3–4). Google can’t provide answers like these. Artificial intelligence is a shadow of such wisdom. A hundred PhDs would only scratch the surface. We have no idea what we hold in the pages of this Book.

The Bible is not peripheral to your marriage and family decisions, your work decisions, your schedule decisions, your church and ministry decisions, your giving and saving decisions, your medical decisions. In his word, his Spirit, and his church, God really has given you everything you could conceivably need to make the daunting decision standing before you.

The Lion in Their Eyes

When it comes to your crossroads, don’t forget the church. Along with the word and his Spirit, God gives us other word-saturated, Spirit-filled, flesh-and-blood fountains of wisdom.

Lucy found the right path by listening to Aslan. Peter, Susan, and Edmund found the right path by listening to Lucy. She saw what they could not see yet, because Aslan had decided to reveal it to her first. How often does this happen with us? Our perspective and judgment are clouded by the weight of a decision, until the right friend comes. They’re not blinded by our fog, and so they’re able to see through it and guide us out. “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22).

“God really has given you everything you could conceivably need to make the daunting decision standing before you.”

When we join a local church, as ordinary or simple as it may seem on the surface, we are being surgically woven into a whole new nervous system of wisdom. God has specifically gifted the people in our church — through his word, through their resources and experiences, through gifts of his Spirit — to meet real needs in our lives, including helping us make wise plans and life decisions. If you’re wrestling between two paths right now, who in your church might already know something about those paths? What might God show them to help guide you?

And what might he show you to help guide someone else? At times, you’ll need a Lucy. At other times, you’ll be a Lucy. God will give you unique, supernatural perspectives on decisions that your friends and family won’t be able to see at first. They’ll need the lion in your eyes.

Following After Trees

Lucy has one more lesson for us. When Aslan appears to her that second time (while the others are still sleeping), he leads her on a walk through the forest glade. As she follows the voice of the lion, she sees something unsettling among the trees. The trees themselves — those dark, towering, leafy pillars — seem to be moving. And not just moving, but dancing.

Why were they dancing, and why now? Not because Lucy and the others had finally chosen the right path, but because of the one roaming that path.

She went fearlessly in among the trees, dancing herself as she leaped this way and that to avoid being run into by these huge partners. But she was only half-interested in them. She wanted to get beyond them to something else; it was from beyond them that the dear voice had called. (146)

Moments later, she is face-to-face with him again. “Lucy rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane” (148).

I found this scene — a frail girl’s heart wrapped tight around the ferocious lion — to be as illuminating and stirring as any. Yes, the lion knew which way to go, but the trees say much more than that. He didn’t just know the way; he was the way. And he was the destination. The wise path, whether up the gorge, down the gorge, around the gorge, or over the gorge, was always going to be wherever his big paws were.

And so, perhaps the best question to ask when faced with another big life decision would be this: Where’s the lion now? He could show up on any number of paths, and it won’t always be easy to see him (and you might not be the first to see him). But in any given decision, we want to be able to wrap our arms around his neck and bury our faces in his fur.

At any given crossroads, we want the path with more of him.

Anyone who has led a Bible study for long has encountered one of those horribly awkward moments when some well-meaning person passionately points out something in a verse that simply isn’t there.

Years ago, I was leading a memorable small group discussion of Romans 9. John Piper once described these 33 verses as “a tiger going about devouring free-willers.” “He has mercy on whomever he wills,” the apostle Paul writes, “and he hardens whomever he wills.” The chapter is a captivating, sobering mountain range of the sovereignty of God and unconditional election. When we finished reading it out loud as a group, I opened the floor for initial responses, “So, what immediately sticks out to you from these verses?”

After a short pause, a sweet, well-meaning woman (who had just started coming to our church) dove headfirst into an uncomfortably long celebration of human free will. It started something like this: “I just love that God gives us the freedom to believe or not, that he doesn’t make the decision for us, that he leaves the choice up to us. I mean, it wouldn’t be right for him to choose some people and not others.” It was as if she had done a belly flop into what we just read. But it was more like twenty belly flops, because she just kept going and going. She wrapped up the wild splashing with a bow: “So, yeah, that’s what I saw.”

Everyone else in this particular circle knew enough to see she had missed the point entirely; they knew she was staring at apples and somehow seeing a longer, thinner yellow fruit with a peel. Unfortunately, all their fumbling twenty-something leader could manage to say in the moment was, “Well . . . those . . . are . . . some thoughts.”

What Does Meaning Even Mean?

The distance between that young woman’s “thoughts” and what Romans 9 actually says holds a critical lesson for ordinary Bible reading. Every book and verse in Scripture has a specific, original, and unchanging meaning. Behind every chapter we read is a real man with real convictions and real objectives, writing to a real audience with real needs and real problems, at a real time in history. And what it meant then, it still means now. Joe Rigney writes,

Whenever we talk about meaning, we are talking about persons. . . . If there is meaning, there must be a mean-er. Meaning exists only when someone has meant. (“Do Unto Authors”)

The Bible doesn’t say what we want it to say, or mean what we want it to mean; it says what it says, and it means what it means. Good reading, then, begins with recognizing and embracing that meaning, whatever it is. That means we don’t start our devotions by asking, “What does this mean for me?” We start with the harder question, “What does this mean?”

Many read the Bible searching for little sayings that inspire, a verse or even phrase to hold onto for the day, and in the process they end up missing what the authors are actually saying. In other words, they almost read the Bible. They open the pages and recognize words, phrases, and sentences, but they never actually get to the meaning. As a result, they often misinterpret (and misapply) what they read — and they miss the golden wisdom, warnings, and encouragements lying right in front of them.

Eight Questions for Better Reading

How do we grow in our ability to understand what authors really mean? What tools could we use to go deeper and see more in our Bible reading? I recently read Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book, and while it’s not a distinctly Christian book, its principles offer some precious guidance for those whose God has written a Book.

Advances in technology have sadly left many of us infants in reading. Adler is a timeless beginner’s guide to reading better. As he trains students to read well, he lays out eight driving questions that help us uncover meaning. None of these relates to applying what we’re reading, but they’re valuable tools for understanding, and all good application begins with understanding. I’ll model how to work through each of his questions using one of the most familiar and beloved chapters in all the Bible: Psalm 23.

1. What kind of chapter am I reading?

In Adler’s words, “Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.” In terms of the Bible, am I reading a history or a letter or a poem or something else? Who wrote what I’m reading, and when did they write it? What was happening at that time in the Bible’s story? Did the author write before or after Jesus came? Not all books and chapters in Scripture are alike. They cover a wide range of centuries, geographies, genres, problems, and objectives.

Psalms, for instance, is a collection of songs that the people of God memorized and sang together in worship. They represent a wide range of experiences and express a wide range of emotions. As we read, we need to remember that these were written to lead the gathered people in worship. Also important to note is that they were written by a number of different authors, so we need to identify who wrote the one we’re reading (in Psalm 23, King David), and if we know anything about the circumstances of the psalm (for instance, we know that David had been a shepherd).

2. How might I summarize the chapter?

Again, in Adler’s words, “State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.” When it comes to Bible reading, can you summarize the overall point or theme of this chapter in a sentence or two? If someone asked you what you read this morning, how would you answer? How would you try and sum up the meaning for someone who has never read what you just read?

How might you try and summarize the six verses in Psalm 23? Your summary doesn’t need to be clever, unique, or poetic — it doesn’t need to be Instagram-worthy — it just needs to be true. I might summarize it like this: If God is your God, he will lead, protect, provide for, and satisfy you — even when it feels otherwise.

3. What big pieces do I see?

In this step, having summarized the big picture, we look for the big puzzle pieces in that picture. During this stage, think a puzzle for 3-year-olds, not one with a thousand pieces. We’re looking for a few bigger points in the author’s argument, and then trying to see how those big glaring pieces fit together.

When you look at the six verses of Psalm 23, do you see any big, distinct pieces that make up the psalm? In verses 1–4, David describes God as a shepherd, who leads his sheep into green pastures and beside still waters, who protects and comforts through danger. In verses 5–6, God’s not a shepherd anymore, but a dinner host, preparing a table for his people and welcoming them to stay in his house forever. So, how might those two big pieces fit together? They’re two complementary pictures of the goodness of God that both borrow imagery from ordinary, familiar aspects of life at that time.

4. What problem(s) does this solve?

As you read the chapter, what issue or dilemma is the author trying to address? What tension is he trying to resolve? What need is he trying to meet? The apostle Paul tells us, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable . . . that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). So, what makes these verses profitable? How, in particular, do they teach, reprove, correct, train, or encourage us?

What problem inspired David to write Psalm 23? What sends him searching for words and drives him to think about green pastures and full tables? Because he knows life doesn’t always feel like green pastures, or still waters, or full tables. He’s reminding himself (and all the others) that God draws near even when he feels far away, that he vigilantly protects us even when we feel fragile and vulnerable, that he opens wide his table even in the moments when we feel hungry and unfulfilled. In other words, the psalm unveils the reassuring light of God’s steadfast care for us in the disorienting darkness of our fears.

5. Can I explain the key words?

Are there words in this chapter that seem especially important to the author? Maybe he repeats a particular word, or maybe the word appears in an especially important verse, or maybe the word itself simply carries unusual weight or significance for the author. We often fail to understand the meaning of sentences and paragraphs because we’ve failed to come to terms with the author. We’re not hearing or using words the same way he does.

As you look for key words, are there any words you can’t define or explain? If so, then you cannot fully understand the meaning of this verse or passage. It’s easier than ever to look up a definition (even better, search the word in the Bible to see how this author, or others in Scripture, use it). Make sure you can first define all the words, and then try to identify the ones that seem most significant to the author in this particular chapter.

What words might that be in Psalm 23? If I had to pick one, it would be shepherd. And before you assume you know what that word meant for David, you might give it a second, longer look. Many of us today are extremely far removed from the harsher realities of shepherding. David wasn’t. Yes, he was well-acquainted with green pastures and still waters, but he also knew valleys dark and dangerous enough to be called death. He knew lions and bears and wolves. So, for him, the shepherd wasn’t merely a gentle, peaceful man petting sheep, but also nature’s great warrior. In other words, he saw strength and courage in the shepherd that we might miss today.

6. Which sentences seem most important?

Similar to the previous point, now try to identify the key sentences in this particular chapter. The most important sentences can appear at the beginning of a passage, or at the end, or somewhere in the middle. Where does the author’s burden or aim come into greatest focus? Which sentences help make sense of all the others?

In the case of Psalm 23, I submit the two most important lines in the poem are the first and the last:

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

“I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

You can almost hear David saying, “If you only hear two things in these six verses, I want you to hear this: The Lord is my shepherd, and I will live in his house forever. Every other line is supporting those two lines, trying to help us understand those two promises and realities. God will protect and provide for me, and he will bring me home with him.”

7. How do the sentences build on one another?

Having identified the most important sentences, now try to discern how the rest of the chapter supports those sentences. Before, we worked with the bigger puzzle pieces. Now, we’re breaking them into smaller pieces and fitting them together. In this step, it’s particularly helpful to stop and study the words many of us overlook completely: for, and, but, if, unless, then, therefore, and so on. We might rush right by these connecting words, but they’re often giving us the answers. They’re telling us how the pieces fit together.

For instance, in Psalm 23, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” How can David live without fear even when he’s surrounded by fearful enemies and dangers? Because (for) he knows God is with him and stays with him, even in the valley. As another example, you can also see how the first several lines clearly build on the first verse: “The Lord is my shepherd.” David uses the next sentences to fill out the metaphor: “The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. . . . He restores. . . . He leads. . . . He comforts — like a shepherd.”

8. What questions do I still have?

Lastly, Adler encourages us to ask what problems the author didn’t solve. When it comes to merely human authors, they might not succeed in addressing the question or tension they set out to address (or they might create whole new problems in the process). The word of God, however, is perfect. “It shall not return to me empty,” God says, “but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). So, these words are never inadequate or problematic.

That doesn’t mean we won’t have questions. We’ll have lots of questions. For instance, in Psalm 23, it’s one thing to know that God is near even when he feels far, that he’ll protect us even when it seems like he won’t, but why does God allow us to walk in the valley at all? Why might he let us wander into brown pastures and raging waters? Why does he sometimes let us feel hungry and deprived and abandoned? Why do we ever need to feel need?

There are plenty of good answers to those questions (and they’re all in the Bible), but those weren’t the questions David was focused on in this particular psalm. Part of good reading, though, is learning to ask those questions and then patiently looking for answers (maybe over years). Fortunately, when it comes to this book, God can handle even our deepest, hardest ones. He’s never left without an answer.

How to Hear God

These aren’t the last questions we ask about a chapter or passage in the Bible — we need to press through and ask about what this means today, what God wants us to feel and do in the twenty-first century. But they should be the first kinds of questions we ask.

If we try to make the Bible meet our immediate needs or make sense of our day before trying to understand the Bible on its terms and in its day, then we’ll inevitably twist and distort what it says. We’ll try to make it say things it doesn’t. But if we’re willing to slow down and listen — to recognize its real meaning — then we’ll get to hear God speak, with authority and wisdom and love, into everything we need and face today.

The little years of parenting are a wonderful and sometimes unbearable wilderness.

Nighttime can be a series of uncivil wars — getting children fed and bathed (and sometimes re-bathed), then getting them into the right bed, at the right time, with the right bedtime story or song (only after finding that beloved stuffie), then keeping them in that bed until they fall asleep (and repeating all of the above when one wakes up at 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00), and then frantically getting as much sleep as you can before the artillery and bloodshed begin again. What’s one of the first questions any of us thinks to ask a parent of babies or toddlers? How are you sleeping? Answers range from “Pretty well” to “What is sleep again?” The nights can be the hardest.

“Jesus can fully sympathize with weakness, with exhaustion, with spiritual warfare.”

And once they’re awake, a new series of predictable but unstoppable ambushes begins. While you’re feeding the baby his breakfast, the two-year-old decides to moisturize her face and arms and clothes with yogurt. While you’re still removing dairy from her hair, your four-year-old loudly announces he’s finished going potty and needs help. While you’re wiping another behind, your two-year-old now decides to remove all the clothes from her dresser. And while you’re refolding a dozen 2Ts, the baby starts screaming because he’s hungry. The days can be the hardest.

The wilderness — primitive, untamed, filled with life, fiercely beautiful — is a fitting picture for these little years with children.

Jesus Braved the Wilderness

As my wife and I wander through these years, I have taken some serious comfort from knowing that Jesus is acquainted with desolate places. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1). Our Savior didn’t save us from a safe and heavenly distance, but stepped into the darkest, scariest corners of our fallen world and faced temptation head-on. He fully sympathizes with weakness, with exhaustion, with spiritual warfare.

While he was in the wilderness, he was tempted by Satan. Unlike Adam and Moses and David and me, Jesus never bit. You can imagine the devil growing increasingly disturbed, desperate, enraged. All the lies that had so easily felled millions before — giants and kings, mothers and soldiers, rich and poor, young and old, prostitutes and Pharisees — now fell flat and soft, like blazing arrows in an ocean.

By the time we’re brought into the skirmish, the forty days have ended, and the devil reaches back for three last frantic shots. He held these three for just this moment, when Jesus was his weakest. And while Jesus was not a father or mother, tired and stressed parents will recognize these lies all too well.

Lie 1: ‘You don’t have what you need.’

When Satan feels his forty-day war with Jesus coming to an end and his feeble chances of victory slipping away, where does he strike? Where do his malicious eyes see vulnerability?

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (Matthew 4:2–3)

Where does the devil take aim first? At the stomach. And why wouldn’t he, since it’s worked from the beginning? “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). You don’t have to be hungry anymore, he whispers. I can give you what you really need. I will give you more than God will. You trusted him, and look where that’s gotten you.

Don’t parents hear the same whispers? We may not face physical hunger (although moms are known to go without meals). But parenting young children will consistently demand more than you think you have to give — physically, yes, but also emotionally and spiritually. You will sometimes lie down at night sincerely convinced you won’t have enough for another day. Parenting can make tomorrow feel like both an inevitability and an impossibility. You might begin to wish you could turn some stones into bread (or at least some dirty clothes into clean laundry).

We know Adam and Eve caved and took the bite, but how did Jesus respond? What did his moments of intense hunger sound like? He answered Satan, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). Notice, he doesn’t say, “I don’t need bread.” He was every bit as human as any stay-at-home mom. But he knew he needed something more than he needed the next meal. He knew his physical and emotional needs were mere shadows of what he needed and had in God.

So, let your needs in the wilderness of parenting — for food, for sleep, for adult conversation, for getting other things done around the house — remind you that you need one thing more than you need anything else. And if you have that — fellowship with an almighty, all-satisfying God in his word — he can sustain you for another long day with kids.

Lie 2: ‘God won’t come through for you.’

When he couldn’t get him to reach for the cupboard, the devil applied vicious pressure to the promises holding Jesus up in the wilderness.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5–6)

What’s the sinister whisper beneath this temptation? Sure, God got you through this, but you haven’t been in any real danger. Think about tomorrow. Deep down, you know he won’t come through for you then. It’s wickedly cunning, and on two levels. First, he belittles what God has done thus far (he just sustained Jesus alone in the wilderness for forty days without food). Second, he concocts imaginary circumstances to arouse unwarranted suspicion (“But what if you threw yourself off of the temple?”).

“Parenting can make tomorrow feel like both an inevitability and an impossibility.”

Even though it failed on Jesus, the devil fabricates the same illusions in our wilderness. He throws shadows over the stunning examples of God’s mercy and care for us, and then turns spotlights onto every conceivable fear about the future. He knows how to make the next 24 hours feel larger and heavier than years, or even decades, of God’s persistent faithfulness. And he knows parents of young children are more vulnerable than most, because the days are so long and unyielding.

As he stands on the temple and looks down, what makes Jesus feel as secure as ever? How does he beat back the siren songs of doubt? He says to Satan, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:7). Notice, Jesus doesn’t reach for a promise this time, but for a command. Promises aren’t our only weapons against temptation. Because he loves us and because he knows how Satan attacks, our heavenly Father also gives us warnings to heed and rules to follow. Jesus knew how Israel had tested God in their wilderness, with grumbling and disobedience (Exodus 17:7), and he knew how that test ended. He wasn’t going to befriend doubt. Even under intense pressure and pain, he trusted God’s good laws.

What commands might help keep you through the wilderness of parenting? “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). Can you, like Jesus, recite them when you need them?

Lie 3: ‘All of this can be yours.’

When Jesus wouldn’t bite on the first two lies, Satan tried to prey on a different kind of hunger.

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8–9)

If he couldn’t lure Jesus away through the pain of need, then he would bait his hook with worldly pleasure. He would hold out what so many fallen people crave: power, authority, glory. He appeals to a pervasive human longing to be seen, admired, and followed. Hearing him talk, it’s hard not to think of social media as a massive, global version of this insidious temptation. They will all look to you. All the eyes will be yours.

He whispers something similar to parents (and perhaps especially to mothers in our day). Look how much you’re giving up. Think about the opportunities waiting out there. No one even notices all you do. All good parents forfeit something of what Satan was offering that day. We invest an extraordinary amount of time, attention, and money, during our strongest and most energetic years, to change diapers and make snacks, to practice letters and reread simple books, to play catch and wipe tears. And Satan knows how to make all of that seem so, so, so small (and just about anything else seem so, so, so great).

So, how does Jesus see through the deception? He responds, “Be gone, Satan!” — we need that kind of aggression for the everyday spiritual battles of parenting — “For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matthew 4:10). He reaches for another command, and (as with all of God’s commands) there’s a compelling reality wrapped inside. Jesus (even Jesus!) refused to seize glory, not only because the law said not to, but because he knew that the law was a script for his greatest possible joy.

God’s commands aren’t arbitrary or irrelevant to our hungers. One by one, they pave a pathway to the feast. The most satisfying lives are firmly anchored in and pointed at the glory of God. To focus on self, as a Savior or a parent, would be to forfeit everything. Jesus warns us later, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:25–26). Whoever loses his life for my sake — Christian parenting often feels like that kind of sacrifice, and it should. That is, if we want to find and experience life.

Whether you’re in a wilderness now or see one coming in the distance, arm yourself against temptation. Commit the words you need to memory, so that you can hear them even when you don’t have the strength or quiet to read them. Get as close as you can to the Son who has gone before you, and prevailed for you, and now walks with you. And then trust him for what you and your kids need tomorrow.

When did you first become acquainted with your finitude?

To some, that may seem like a funny question. When was I not acquainted with finitude? For as long as you remember, you’ve been confronted with the limits you face in the mirror. Sometimes, it may even feel like the mirror has come to life and follows you, carrying your flaws and failures wherever you go. There’s a friend who sticks closer than a brother, and finitude draws closer still.

Where shall I go from my limits?     Or where shall I flee from my weakness?If I work diligently into the night, you are there!     If I wake early before the others, you are there!If I give all I have, and do all I can, and make every possible effort,     even there you find me.

Finitude, of course, touches a dozen different nerves. You may get tired more quickly than others, and end most days worrying about what didn’t get done. You may have a hard time falling asleep, or staying asleep. Or if there’s an opportunity to get sick, your body seems to seize it. Maybe you’ve battled chronic illness or persistent pain over years or decades. Or you’re called to some difficult relationship that always seems to demand more than you can give. It’s part of the mystery and brilliance of humanity — these creatures that can harness electricity, transplant a heart, and visit the moon, and yet still need naps and sick days.

Whatever limits you, you can probably walk outside and see something of yourself in those tiny green blades beneath your feet:

As for man, his days are like grass;     he flourishes like a flower of the field;for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,     and its place knows it no more. (Psalm 103:15–16)

If you follow this grassy trail through Scripture, you realize that our finitude isn’t the accident it often seems to be (or at least feels like in the moment). If you can believe it, it’s actually a feature.

“Humans are finite to maximize, not minimize, what humans are made to be and do.”

Notice, even before the fall (before our need for redemption), God made us unavoidably limited. And now after the fall, he uses our finitude to draw us back to him. From the beginning, humans are finite to maximize, not minimize, what humans are made to be and do. To be fully human requires feeling and embracing the limits of being human. Even glorified humans living with God in the new heavens and new earth will still be finite — free from sin and pain and sorrow, but not without the limits of a body.

We know our finiteness is intentional and purposeful, because God brings it up again and again in the Bible. As he does, he often reaches for grass (which, remember, he himself sovereignly sketched and planted).

All flesh is grass,     and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.The grass withers, the flower fades     when the breath of the Lord blows on it;     surely the people are grass. (Isaiah 40:6–7)

As I write, our yard’s been without rain for several weeks. Despite some real (modest) effort, I’m watching the withering in real time the brief and fragile life of my poor lawn. And I’m learning about myself. All flesh is grass, even mine, and my short spring and summer will soon fall into winter.

But grass isn’t the only window we have into finitude. Even in Psalm 103, God gives us another metaphor for our limitations: “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). Man was formed from dust, and we must all return to dust, and in between, we are small, brief, and brittle, like dust. Dust from dust to dust.

By the sweat of your face     you shall eat bread,till you return to the ground,     for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,     and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19; see Ecclesiastes 3:20)

Like grass, like dust, like a single drip of water: “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (Isaiah 40:15). We were meant to feel this way, like a 5-foot 9-inch blade of grass, like a 195-pound shadow. If you feel the discomfort of finitude, you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. You’re human.

Prayers of Finitude

The more I walk through the field of Psalm 103 in particular — “As for man, his days are like grass” — the more I realize that finitude weaves its way through the whole psalm. These have been some of my favorite verses to pray in all the Bible:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and all that is within me,     bless his holy name!Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and forget not all his benefits,who forgives all your iniquity,     who heals all your diseases,who redeems your life from the pit,     who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,who satisfies you with good     so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1–5)

I’ve long loved these verses for rehearsing the height and width and depth of God’s power and love, but I’ve recently learned to appreciate them even more for being prayers of vulnerability and finitude. These are the prayers of people acquainted with sickness (“who heals all your diseases”), of people in desperate situations (“who redeems your life from the pit”), of people wrestling with weakness (who renews your youth), of people weighed down by sin (“who forgives all your iniquity”), and in the next verse, of people who’ve been wronged and wounded (who “works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed”).

“Finitude exists to lead us to Infinitude.”

In just a handful of lines, we can each find someone who relates to our finitude. We can find a cry for whatever fragile moments we experience. We also find a God ready to meet and bless us in our particular limits and weaknesses.

Where Finitude Takes Us

If we let it, finitude really will help us live happier, more fully human lives, but only if we see through the grass, the dust, the shadow, the drip. Follow Psalm 103 through the field: “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But . . .” Now we’ll learn where the good path of finitude finally leads. All of our weakness, sickness, frustration, disappointment has been leading us to and through this sentence:

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,     and his righteousness to children’s children,to those who keep his covenant     and remember to do his commandments.The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,     and his kingdom rules over all. (Psalm 103:17–19)

Finitude exists to lead us to Infinitude. God never grows weak or tired. He never needs help. He never sins. He never feels stuck or desperate. He never needs to sleep in or take a nap. Unlike us, he’s not like grass. If all the nations are a drop in the bucket, his kingdom is an ocean.

So, as we come up against our limits again and again, when we feel our dust-ness more acutely again today, or tomorrow, or sometime next year, we’re meant to see and feel his limitlessness. There’s no ceiling to his ability, no reins on his power, no vulnerability in his plan, no exhausting his mercy. The grassiness of our short, complicated, confusing, often discouraging lives should lead us to his iron throne of love. Every limit and weakness that sets us apart from God can help us savor more of him.

He Knows Our Frame

Being himself infinite, you might think God would have a hard time relating to finite creatures like us, but he doesn’t. In his infinitude, he finds the heart to father the weak and flawed, to love us as if we were his own children. He loves us more than an earthly father could (Luke 11:13).

As a father shows compassion to his children,     so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.For he knows our frame;     he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13–14)

We know our frame, and we grumble and despair. God knows our frame (even more than we know ourselves), and yet instead of complaining about us or rejecting us, he draws close to strengthen and help us. In Christ, his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). He approaches our frailty with the heart of a devoted father, not of a ruthless manager. If we fear and follow him, the limits we’re tempted to despise about ourselves stir and inflame the coals of his compassion.

And he not only knows our frame, but sent his Son to bear our frame. Our God is the only God ever conceived who can sympathize with finitude. Jesus lived a short, physically demanding, relationally trying, temptation-battling life. He slept and got sick. He even died. And then he rose to give your grass-like life a throne-like weight and glory.

So, if you feel a little like grass, let those sharp green blades point you up and away from your frustrations and insecurities to the God who knows your finitude, planned your finitude, lived your finitude, and now redeems your finitude.

If I had to do what Bilbo Baggins did that day, I have wondered if I’d have had the strength and courage to do it. And I’m not talking about the fire-breathing dragon, or the gigantic, bloodthirsty spiders, or the caves filled with goblins. The demise of Smaug, it turns out, wasn’t the end (or even the peak) of Bilbo’s courage. No, the greatest challenge set before him would not make him confront an enemy, but a friend.

As Bilbo and his company of dwarves recover the lost and buried treasure from the fallen dragon, their leader, Thorin, will not rest until he finds one jewel in particular, the King’s jewel, the Arkenstone. As the hunt stretches over days, the mountain gives birth to the second, more dangerous threat.

Bilbo did not reckon with the power that gold has upon which a dragon has long brooded, nor with dwarfish hearts. Long hours in the past days Thorin had spent in the treasury, and the lust of it was heavy on him. Though he had hunted chiefly for the Arkenstone, yet he had an eye for many another wonderful thing that was lying there. (The Hobbit, 265)

This lust hardened Thorin’s heart and began to poison his mind. He soon refuses to deal with the elves and men (his potential allies) at his doorstep and foolishly lays the kindling for a great war. The hobbit senses the fierceness and perilousness of this greed, and so he takes a quietly brave step. He risks his friendship (and his life) to deliver the object of Thorin’s lust (which Bilbo had found and concealed) to the allies the dwarf was now treating as enemies. He sneaks from the camp and goes to the elves and men as they ready for war.

“This is the Arkenstone of Thrain,” said Bilbo, “the Heart of the Mountain; and it is also the heart of Thorin. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining.” Then Bilbo, not without a shudder, not without a glance of longing, handed the marvelous stone to Bard. (273)

Bilbo’s most courageous act wasn’t creeping down into the dragon’s lair, but walking off alone to incense (and perhaps save) a friend who had gone astray. It wasn’t the big, scary enemy he had prepared for over miles and miles, but the sudden need that emerged in his own camp.

Benevolent Betrayal

Bilbo’s quiet midnight deed of bravery didn’t avert war altogether — goblins and wolves descended on the mountain shortly after, uniting dwarf, elf, man, and wizard. Nor did his actions go over smoothly with Thorin, who unraveled in rage and cast him out of the camp, warning him with violence to never show his face again.

As the Battle of the Five Armies comes to an end, though, and the eagles withdraw (evil having been soundly defeated again), Thorin lies seriously, fatally wounded. Before he dies, he calls for the hobbit.

There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. (290)

Bilbo had largely missed the great war, quickly vanishing behind his ring and then being knocked unconscious by a random, falling rock. With his parting words, Thorin wasn’t talking about fighting goblins and wolves; he was talking about a stone — about a benevolent betrayal. At the doorstep of death, he could now see just how free the hobbit was from the dwarf’s blinding lusts, and that he wisely prized what he could enjoy with others over anything he could have alone. After slaying his share of goblins and wolves, Thorin saw the wisdom and courage in a friend’s correction.

Yes, there may have been “more” at stake for Bilbo — dwarves and goblins and the fate of Middle Earth — but the lesson holds. Often the biggest, most dangerous dragons are the ones closer to home. The more unlikely courage is the courage to lovingly confront sin in those we love.

Wounds That Heal

Where do we see this kind of courageous confrontation in Scripture? We have striking examples of bold and loving correction — the apostle Paul confronting Peter, Nathan confronting King David, Jesus confronting his disciples. As I watched Bilbo hand over Thorin’s heart to the other side, though, my mind wandered to the apostle Paul’s second letter to a church whom he loved.

Despite his complicated and painful history with Corinth, we know Paul loved the believers there intensely. He says of them, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). As he watched some fall away from Christ, though, that intense love provoked an acute concern. Next verse: “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” This fear led him to write a more severe letter of rebuke and warning (that we do not have). This was their Arkenstone moment. Later he says of that lost letter,

Even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it — though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. (2 Corinthians 7:8–9)

“Whom do you love enough to confront when necessary, even if it pains them?”

The letter clearly hurt to read. Almost all correction does, at least at first. Paul’s willingness to wound them, however, was not from a desire to harm them, but from a desire to heal them. “I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you” (2 Corinthians 2:4). Who loves you like that? Whom do you love enough to confront when necessary, even if it pains them?

Food and Cheer and Song

While some were grieved into repenting by Paul’s letter, the last four chapters of 2 Corinthians are a hard word for those who continued to reject and rebel against his message and ministry. He has unusually harsh words for those who won’t repent of their quarreling, jealousy, anger, and gossip:

I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them. (2 Corinthians 12:20; 13:2)

Those who won’t turn from their sin will face discipline. A few verses later, he issues an even stronger warning:

I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down. (2 Corinthians 13:10)

I don’t want to be severe, he says, but I will if I must. Because I love you, and want what’s best for you, I won’t tolerate sin in you. I’ll risk relational friction, and even separation, to rescue you from the fierce bonds of sin. What struck me recently, though, (and what echoes some of Thorin’s last words) are the very next verses:

Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. (2 Corinthians 13:11–13)

In other words, the purpose of all this severity is the felicity of fellowship — joy, restoration, comfort, unity, peace. Or in the kingly dwarf’s words, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” Food and cheer and song represent countless things in life we enjoy together. The rewards of courageous confrontation, then, are the table of faith-filled fellowship, the laughter of serious joy, the glory of Christ-exalting worship.

The Greater Commendation

Now we can appreciate why Bilbo’s greatest courage was in carrying that rock and confronting a friend. Tolkien certainly seemed to think so, anyway. As Bilbo left the Arkenstone and began the long midnight walk back, not knowing yet whether he would lose his head for what he’d just done, “an old man, wrapped in a dark cloak” rose from his tent and stopped the hobbit.

“Well done! Mr. Baggins!” he said, clapping Bilbo on the back. “There is always more about you than anyone expects!” It was Gandalf. (274)

It’s at this point of the story — before the stubborn lust of Thorin, and not before the devastating fires of Smaug — where the hobbit receives his commendation.

Maybe God will call you to brave mountains and defy dragons in your lifetime. But he’ll almost certainly call you to give away an Arkenstone or two along the way — to boldly confront someone you love, to be willing to have hard, painful conversations behind the scenes, to call a wandering friend back into the joys of food and cheer and song again.

So, my fellow hobbit, is there a Thorin in your life right now who’s in grave need of your courage?

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which — if you saw it now — you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. —C.S. Lewis

When I’ve read or heard these words over the years, I’ve typically thought of strangers. “It’s a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses” — standing at the bus stop, waiting in line at the grocery store, walking by on the street (all the people I’m tempted to see but never notice). We’re surrounded by immortal souls, all the time — but we’re often tempted to treat them like houseplants. Like nice houseplants, beautiful even, but not like humans — not like eternal souls who will stand before the living God and be ushered into a perpetual, untouchable paradise or a terrifying home of never-ending torment.

Wake up! Lewis says. You’ve never met a mere mortal. Those strangers walking by are not houseplants; they’re wonders wrapped in flesh and blood and need. That’s a good application. Every “random” person you encounter is an eternal marvel — a miracle in the making, or a nightmare, an immortal life worthy of your attention, concern, respect, love.

The quote took on even more meaning, though, when I realized that Lewis doesn’t limit the point to strangers.

No Ordinary Spouses

Keep reading, and the spectacular reality comes uncomfortably close to home:

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another — all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. (The Weight of Glory, 45–46)

“All friendships, all loves . . .” he says. “It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry . . . immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” Eternal miracles or nightmares. What dawned on me is that I’m not only tempted to overlook the spiritual potential and destiny of strangers; I’m tempted to do so even with my closest relationships — my friends, my family, my bride, my kids.

Sometimes it’s the people we know the best that we most struggle to see in the light of spiritual reality. They’re almost too familiar, too predictable — too, well, ordinary. But there are no ordinary friends. There are no ordinary classmates or roommates. There are no ordinary students or teachers. There are no ordinary boyfriends or girlfriends, husbands or wives. It is a serious thing to live beside immortals.

Miracles in the Making

Where would Lewis get an idea like everlasting splendors? From verses like Romans 8:16–17:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

If the Spirit dwells in you, by faith, then you are a child of God. And if you’re a child of God, you will be glorified with God. Have you realized that? You will be like him. God will glorify “ordinary” people like you and me — to the glory of God.

“Sometimes it’s the people we know the best that we most struggle to see in the light of spiritual reality.”

Next verses, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for —” For what? For the appearing of Christ? For the new heavens and new earth? That’s not what Paul mentions here. “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18–19). The creation wants to see us — what we will become. Are you hearing Lewis yet? And we won’t be God-like splendors for mere centuries or millennia, but forever. “I give them eternal life,” Jesus says, “and they will never perish” (John 10:28).

We are miracles in the making. The oceans, mountains, and stars are lined up outside to get a glimpse of what we’ll become. If you love and follow Jesus, that’s true of you. And here’s the critical turn that Lewis takes: if the dull, uninteresting, ordinary persons you live with (or work with, or coach soccer with, or go to church with) love and follow Jesus, it’ll be true of them too. If you could see what they will be in 150 years, you would see them differently. You would treat them differently. Wouldn’t you?

Nightmares in the Making

Lewis didn’t only say everlasting splendors, though — everlasting splendors or immortal horrors, future miracles or nightmares. Have you reckoned recently with the never-ending destiny of those in your life who will not love Jesus?

For as little as we might think about the blinding glory coming to those who believe, we might think even less about the awful terror awaiting those who don’t. “As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars” — that is, those who won’t bow and follow Jesus — “their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). One purpose of the vivid imagination and visions of Revelation is to make the depths of hell feel more real. They force us to imagine real people in fire and sulfur and torture, because people we know will really suffer like that, and worse, forever.

Even among those who currently profess faith, we can’t take their future splendor for granted. Hebrews 3:12–13 warns us, “Take care, brothers” — he’s writing to the church, to those who claim to love Jesus now —

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Part of being awake to one another’s immortality is to remember that any of us could be deceived and hardened and destroyed by sin. And if we let sin have its way in us, it will mutilate us. It will make us hideous — “a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.” If we could see what sin does to a person — for now, on the inside, but one day, for all to see — we would pursue and exhort one another more than we do. We’d exhort one another every day.

How to Love Immortals

The truth is that Lewis exposes us. We often live and work and study and play and date functionally oblivious to both heaven and hell — as if we didn’t know that everyone we meet, everyone we love, will spend eternity in one or the other. But there’s no “spiritual Midwest” lying out there between paradise and agony, between the everlasting splendors and the immortal horrors — just heaven and hell, forever.

So, what might all of this mean for our closest relationships? What might this mean for a home, like mine, with a wife and three small kids? First, and perhaps most humbling, it reminds us to pray. Their immortality reminds us how painfully little we control in our relationships. All the things we want most for our spouse, our children, our extended family and friends are things God must do. That doesn’t mean, as we often assume, that there’s nothing we can do. There’s just nothing we can do without God.

Having first prayed, though, what else can we do? We could use more of our interactions to remind loved ones of their immortality. For those who do not yet believe in Jesus, these will likely be unnatural and awkward conversations. How they feel about the conversation doesn’t change the truth. One day soon, they will be an everlasting splendor or an immortal horror. Immortality is worth an enormous amount of awkwardness and friction.

“Christians who sense the reality and urgency of eternity don’t tolerate patterns of sinfulness in one another.”

Even those who do believe in Jesus, though, still need regular, sometimes forceful reminders of their immortality. “Exhort one another every day.” Christians who sense the reality and urgency of eternity don’t tolerate patterns of sinfulness in one another. The love of Christ controls them, so they speak up when others wouldn’t. They seek the sweet and lasting fruit of some relational discomfort. They’re also often unusually faithful encouragers. They know when to warn the wayward, and they know when to lift and strengthen and focus the weary. Every everlasting splendor is the product of consistent, meaningful encouragement.

Perhaps the simplest way, then, to apply the prospect of these two mouth-stopping eternities — future miracles and future nightmares — would be to seek to be (and stay) uncomfortably Christian. Modern life, at least in America, resists this kind of Godwardness. We quietly agree to keep our conversations to what we can see and hear and touch, but everything we can now see and hear and touch will pass away. And when it does, you and everyone you know will become the wonder or horror you will forever be.

When I applied for seminary, I had the naive notion that I would graduate (after just four years) having essentially mastered the Bible. I knew, of course, that I would keep reading it for the rest of my life, even daily, but I figured by then I would be brushing up on what I’d already seen, not hiking up the mountain anymore.

Less than a week into my first semester, that naive notion mercifully crashed, took on water, and drowned. And from its grave, a new hunger emerged, a happy realization that I would never exhaust this book, that if I kept reading, I would see more year by year, not less. Not only could I not master this book in four years, but I came to see that I couldn’t in forty years — or four hundred, for that matter, if God gave me centuries. No, my time in seminary was a serious education in how to be gladly mastered by the Book, ready to be awakened, chastened, exhorted, and thrilled by it for as long as I live.

The iceberg on which my naivete sweetly crashed and sank was one of the happiest men I’ve ever met, a pastor who has served for decades, and devoted many of those years to teaching naive men like me to study, live, and teach the word of God. Now a decade removed from seminary, I firmly believe that nothing I learned was more valuable than witnessing, week after week, a humble, joyful, wide-eyed Tom Steller open the Bible with us.

That Kind of Happy

By the time I started seminary, I had memorized Psalm 1:1–2, but meeting Pastor Tom brought two of the words in particular into fuller, more tangible life: blessed and delight.

Blessed is the man     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,nor stands in the way of sinners,     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;but his delight is in the law of the Lord,     and on his law he meditates day and night.

Walking through Scripture with Pastor Tom, verse by verse, even phrase by phrase, was like tasting honey for the first time. When King David says that the rules of the Lord are “sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb,” we know that honey is sweet, even if we’ve never had any. But actually tasting honey for ourselves makes a verse like Psalm 19:10 really sing. That’s what happened as I watched Tom Steller savor Ephesians. He was (and is!) the blessed man, and his delight in the word was nearly tangible. He’s that kind of happy.

“He treasured what he saw far more than how he might be seen.”

Who knows how many times he had been through Ephesians in his life? And this wasn’t even his first time teaching the book. Yet he came to class expectant, on the edge of his seat, like a five-year-old just before the ice cream comes. You left class wanting to read your Bible more because you wanted to see more of what he saw, to feel what he felt, to live and pastor like he did.

That Kind of Humble

Over time, digging into chapter after chapter with Tom, we slowly uncovered the quiet secret to his joy in Bible reading: humility. Even after reading these verses for years, studying these verses for years, even teaching these verses for years, he came to class to learn — to see what he had not seen (or to correct what he thought he had seen). Don’t be mistaken, he had deep, durable convictions, but he held those convictions with an equally deep and durable humility.

No verse was too familiar. No question seemed threatening. No alternative translation or interpretation was discarded too quickly. In his fifties, he took as much or even more joy in the insights a twentysomething stumbled upon. He wanted to see everything there was to see in these chapters, and he didn’t care how he saw it or who saw it first, whether a fellow pastor or professor, one of his students, or a second grader. He treasured what he saw far more than how he might be seen.

In this rare freedom from pride, he modeled what John Piper says about supernatural, soul-stirring Bible reading:

When the Spirit works in the reading of Scripture, we are humbled, and Christ is exalted. Our old preference for self-exaltation is replaced with a passion for Christ-exaltation. This new passion is the key that throws open a thousand windows in Scripture to let in the brightness of God’s glory. (Reading the Bible Supernaturally, 248)

That’s what it was like in Tom’s classroom, flooded with light. Each week, more windows appeared, opening up some fresh and vivid view of God. Because he never assumed he’d seen it all, even in his favorite chapters and verses, he saw more than most could. And then more again the next day.

The Unblessed Man

Providentially, I met a second pastor during that first week of seminary, a retired pastor who served at the food shelf where I worked. While he was kind and generous, he and Tom were dramatically different pastors (and Christians). Getting to know them, I learned that their many and varied differences had their root in one underlying divergence.

“You left class wanting to read your Bible more because you wanted to see more of what he saw.”

One day at the food shelf, after the staff finished reading our daily chapter of the Bible together, I was talking to the retired pastor about something we read that morning. At some point in the conversation, I asked what Bible reading looked like for him at this stage of his life, imagining that retirement might afford even more time to slow down, meditate, and enjoy Scripture. I’ll never forget what he said next (and where I was sitting when he said it):

Oh, I don’t read the Bible much anymore, just the couple days I’m here at the food shelf. I’ve read it all many times before. Now that I’m retired, I can focus on other things.

Here was a man who had devoted his vocational life to Christian ministry, and yet the Bible had grown old, unappealing, even unnecessary. God himself has spoken in ink and paper and wonder, and yet somehow he’d seen enough.

While Pastor Tom woke up, day after day, to new and wider windows, this man pulled the shades. If Tom’s bright eyes were a towering lighthouse of hope and reward for an aspiring pastor, this man’s dim eyes were an ominous cloud of warning.

Minutes from the Mountains

The retired pastor incriminated himself, exposing a shameful, arrogant ignorance — and yet he’s not the stranger I wish he were. We may not say out loud what he was so willing to say, but we betray ourselves whenever we race past or rush through this book. Satan stands beside all our windows, distracting us, interrupting us, taunting us, entertaining us. His warped lenses make the oceans of Scripture look like thimbles and the lions like kittens. He turns awe-inspiring mountains into molehills.

But even at his murderous best, Satan’s fighting uphill. The brilliance and beauty of the Bible shines through even the heaviest blackout curtains. If we slow down enough to see what’s there, with the Spirit’s help, we’re just minutes from sunlight and grandeur, from reality and vitality, from hope and joy. Wisdom promises this kind of Bible reading to those who come humble and hungry:

If you call out for insight     and raise your voice for understanding,if you seek it like silver     and search for it as for hidden treasures,then you will understand the fear of the Lord     and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:3–5)

I hope you have a Tom Steller somewhere in your life, someone who throws open windows for you in Bible reading, someone who won’t stop looking and asking and listening, someone who helps you over tall hurdles, out of deep ruts, through thick forests, someone who loves watching you see more — and seeing more through you.

And I hope you, like me, get to be his kind of happy.