Well, your screen addiction has been profitable to a lot of readers. I feel as though the evangelicals went woke and the conservatives went Christian nationalist, and reading your work reminds me of a bygone generation that was political without being partisan or losing sight of the lost boys or the weird girls. I am working on downsizing my internet time too. Good luck and thanks!
If we Christians have proven anything over the years, it's that we don't like each other very much, we make for a terrible political coalition because we don't want to be identified with the wrong kind of Christian, and if we do score a social or political win together, we don't even wait for the world to point out our differences. We happily do it for them.
We're a bunch of love-making porcupines. We need each other right up until the quills come out.
And that doesn't even include the fact that most Americans who go by the name "Christian" don't believe even the very first tenet of any orthodox creed. And yet they're probably the most legalistic of all, defined as they are by their goodness. Those of us who believe ourselves dependent upon the gracious gift of a redeeming God are abhorrent to the social gospel warriors.
I consider myself a conservative Christian and do not align with any of the varied and loose definitions which would label me a Christian nationalist (but I vote).
Ah yes. The blessings we know about and like. Those funny blessings. Blessings we are initially unaware of but may come to recognize. And those you ordain that at first do not feel like a blessing. Thank you Lord for each one. Thank you Lord for allowing me to notice them afterwards as blessings sent by You particularly for me. May I become more aware of you and your grace and then love others as you would.
‘I like to think that in some sense it’s a gift, but it’s one of those gifts you’d sometimes like to return to sender’.
That stuck with me. Where the lines of gift and curse fall with all our talents highlights that even our strengths are weak. The gifts that you have, in this poem and your writing in general deeply reflect the sender. And for that many are grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!!
Thank you. I like the poem very much. The struggles and the failures are real, and the enemy would provoke us to despair over them. (By the way, I don't think he knows the future, at least not in any detail.) But your poem recognizes that gratitude is the antidote to despair, and your plea for grace and help is just the right prescription to counter his attacks.
I thank the Lord for giving you more media and writing opportunities. I would like to see you spend more time on those and less time on Twitter/X feuds. But maybe that's just me. Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
Your meditation captures something true without overstating it: gratitude can deepen precisely when life feels frayed, and small, steady rituals—snowlight, fruit bowls, a familiar hymn—become anchors rather than escapes. The poem is honest about melancholy without turning it into an aesthetic, and your reflections on screen-driven distraction are sharper for their understatement.
If anything, the piece’s strength is its refusal to offer easy consolations. You name losses directly and still insist that attention to ordinary beauty matters. That’s not sentimentality; it’s discipline.
Well, your screen addiction has been profitable to a lot of readers. I feel as though the evangelicals went woke and the conservatives went Christian nationalist, and reading your work reminds me of a bygone generation that was political without being partisan or losing sight of the lost boys or the weird girls. I am working on downsizing my internet time too. Good luck and thanks!
If we Christians have proven anything over the years, it's that we don't like each other very much, we make for a terrible political coalition because we don't want to be identified with the wrong kind of Christian, and if we do score a social or political win together, we don't even wait for the world to point out our differences. We happily do it for them.
We're a bunch of love-making porcupines. We need each other right up until the quills come out.
And that doesn't even include the fact that most Americans who go by the name "Christian" don't believe even the very first tenet of any orthodox creed. And yet they're probably the most legalistic of all, defined as they are by their goodness. Those of us who believe ourselves dependent upon the gracious gift of a redeeming God are abhorrent to the social gospel warriors.
I consider myself a conservative Christian and do not align with any of the varied and loose definitions which would label me a Christian nationalist (but I vote).
Ah yes. The blessings we know about and like. Those funny blessings. Blessings we are initially unaware of but may come to recognize. And those you ordain that at first do not feel like a blessing. Thank you Lord for each one. Thank you Lord for allowing me to notice them afterwards as blessings sent by You particularly for me. May I become more aware of you and your grace and then love others as you would.
‘I like to think that in some sense it’s a gift, but it’s one of those gifts you’d sometimes like to return to sender’.
That stuck with me. Where the lines of gift and curse fall with all our talents highlights that even our strengths are weak. The gifts that you have, in this poem and your writing in general deeply reflect the sender. And for that many are grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!!
Thank you. I like the poem very much. The struggles and the failures are real, and the enemy would provoke us to despair over them. (By the way, I don't think he knows the future, at least not in any detail.) But your poem recognizes that gratitude is the antidote to despair, and your plea for grace and help is just the right prescription to counter his attacks.
I thank the Lord for giving you more media and writing opportunities. I would like to see you spend more time on those and less time on Twitter/X feuds. But maybe that's just me. Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
Your meditation captures something true without overstating it: gratitude can deepen precisely when life feels frayed, and small, steady rituals—snowlight, fruit bowls, a familiar hymn—become anchors rather than escapes. The poem is honest about melancholy without turning it into an aesthetic, and your reflections on screen-driven distraction are sharper for their understatement.
If anything, the piece’s strength is its refusal to offer easy consolations. You name losses directly and still insist that attention to ordinary beauty matters. That’s not sentimentality; it’s discipline.
Thanks!