While waiting for my coffee to brew this morning, my gaze rested on an abstract painting that my son created last week and hung proudly on our kitchen’s wall of fame. As I stared at the pleasing colors and the unusual shapes– at both the positive and negative spaces they created that somehow harmoniously balanced each other– a whisper of a new idea started to form in the hazy outskirts of my mind and travel down to my waiting heartstrings…

Suddenly, a seeming non-sequitur of a memory projected like a movie in front of my tired, pre-caffeinated eyes:

It’s 1986.

A wood-paneled station wagon pulls up to a yellow stucco house. A little girl, hiding inside the house behind a drapery, watches as a middle-aged woman steps out of her station wagon and approaches the front door. The silently crouching girl knows that this kind woman, a neighbor, has come to offer a ride to a birthday party at a miniature golf course way across town. This little girl does. Not. Want. To. Go.

The little girl’s mother answers the door. She has been expecting this woman. Carpool plans, clearly arranged in advance, are now underway.

The little girl’s mother calls out, “Jessie! Time to go to Kate and Wallace’s birthday party! Their mother, Mrs. Stark, is here to take you!”

Silence.

Awkward moments follow as the two women spot the little lurker’s socks poking out from behind the window treatments. Try as they might, they cannot coax the child out of hiding. She doubles down in quiet, concealed resistance. She is incredulous within her private chamber of curtains. Why would anyone want to leave the familiar peace of home and be thrown into sticky, screaming, shoving chaos? she wonders only to herself. The notion is simply preposterous to her young mind. How could these seemingly well-meaning adults subject anyone to such a peculiar form of forced-fun-torture? No, she is not going. She pulls in her socked feet as she hugs her knees more tightly to her chest.

“Oh, is there a birthday party?” 

All eyes quickly turn to another young girl who has entered the foyer. It’s the hiding girl’s older sister. She is bright-eyed and eager. She has the same alert and energetic presence of a puppy anticipating a thrown ball.

“Yes…” says her mother wearily, unsure how to solve the growing inconvenience that her children are creating for this poor carpool-volunteering-friend whose car is still running out front with her birthday children inside, waiting to attend their own party.

“I’ll go!” chirps the freckled-faced older sister, blue eyes twinkling with new excitement.

The two mothers look at each other– one is good-naturedly amused while the other seems exhausted and bewildered.

“No, Annie,” replies her mother. “This party is for 5 year old girls and 7 year old boys. You are 8 and a half.” The older sister blinks blankly back, unfazed by this information.

“Also, sweetie…this is for Jessie’s little friend. You were… not invited.” Again, the older sister does not see the issue. Her steady, undeterred gaze communicates, “And the problem is…?”

In the end, a very patient Mrs. Stark gets back into her car with one of the Palmore sisters. It’s just not the one anyone was expecting. As the station wagon pulls away, the jubilant older sister waves enthusiastically from the car window. The little sister, still curled up behind the drapes, feels her shoulders relax as a joyful relief floods her tiny system.

As I returned to the reality of my waiting coffee cup, I pondered this Stark birthday debacle from ages past. It always amazes me into a chuckle to recall what different children my sister and I were. She craved adventure, outward stimulation, and constant interaction as strongly as I craved peaceful time at home, snuggling my stuffed animals, climbing the tree in our backyard, and maybe doing a craft or two with my mom. Her zest for life burned as brightly as the sun, and my subdued shyness was more of the gentle moon beam variety. Night and day. Or “lion and lamb” as our parents often laughed and called us. You can guess who was who.

But this morning, as I honed in on the opposing forces of the abstract painting, the new idea-turned-feeling I experienced can best be described… as gratitude.

And that gratitude hit me like a growing revelation this morning with several layers to unpack.

The people in our lives (in our families, in our places of work, in our church congregations and neighborhoods…) who are the most different from us are also often our biggest blessings, whether we readily recognize it or not. Sometimes it is all too easy to focus on how tricky it can be to understand others who are wired so differently than we are. But this morning, a swirling compilation of artwork and memory and gratitude finally took shape to show me this:

Just as a bold object in a painting takes up specific space on its canvas, it simultaneously carves out the negative space that can be equally compelling. The diverse elements and opposing colors in a piece of artwork balance each other, create room for each other, and ultimately magnify and more clearly define the strengths of each other as complements. The result is a complex harmony that is full and beautiful. What I realized slowly this morning was that the same is true within human relationships.

My sister stepped forward naturally in her own exuberant strength that day to stand in for me when I was flailing in my own puddle of weakness, and my hiding in the shadows actually allowed her to enjoy the light of a new opportunity. As Annie and I grew older, we continued to grow and change, but we almost always landed on opposite sides of the spectrum from each other. We were not opponents, I now realize, but we were each other’s complement.

As we moved into our teenage years, unpredictably, I became the friendlier one with strangers, always stopping on walks to chat with neighbors, while Annie blazed ahead as the fastest speed-walker you’ve ever seen.

As she became more serious about her career in the corporate world, I became more creative and playful in mine as a teacher.

Whenever one of us was facing stress or hardship, we became a soft place for the other to land.

When in our twenties we lost all of our beloved grandparents, Annie was the pillar of strength while I was a blubbering mess.

Years later in our thirties when we lost a beloved parent, she fell more deeply into her emotional grief while I discovered unexpected peace, perhaps borrowing strength from the model Annie had provided for me over so many years.

We have yin-and-yanged our way through life for 40 years now in innumerably varying ways, and the older I get, the more respect I have for our differences. Indeed, I feel grateful for the balance they have provided us. I know that neither of us would be the people we are today without each other. And of course I feel especially grateful for the one mainstain and connective thread in our relationship throughout: Laughter. We have always, always been able to laugh together.

As I took my coffee to-go this morning for the gorgeous drive in to First Pres, I felt a further sense of appreciation. Here we are now on the verge of spring– which will surely usher in the glorious weather that will allow for friends and families to recommune with each other outside in fellowship– and I feel an eager anticipation for all sorts of reunions. Afterall, when we are in relationships with people who are different from us, our wide-ranging gifts, arrays of flaws, diverse personalities, varying ages, and all other differences combine like distinctive elements of a painting, a magnificent masterpiece designed by God’s infinite creativity. As Romans 12:4-5 asserts, we are better together than we are alone. We fortify each other naturally. And now as I finish writing this rambling reflection, having finished perhaps one too many cups of coffee,  having just reached out to a plethora of young parents to invite them back into the fold this spring at FPC, and having just texted my sister that I love her, I feel deeply grateful all over again.

Dear God, thank you for the blessings of other people. As our pastors say, Your greatest gifts to us are wrapped in flesh and bone. Thank you for the diversity of Your creation and the rich beauty You create through our varied relationships. Help us to delight in each other’s differences, to rejoice as a reunited community again soon, and to give thanks for the masterpiece You create in artfully intertwining our lives with others in unexpected, often mystifying, and deeply enriching ways. Amen.

A stream of consciousness while washing dishes:

Staring out the window at the dark outline of treetops, black against a deeply purple sky. It appears to be later in the evening than it is. I try to guess the time, resisting the urge to turn around and confirm with the oven’s small digital clock display behind me.

My daughter grabs my legs. She has snuck up silently to scare me. She laughs. I breathe. She is supposed to be upstairs getting ready for bed. I decide I have just enough patience left to be a good sport for at least a minute or two while I finish the dishes. I start singing an old Motown song as she hangs on my legs. Instantly, I feel happier. This is actually a much more fun way to complete the daily dreaded task of dishes. Wonder (hope): will this be the type of memory my little girl will recall when she’s in her old age?

Suddenly a vivid memory of my college friend comes to mind. It’s a snapshot of her quietly washing dishes like a real, capable adult when a gaggle of us visited her years (decades?) ago. There was laughter and singing all around, but stolidly she stood in front of the sink by herself, dutifully washing each dish with care. Why do I remember that quick, wordless scene? Her neatly manicured fingers brushing the bubbles off a white plate under the water’s steady stream. Wonder if her sons now marvel over her adept skills in the midst of their own chaos. Wonder if they can tell they have the type of mom who has always been a capable adult, even when she was still a teenager. Wonder if my children can tell that I am still trying to figure out how to be an adult, or that I still sometimes associate more with the teenager that I once was… We are all so different, aren’t we?

Now my little Poppy is singing, too. The weight of her pulling against my legs is starting to bother my knee. Try to remember if I have any memories of my parents washing dishes. Did I ever hang on their legs? Lots of memories pop up of my dad cooking pancakes and singing… “I used to cook pancakes for the Queen!” he would exclaim each time, turning up the clock radio under the cabinets, tuned to an oldies station playing Motown songs. I can clearly envision my mom’s back as she tended to the stove, stirring Brunswick stew with the serious concentration of a pioneer woman preparing a meal.

Strangely, however, no moments register of anyone in my childhood home undertaking the mundane task of washing dishes. I start sorting through memories a little more intently now as if I am holding up film negatives to the light. I cannot even recall anyone in my family at the sink…

Full stop.

Cannot remember my childhood sink. At all.

The sink from which I surely retrieved countless glasses of water from ages 4 to 19. Now I cannot even determine where the sink was positioned in our old kitchen. Okay, think I see the corner now where it was located… but can I imagine the faucet or handles? Or see myself or my parents rinsing a bowl to put in the dishwasher? Only through a dimly lit haze. Slowly I start seeing my mom rinsing peanut butter from a rounded knife and bending to place it in the plastic aqua silverware holster of our dishwasher, but recalling this scene took tremendous mental exertion.

My son is now standing next to me, looking puzzled (or amused?) at my far-off trance as the water continues to flow over the remaining dishes. He wants to know all about my train of thought– Vaughan always wants all the details —  and so I tell him every bit as we walk upstairs together with his sister for bedtime. “My brain does that, too,” he confides once we are alone. “I start thinking about one thing, and then it’s kinda like I am somewhere else in my head thinking and remembering.” Maybe we are not all so different, after all.

I go to bed that night pondering this:

A lot of life happens in the small details of our everyday life, both in the physicality of our movement through each day, and also internally within our own minds. Perhaps remembering the minutia or acknowledging our streams of consciousness is not vital to a life well-lived, though I cannot help but marvel over the illumination that occurs when we hover over the seemingly unremarkable aspects of our thoughts and memories. What remains? What can we, with effort, retrieve or unlock or hold up to the light? And what hidden images and emotions are tucked into the deep recesses of our memories just beyond our stockroom of fully formed stories that we recall from our past?

Can you return to your childhood kitchen in your mind? Can you see any of the details that perhaps you haven’t thought of in quite a while? Do any new moments or memories resurface? Do certain recollections, that have no immediately apparent significance, continue to bubble up? What messages can you glean from them when you pause to consider their offerings? And how does one memory or thought lead to the next if you take the time to tune in and track them?

The notion of these unspoken inner-lives we lead has been at the forefront of my own thoughts this week in particular. One of my best friends has been slowly losing her mother to Alzheimer’s for years, and it seems as though the bittersweet release is now within sight. It is awe-inspiring and excruciating to witness. The memories, the words, the richly beautiful life she lived… all slipping away like sand through a sieve. The pain of this slow and staggered loss breaks my heart for my dear friend. And it also reminds me to remember that remembering is a gift (if you’ll forgive the ridiculous redundancy of that sentence). Even if the memories we recall are painful or confounding or dull, there are insights wrapped up inside each of them. Even if our thoughts wander aimlessly, there is still something remarkable about being able to keep ourselves company through our wildly active minds.

I secretly hope that my children are as hopelessly nostalgic as I am. I hope that they will feel connected to these fleeting years we shared under the same roof, beside the same kitchen sink, even when my memory begins to fade and especially when I am gone. After all, our minds and memories, both miraculous gifts from God, have the power to connect us to others through space and time. Years have passed since I have been in the presence of some of the people and places I treasure, yet God grants me access to revisit and delight in them through my thinking of them.

Thank you, God, for the rich soil you grant us in our innermost thoughts and memories. And thank you for the moments when you remind me that I have a role in creating loving memories for my children that may, with hope and grace, counterbalance the painful ones that will inevitably occur along the way. And mostly, please help draw our thoughts back to You, remembering always that You have been with us all along, at work even in the mundane details, and loving us all the while.

Amen.

Anyone who has held a baby knows this much is true:

Cradling a new life alters every single aspect about that moment in time.

We breathe, think, move, and speak differently when a newborn is in our arms. Whether we claim them as our own or are momentarily watching over someone else’s progeny, we innately treat them as the precious, fragile gifts that they are. It is part of the reason why babies are so easy to love: they are utterly needy, and thus call upon the nurturing and protective instincts that lie deep within us.

And perhaps a human’s unrestricted, uncomplicated love for babies is also tied to the notion of temporality. We know that baby-hood does not keep. Infants seem to change and grow from one moment to the next, thus we feel further beckoned to notice and appreciate each detail of their being.

I have been thinking a lot about babies and the transformative love they inspire. Throughout the Christmas season, I kept envisioning Mary holding her newborn, full of wonder and fear, but surely also full of that whole-body attentiveness that a new life activates within its holder. And I thought — maybe for the first time, or maybe just more seriously than ever before — “Wow. That’s not only how God loves us, but how He allowed us to love Him, in the most vulnerable form possible.”

I had to ask myself, “Is that how I love God?”

And then even more convicting still, “Is that how I love other people? As if they were as precious and miraculous as the newborn babies that they once were?”

Sometimes God puts a new thought in my head that I delight in mulling over for days on end. This notion of loving others as if they were babies has been keeping me good company for weeks now.

Suspend disbelief for a moment to imagine this with me:

What if someone placed into your waiting arms an adult you know but in the form of his or her newborn self?

Can you imagine holding, for instance, your own parent when he or she was a baby?

What about your spouse?

What about yourself?

What about a friend or a neighbor or a foe— all transformed for a moment in time into an infant form of themselves for you to hold with all-consuming wonder and care…?

Somehow, imagining the adult people who populate my life in their earliest form has cracked open in my heart a new way of loving them, of seeing them, of cherishing them with the tenderness that comes from recognizing the fragile, temporal, innocent humanity that is beating within them. I love thinking about it.

I must admit here, however, that this is decidedly not how I love others. I am not nearly as gracious or imaginative in my day-to-day loving as that. But what if I took this unusual, mind-bending thought as an instruction and opportunity to grow?

With all the heartache and misunderstanding that exist among human beings, what if we all started looking at each other with compassionate imagination? Would we be able to, if only for a moment, see even our adversaries as vulnerable, loveable beings? What if we really were granted glimpses of each other as newborns— not as worldly manifestations of frustratingly opposing agendas, but instead needy souls that intrinsically crave the same love and security that we once did and that we still do?

In short, what if we sought out the God spark in each other the way we do when we marvel over babies?

As I linger over this train of thought, these words from Betty Smith’s classic novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, keep floating into my mind: “Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”

God, please help me look at the people you put into my life and along my path with a fresh perspective, seeing their lives as precious as they are, as wondrous as if it were the first time I were encountering your creation, and as fleeting as if it were also the last. And help me love you, Lord, as the miraculous gift that You are. Then perhaps any pettiness or cold-heartedness would melt and fall heavily away, like ice shelves from an ancient glacier, so that our time on earth would fill with the radiating glory of Christ-like love.

Amen.

Cold rain drops poured down my sister-in-law’s muddy face, leaving clean tracks behind. “This is miserable!” she exclaimed, half laughing. “I want OUT!”

We were only a quarter of the way into a seventeen-mile bike ride on the Virginia Creeper Trail when the gray sky opened to release its heavy load. Although it had started as a crisp, rather promising morning (with flashes of clear October sunshine breaking through the downy cloud cover, setting the autumnal leaves ablaze), the weather had taken a significant turn for the worse. But what were we to do? We were the stubborn ones, the optimistic ones, the ones who had scoffed at the weather reports and doggedly refused to let the family adventure we had planned for months fall by the wayside. While our original crew of Yanceys had started out as nearly twenty, we had dwindled to half that size with the news of Hurricane Delta’s far-reaching rains. 

So there we were: the self-selected few who smugly smiled when the day began with ideal conditions, and then who soon became the regretful parents with smiles fading as we gazed at the wet backs of our young children pedaling ahead of us on the slippery trail, round drops splashing off their little helmets and trickling down their shivering shoulders. We had a long way to go.

Perhaps the essence of this hapless scene feels familiar. Perhaps you have found yourself in the thick of a foolish escapade before, or, more seriously, in the midst of a waking nightmare. Maybe you are, currently, smack dab in the middle of a season that feels endless, grueling, or inescapable; and maybe you have found yourself searching for an escape route or at least a temporary shelter where you can weather the storm. 

Several memories of this vein now surface in my mind:

…trying moments during the ongoing pandemic when I have felt physically depleted, emotionally discouraged, and more than a little fearful for the well-being of my neighbors.

…helpless, sleepless moments of early motherhood when both of my babies would begin crying at precisely the same moment.

…the complicated dynamics of blending families after marriage, when it seemed challenging to find middle ground between well-meaning though vastly differing sides. 

…the immense pressure I would feel bearing down on my shoulders while studying for an impossibly comprehensive English exam with the midnight fluorescent lights of the library blinking down disapprovingly.

…the twin sensations of panic and despair Steele and I shared as we sat awake all night in hospital chairs, watching doctors tend to our small children who were suffering from various frightening conditions like fractures in her infant skull and second-degree burns covering the majority of his tiny chest…

I shudder now to recall how much I wanted an OUT of those moments. 

Certainly we all can recall finding ourselves in the quagmire of less-than-ideal situations with no end in sight. And I would venture to guess that many of us have experienced that human instinct of wanting “out” in one way or another. 

Left to our own human devices, we can find all sorts of ways to momentarily flee from discomfort and circumnavigate pain. We turn to anger or blame, denial or physical withdrawal, mindless distractions or any number of numbing agents. There are far too many ways for us to slip beneath the surface of our lives and momentarily disconnect. Though as we discover time and again, none of the outs we pursue actually help in lasting, sustaining ways. Blaming only deepens the pain, numbing only delays the inevitable or defers the consequences for later, and quitting merely distances us even further from the present life we are called to live while we are alive.

And we turn to God. We reach for Him in prayer. We plead for His assurance when we do not know how we are going to make it.

Yet in those moments, God does not always grant us that eject or rewind button we so long for, nor does He give us an easy pass. He invites us into something more challenging, oft-times more life-changing, and strangely more life-affirming instead. In those experiences when we most want to coast or quit or sink into self-pity, he calls us instead to engage; to tuck our chins, brace for impact, and Keep. Moving. Forward. No, He does not offer us an “out,” but he does offer us a “through.” 

Back to the muddy trails…

I must admit that when we stopped for a quick break and learned that we were now only half-way through with about eight more miles to go, I started going through a mental rolodex of possible escape options. Could we call one of the family members who had backed out of the trek to come pick us up? Was there a safe space where we could at least dry off and warm up for a bit? Could we just ditch the rented bikes on the side of the trail and explain to the company where they could pretty please pick them up later? None of us actually vocalized these options, but we exchanged knowing glances through the onslaught of rain which communicated clearly enough that at least some of us were thinking the same thing. 

But then– surely in thanks to the Lord above– one of us piped up with, “Okay, team. We’ve got this.” 

And then another younger rider, emboldened by the encouragement, added, “Let’s DO this!”

Finally, even one of the more disgruntled members steeled her gaze and nodded her head resolutely. “Only one way down this mountain,” she said. Then she took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

The trials that God places in our life’s trail, whether trivial or heart-breaking or somewhere in between, always seem to forge the biggest imprint on our lives. It’s in those challenging moments when we choose not to give up hope but to double-down with faithful grit that push us closer to growing into the people God created us to be: people who are awake to the wonders of His world, are engaged with others in meaningful, messy ways, and are fully alive with the strength and capabilities He has given us.

And you know what? When we arrived at the end of that trail hours later, soaked to the bone and covered from head to toe in sooty mud, there were wide, joyful smiles all around. We felt tough, strong, bonded to each other in a new way, and so very grateful. We felt alive.

The “through” can be undeniably brutal, but ultimately life-affirming indeed. God created us to be so much grittier and more resilient than we realize. Moreover, He promises to stick with us as we trudge along whatever trenches we find ourselves in, and He promises that what is waiting for us on the other side is most definitely worth the passage through.

It was within the first hour of the third day of my daughter’s virtual school year…

We had made it through the nervous butterflies and technological glitches that riddled the first day, and we had learned from the multiple user-errors of the second day (like when her soft fingertip mistakenly found the power button, shutting down the computer and all programs mere seconds before class began). I was certain that day three would be smooth sailing. As I set up shop to answer emails in the often overlooked sitting area near our front door that we call “the Welcome Room,” I heard a most un-welcomed hint of sniffles coming from the kitchen nearby. Honestly, I almost ignored it. This was my time. I needed to be productive! I had very little patience left inside my tank. But some little nudge inside prompted me to set my own computer aside and investigate the scene on the other side of the wall. Thank God I did. My poor little girl.

There she was, curled into a ball underneath one of the kitchen chairs, crying silent tears, while her patient 1st grade teacher continued to expound upon mathematic properties to a grid of her young students’ faces on a computer screen. How could the teacher have known that one of her student’s tender hearts had been struck with sudden dread at the mention of an overlooked assignment? How could she have noticed that one of her twenty-two virtual students had quietly slid off the grid and gone into hiding, below the visibility range of the laptop’s camera? Amazingly, her teacher had that sixth sense that I am convinced all elementary teachers must have, and quickly called out, “Poppy? Where did you go, Poppy?” I almost had to laugh at the sheer panic that flashed across my daughter’s face as her thin eyebrows raised, blue eyes widened, and pointer finger raised immediately to her lips with an urgent “SHH!” in my direction. It was almost cinematic. My amused mind started comparing the scene to a prisoner escaping her cell before being spotted by a flood light, or a cartoon Tweety bird tip-toeing away before coming face to face with the sneaky cat.

Perhaps we all know that feeling of wanting desperately to hide and then inevitably being caught or seen or found out. It is the worst. It gives me flutters of anxiety now just thinking about all the similar moments I can recall from my 39 years of life. In keeping with scholarly mishaps, this painful embarrassment comes to mind:

It was the the second half of my first semester studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland…

I had made it through six weeks in my Art History tutorial class without saying One. Single. Word. Not a one. In six weeks! It is hard to believe that is even possible, especially for me who as a student loved engaging in lively class discussion. But this class was entirely different from any I had taken before. First of all, I had never taken a single Art History credit. So there’s that. Secondly, I had unintentionally signed up for an advanced level course, and despite my desperate pleas to the disinterested registrar, I was quite bafflingly not allowed to drop it. Strike two. Thirdly and most significantly, every other student in the class came across to me as legitimate British geniuses, all of whom were casually capable of making the most dazzling cross-references and dizzying analyses in undeniably posh, sophisticated accents. I spent the first quarter of the course attempting to write down every word my brilliant professor and classmates rapidly exchanged. I am surprised my flurry of note-taking did not produce puffs of smoke to waft up from my frantic pencil.

And then…

One day the professor called on me. Just like that. He asked me to get up OUT of my chair, walk to the FRONT of the room, select a SPECIFIC slide of a painting by Fernand Léger, put said slide into an old-fashioned PROJECTOR, and EXPLAIN to the class how Léger utilized the elements of Cubism in said painting. Excuse me, WHAT?!

Shock, terror, and indignation flooded my system. With an immediate face-sweat, hand-tremor, and breath-shortage, I opened my mouth to utter my very first words in front of that class. I can still remember the look of confusion and bemusement on one classmate’s face as she queried, “Oh, she’s an American?!”

These moments of academic panic are surely familiar to many of you. They are the perfect fodder for anxiety nightmares galore, enough to last a lifetime. But far beyond the classroom, this knee-jerk reaction to hide is interesting to me as it stirs up questions about human nature…

Do you ever try to hide? Avert your gaze, silence your voice, or attempt to disappear? Why? When? There are myriad examples that may come to mind: whether in the midst of an awkward social encounter, during a tense work meeting, while waiting in a grocery store line with a crying toddler, when confronted with a probing question, the moment you realize you dropped the ball or are caught in a white lie. The list goes on with too many to catalogue. Can you relate?

What are we trying to accomplish when we freeze, withdraw, or attempt to hide? Is the goal to avoid the pain of appearing foolish? Is it to flee from the shame that we are utterly imperfect? Is it to deny our vulnerability? Or rather to fortify the walls of our prideful façade?

Recently, I listened to a fascinating sermon by Tim Keller called, “False Testimony.” Part of his message focused on Adam and Eve’s instinct to hide after disobeying God, thus establishing one of the earliest human behavioral patterns: failing—> feeling shame —> hiding. But the most powerful conclusion to his sermon is a revisitation of the moment Pilate asks Jesus if he is King. If Jesus answers with the truth, he dies. If he hides, averts his gaze, disappears into half-truths, he lives. And amazingly, at infinite cost to himself and infinite benefit to us, he speaks the truth:

Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” -John 18:37

Jesus pays the ultimate price for us by bravely showing up for us because he delights in us.

Whenever we have that sudden, human, fearful, or prideful inclination to hide, perhaps if we think of His brave and sacrificial truth-telling, we will remember that we already have everything we need. Perhaps then we will feel emboldened to stay put— regardless of the circumstance— stand tall, confess fault, offer a sincere apology when needed, and readily receive the discomfort of losing any momentary approval because we have His everlasting approval.

Because let’s face it: in this ever-changing, unpredictable landscape in which we currently live, we are bound to take an accidental step in the wrong direction at any given moment. Say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, post the wrong thing, agree to the wrong thing, press the wrong thing, forget to complete the wrong thing… There is so much room for error in a world that has never felt less certain. We may now, more than ever, mightily reconnect with that frightened young student we once were who felt the weighty stress of an unpredictable classroom.

Thus, it is of endless comfort to know that God never changes. He is the same today as yesterday as tomorrow. There is no hiding from that truth. And just like that seemingly omniscient 1st grade teacher, God spots us immediately when we try to slip away or avoid our mistakes. He sees us. Like that brilliant professor, He calls on us to step out of the shadows and risk vulnerability. He believes in us. What if we choose to view the flustering moments He offers us in our daily lives as the fertile soil for our spiritual strengthening and character development? Perhaps then we would feel less inclined to curl into a ball to hide and more encouraged to lean into our discomfort with open minds and humble hearts—ready to learn, willing to unfurl, and eager to grow.

Dear God, You call on us to show up, to be truth tellers, to be courageously present even in the midst of all our many, many flaws. Please help us take a deep breath and recenter our focus on You in those moments when we feel weak or embarrassed or inadequate. Please help us remember that we can never hide from You; and in Your ever-present, never-changing love for us, we have every assurance we need.

Amen.