You may know that the American author Flannery O'Connor was a sincere and deeply committed Christian. Even though her writings are not classified as religious works, they are saturated with spiritual insight. What you may not know is that in her mid-twenties she was diagnosed with lupus, a devastating disease that attacks the joints and slowly restricts movement. She died young, at the age of thirty-nine.

At one point O'Connor's aunt encouraged her to travel to Lourdes, France, to take a healing bath in the waters of the famous shrine there. O'Connor agreed to go — but only reluctantly. She wrote: "About the Lourdes business, I am going as a pilgrim, not a patient. I am one of those people who could die for his religion easier than I could take a bath for it."

That line makes me smile. But underneath the wit is something worth reflecting on. O'Connor understood that while miracles occasionally happen, they are not among God's promises to us. She would surely have welcomed healing. But she had learned — through years of living with pain and limitation — that faith is about more than receiving. It is about how we carry what we are given.

Paul knew something about this. Writing from prison, he said: "I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content... I can do all things through him who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:11-13) Not a triumphant claim of superhuman endurance — but the hard-won testimony of someone who had discovered that God's grace is sufficient even when the circumstances are not.

The witness of people of faith across the centuries bears this out: even in the midst of our own struggles, there is something quietly restorative about turning outward — about giving, serving, showing up for others. When we get outside of our own pain and focus on something beyond ourselves, our spirits are lifted. Not always dramatically. But enough.

I don't know what you are carrying today. But I pray that God's grace would uphold you — and that in giving to others, however small that might look, you would find new strength, new courage, and perhaps even unexpected joy.

Prayer: Write your blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart, there to remain so indelibly engraved that no prosperity, no adversity, shall ever move me from your love. Be to me a strong tower of defense, a comforter in tribulation, a deliverer in distress, a very present help in trouble, and a guide to heaven through the many temptations and dangers of this life. Amen.

‍

In the film Awakenings — based on a true story — a doctor uses an experimental drug to awaken patients who have spent decades in a catatonic, sleep-like state. The first patient to respond is a man named Leonard, who has been essentially absent from his own life for thirty years.

In one scene, Leonard calls the doctor in the middle of the night — he has to talk to him, right now. The doctor rushes over. And Leonard, barely able to contain himself, holds up a newspaper and says:

"Read the newspaper. See what they say — all bad, it's all bad. People have forgotten what life is about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded about what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!"

Somewhere along the way, most of us lose that. Not all at once — gradually, imperceptibly. The wonder gets worn down by familiarity. The gift gets obscured by routine. We stop noticing.

The philosopher G.K. Chesterton wrote about children and their insistence on repetition — "Do it again! Do it again!" — and suggested that what looks like simple immaturity might actually be closer to the divine:

"It may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. For we have sinned and grown old — and our Father is younger than we."

Jesus said that the kingdom of God belongs to those who receive it as a child. Wide-eyed. Wondering. Awake to the gift of being alive.

What would it take today to see your life the way Leonard saw his — as something precious, something worth exclaiming over, something you don't want to sleep through?

Prayer: Loving God, wake us up. Open our eyes to the gifts we have grown too familiar to notice — the ordinary miracles of this day, this life, this breath. Give us back something of that wide-eyed wonder that greets the world as the gift it is. And may that wonder draw us closer to you — the one who makes every daisy, and has never once grown tired of it. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

‍

I ran into a woman from a church I once served — she and her husband had been going through a very difficult time in their marriage, and they had quietly stopped coming to worship. She started explaining why, a little defensively, the way people do when they assume the pastor is keeping attendance.

Then she stopped and said simply: "You know, Joe — on Sunday mornings, I can't keep pretending that everything's okay when it's not okay."

That sentence has stayed with me for years.

How sad that she would feel she had to pretend in order to belong. And yet — how many of us have felt exactly that way? The sense that church is a place for people who have it together, and that our job is to appear as though we do.

Jesus was remarkably clear on this point. He didn't come for the people who had it all figured out. He came for the rest of us — the ones who know, if we're honest, that we are works in progress. He scooped children up into his arms precisely because they hadn't yet learned to pretend. What you see is what you get. They put themselves out there, fully and without reservation.

That kind of vulnerability is not weakness. It is the very thing that makes real relationship possible. When we have to perform — when we can't bring our actual selves to the table — we lose the honesty and openness that allow others to truly know us, and to be known in return.

The woman I met in the grocery store thought she had to choose between her real life and her church community. She was wrong — but I understood why she felt that way. And I wonder how many people around us are making that same painful calculation.

May the communities we belong to be places where no one has to pretend. Where the struggling are welcome, and the honest are at home.

Prayer: Gracious God, forgive us for the ways we have made it harder for people to bring their real selves — to church, to friendship, to you. Give us the courage to be honest about our own struggles, so that others might feel the freedom to be honest about theirs. Make us communities of grace — where no one has to pretend, and everyone belongs. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

‍

Rabbi Harold Kushner once wrote about the character Atlas in Greek mythology. You may remember that Atlas was condemned to carry the weight of the entire world on his shoulders — a punishment so severe it was the harshest the ancient Greek mind could conjure.

Kushner's observation was simple and devastating: "Today, it seems, we have volunteered to play the role of Atlas. We have not offended God — we've dismissed him. We've offered to carry the weight of the entire world on our shoulders.”

We laugh. And then we recognize ourselves.

There is something in adult life that accumulates weight. The responsibilities, the worries, the awareness of everything that could go wrong. We carry our work, our families, our finances, the state of the world — and we carry it all with a kind of grim determination, as if the whole thing might fall apart if we stop holding it up.

Jesus once watched his disciples try to shoo children away from him — too busy, too serious, too much important business at hand. And he stopped them. "Let the children come to me," he said. "It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." (Mark 10:14)

And then he said something that stops me every time: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

Children don't carry the weight of the world. They take each moment as it comes, trusting that they will be taken care of. Not because they are naive — but because they haven't yet talked themselves out of that trust.

What if we could recover even a little of that? Not irresponsibility — but a genuine, practiced trust that God is at work in the things we cannot control. That we are not, in fact, Atlas. That the world is held by hands far steadier than ours.

I honestly struggle with this as much as anyone. The Atlas habit runs deep — and I suspect I am not alone in that.

But perhaps that is where we begin — not with perfect trust, but with the willingness to loosen our grip, just a little. To admit that we were never meant to hold all of this. And to let God be God.

I wonder what might we be able to set down - even if it is just for today?

Prayer: Loving God, we confess that we have tried to carry what was never ours to carry. We have worried and strained and gripped tightly — as if everything depended on us alone. Remind us today that we are not Atlas. You are holding this. Give us the grace to trust you with what we cannot control, and the freedom that comes from releasing it. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

‍

Today's message was written by my friend, Rev. Roger Kunkel, founder of Dial Hope.

A great British preacher of a generation ago told the story of a young servant girl who had no formal education yet was deeply spiritual. She had a strong sense of compassion, a concern for people. When this minister visited her one day and asked how she spent her days, she said, "My work is very demanding, and I don't get much time off, so I can't serve the church as much as I would like. But I have come up with a plan that lets me do what I can," "What is that?" asked the minister. She replied, "Well, I always take the daily paper to bed with me at night." He was puzzled. "Tell me about that. I don't understand." "Well," she said, "l read the page with the birth notices, and I pray for the babies that have been born; then I read the marriages, and I pray that they may be happy and true, and next I read the deaths, and I pray that God's comfort may come to those sorrowing homes." 

That young girl was not far from the Kingdom. Why? Because she had discovered the spirit of loving compassion. Loving compassion, Jesus called it the most significant sign of discipleship. In John's Gospel, he said it like this: "l give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples" (John 13:34-35). As deftly as a magnetic needle points to the north, so the heart of Jesus immediately zeroed in on the neediest person in the crowd. 

The poet put it this way: 

Love in your heart isn't put there to stay; 

Love isn't love till you give it away. 

Let us pray: God of love, you who have the whole world in your hands, we claim to be one nation, under you, and that you are the One in whom we trust. We are aware that you have called us to love you and one another, and we pray that you will remind us anew that love, to be love, must be expressed in action. Give us hearts of loving compassion. In Jesus' name, Amen.

‍