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

In the novel about life in a mental hospital, entitled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, these words were uttered by Randall Patrick McMurphy: "That's the first thing that got me thinking about this place, there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door......When you lose your laugh, you lose your footing. " 

Because of the level of depression and pain in such institutions, a heavy dose of laughter is sorely needed. Through laughter, inner torments work themselves out. It is the medicine needed to revive a wracked heart or withering spirit. We need sure footing along life's rugged paths. A steady supply of laughter gives us footing. For when I complain, scowl, or retaliate, I am caught in the clutches of cursedness. I am miles from blessing anything. When I laugh, life giggles and shakes in delight. 

We are reminded that the Gospel is not boring, it is not ho-hum, it is good news. Ta-Da! In Proverbs, we read, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones." (Proverbs 17:22) 

Let us pray: God of all precious things, who hears our pain even when tears block our words, create in us a heart of laughter and hope. May your Spirit still the anxiety of those who live with enormous pressure and stress. So bring us comfort where we need comfort, but where we need justice, let there be love. Lord, you have become an undeniable presence, a reliable friend, the one who walks in when the rest of the world walks away. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. 

A friend once asked Isidor Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in science, how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn't so much interested in what he had learned that day, but she always inquired, "Did you ask a good question today?" Without a doubt, asking good questions helped Rabi succeed.

Questions are essential to science. They are also essential to life and to faith.

In one of his books, pastor Rob Bell writes, "Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: We don't discuss those things here."

"I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question."

What strikes me about that list — Abraham bargaining, Job arguing, Lamentations putting God on trial, Jesus answering with questions — is that none of it looks like tidy, comfortable religion. It looks like people who took God seriously enough to wrestle. And God, it seems, welcomes that.

May your family, your church, your friends be a community open to honest inquiry. May you ask good questions. And may you trust that God's Spirit is patient enough, and big enough, to meet you inside them.

Prayer: Eternal God, you are holy and you are mystery — and yet you are loving, and as near as our next breath. We confess that we don't always have the answers. We confess that sometimes we are afraid to even ask the questions. Give us the courage to bring our honest doubts and deepest wonderings to you. And grant us the grace and peace that surpasses understanding, even now. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Some years ago, I was jogging with a friend. He and his wife had recently lost a baby during their pregnancy. I can only imagine all the emotions he must have been experiencing. But as we were running, he said, "I've always struggled with the Christian theme of redemption — understanding what it means. But recently I think I got a glimpse. On the one hand, this has been the hardest thing that my wife and I have ever gone through. On the other hand, because we are going through this together, we have experienced a level of closeness and intimacy that I didn't know was possible. I think we realized more than ever how fragile life is and how much we really need each other."

His comments made me reflect on redemption — and the way that life is layered. There is so much that is good and true and beautiful. And that often sits right alongside the heartache and violence and brokenness. But sometimes we do get a glimpse of the way in which God can bring good out of bad, beauty out of ugly, light out of the dark.

Redemption doesn't erase the hard thing. It works through it, alongside it — until something new and unexpected emerges on the other side.

Psalm 130 makes the powerful claim that "with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem." This is not a promise that life will be smooth or without suffering. But it is a promise that things will not always be as they are today. There is hope. God will have the last word.

Prayer: Today, loving God, I lift up to you those who are carrying heavy burdens — those who feel as though they are in the midst of the darkest night. Meet them in this moment, that they would sense your loving presence. Grant each of us eyes to see your hand at work in our lives, even now; for you are the God who has promised to make all things new. Amen.

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George Herbert was one of the great poets of the English language. Born in the early 1600s, he received an elite education at Cambridge and could have taken a powerful government position in England. Instead, he chose a minor office in the church, serving as a local country pastor. He cared deeply for those most in need and was much beloved by his parishioners. Out of that small, hidden life came some of the most beautiful poetry ever written.

His poem The Altar draws on scripture — including God's command to Moses to build an altar using uncut stones, and the words of Psalm 51, where the broken human heart itself becomes an offering to God. I share it with you today:

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,

Made of a heart, and cemented with tears.

Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;

No workman's tool hath touched the same.

A heart alone

Is such a stone,

As nothing but

Thy power doth cut.

Wherefore each part

Of my hard heart

Meets in this frame,

To praise thy name:

That, if I chance to hold my peace,

These stones to praise thee may not cease.

Oh let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mind,

And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

The image at the heart of this poem is worth sitting with: a broken altar. Not a grand one, hewn and polished. An altar made of a broken heart, cemented with tears. Herbert suggests that this is precisely what God is looking for — not our finest, most impressive offerings, but the honest, unvarnished truth of who we are.

What might it look like today to offer God exactly that?

Prayer: Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Loving God, we give you our hearts, we give you our hands, we give you our very lives again this day. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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She was an unlikely candidate for the role.

The woman Jesus met at the well in Samaria was an outsider in almost every sense. As a Samaritan, she was despised by the Jewish culture of her day. As a woman, she would not have been expected to engage a strange man in theological conversation. And she came to the well alone, in the heat of midday — almost certainly to avoid the other women of her village.

She had a complicated past. She had every reason to keep her head down and her story to herself.

And yet.

When Jesus spoke to her — when he treated her as a full human being, worthy of honest conversation and genuine grace — something in her came alive. She began to see who he was. First a stranger, then perhaps a prophet, then something more. "Could this be the Messiah?" she wondered.

And before she had it all figured out, before her theology was tidy or her life sorted out, she ran back to her village and said the simplest thing imaginable: "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done." (John 4:29)

Come and see.

Not a polished argument. Not a carefully prepared presentation. Just an honest word about a real encounter. And John tells us that many in that village believed — first because of her testimony, and then because they experienced it themselves.

We are all on a journey. At some point along the way, most of us cross a quiet threshold — where faith stops being something we've heard about from others, and becomes something we have actually experienced ourselves. Something we know. Something we carry.

And when that happens, we have something worth sharing.

You may feel like an unlikely evangelist. Most of us do. But you don't need a theology degree or a perfectly ordered life. You only need a story — and the willingness to say to someone who needs it: come and see.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you met a woman at a well and changed the course of her life — and through her, the lives of many others. You work through the unlikely, the ordinary, the ones who least expect to have something to offer. Use us that way too. Give us the courage to share what we have experienced of your grace. And may the living water that has been given to us flow outward to those around us who are thirsty. Amen.

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