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.

‍

Some time back I was out surfing alone when another surfer paddled out next to me. It was a beautiful day — warm water, decent waves, pelicans soaring overhead. But this surfer was full of complaints. Someone had told him the waves were perfect and they were not. His language was rough and his mood was dark. I found myself thinking: You are not at work. You are not in a hospital. The sun is out and the water is clear and warm. I didn't want anything to do with him, so I turned and paddled down the beach.

But later, as I reflected on the encounter, something shifted. I realized I had no idea what this man might have been carrying that morning. Maybe he had just argued with someone he loved. Maybe he was worried about money, or his health, or his job. The more I thought about it, the more my irritation gave way to something softer. And I found myself praying for him.

How often do we judge others without knowing what they are actually going through?

I hope I am never as ungrateful and negative as that surfer seemed on that morning. But I also hope no one judges me based on one chance meeting. We all have our moments, don't we? We all have days when the waves are never quite right — and the trouble has nothing to do with the waves.

Jesus said, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." (Matthew 7:1-2)

May God give us eyes to see beyond the surface — to see something of his image in each and every person we meet, even the difficult ones. Especially the difficult ones.

Prayer: You have called us to be salt and light — to set an example of your love and grace. And yet, O God, we confess that we are quick to judge and slow to understand. When we encounter people who are hard to love, soften our hearts. Help us to remember that we too have needed grace. And may the measure we give be generous — as generous as the measure we have received. Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

‍

There is a story about a woman who had spent years trying to persuade her self-absorbed boyfriend to change his ways. He talked almost exclusively about himself, rarely listened to anyone else, and seemed genuinely convinced that the world revolved around him.

One day on a date they came across an old-fashioned fortune-telling scale. He stepped on, dropped in a coin, and out came a card. He read it aloud with barely concealed satisfaction: "You are a born leader, with superior intelligence, quick wit, and a charming manner. You have a magnetic personality and are attractive to the opposite sex."

"Read that!" he said to his girlfriend.

She read it. Then she turned the card over and replied, "Yes, honey. And it has your weight wrong too."

A little humility can go a long way.

What strikes me about humility is that it is not about thinking less of yourself — it is about thinking of yourself less. It creates space. Space to actually hear what someone else is saying. Space to be surprised, corrected, changed. Space for a relationship to become something real rather than just a mirror.

James puts it simply: "Be quick to listen, slow to speak." (James 1:19)

And Peter goes further: "Clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time." (1 Peter 5:5-6)

Clothe yourselves with humility. It's a beautiful image — as if humility is something we put on each morning, deliberately, before we walk out into our relationships and our day.

What might change today if you wore it?

Prayer: Loving God, we all want relationships that flourish and give life. And we know that flourishing cannot happen when we are at the center of everything. Help us to clothe ourselves in humility — to listen more than we speak, to seek to understand before we seek to be understood. Grant us caring, open hearts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

‍