We may give the Israelites a hard time for not making it past 40 days, but in our age of instant gratification, who among us can make it 40 minutes simply sitting and waiting to sense God’s movement and presence?

But here’s the thing: as people of faith, we believe that following Christ beckons us into a way of living that prioritizes love — not just of self, but of neighbor, and enemy. We live and act not for ourselves or our own benefit, but for God and the world God made.

Ultimately, the provision of water isn’t about geology, or atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, or even about what humans need to survive. It is about a people who are desperate to know, “Where is God in relation to us?”

If you'd been here, Lord... I think a lot of us know that sentence. We've asked it of ourselves. And we've asked it of God.

If the point of this parable is not about the mechanisms of forgiveness, what if the point is about the conditions of forgiveness? And by that I don’t mean conditional forgiveness. I mean forgiveness as a way of life — as something we cultivate the conditions for, with God’s help.

What does mutual forbearance look like for a person of faith today living in a deeply polarized country; in a culture that would rather cancel than communicate, where relationships seem disposable the moment conflict arises, when it is difficult to see that those who do things we abhor are also made in the image of God?

This is our twelfth national park on our summer-long road trip, and looking back, I think at least half of them taught us a thing or two about what it means to be interconnected. The Great Smoky Mountains are no different.

Sin is not just action, or inaction; it is a state of being, one we cannot escape, from which none of us are immune. Have mercy on us all, O God. But if we look at [Psalm 51] more closely, we realize that it is not just about sin.