It was Sunday.

Sunday following a long, demanding week, a week filled with meetings, public speaking, and more stress than I care to admit. At one point, it all left me trembling, a quivering ball of fear and anxiety. But by the end of it, God turned my weakness into victory.

When I woke that Sunday morning, gratitude met me before my feet even touched the floor. Saturday had been a day of quiet recovery, but Sunday, Sunday felt different. I was overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God.

As I sat there, coffee in hand, I realized again how it’s not our discipline, motivation, or even our desire to change that truly transforms us. Those things matter, of course, but they’re not the source. The thing that changes a person, really changes them, is the love of God.

Realizing how deeply He loves you.
Realizing how faithfully He shows up, day after day.
Realizing how gently He calls you toward a path of righteousness.

It’s His love that makes you want to live differently.

That morning, I thought about how blessed I am, my little apartment, my job, my kids, and even my disobedient Husky who keeps life interesting. Gratitude welled up until it spilled over as tears. I’m not a crier, but lately I seem to tear up easily, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

There was something stirring in me, a longing to do more for God. I don’t even know what “more” looks like, but I felt it deep down. Maybe it’s because fifty isn’t far off and I’ve started asking bigger questions:

Is there more to life than working and saving and waiting for retirement?
Is there more to faith than routines and resolutions?
There must be more.

I rummaged through my closet for something decent to wear to church, still teary-eyed, and when I arrived, the sermon was about generosity, of all things.  Generosity of time, money, and self. It felt like God was whispering, This is the path forward. Stay open. Keep listening.

Right now, I don’t have all the answers. I still go to work, still pay the bills, still wait for whatever comes next. But I sense something on the horizon. And in the waiting, I want to stay faithful, to keep showing up for God as He has always shown up for me.

I love Him so much. Sometimes, if I'm honest, I get bored with ordinary life, but never with the adventures He writes into it. So I wait, with a full heart and an open hand, trusting that whatever comes next will be worth the waiting.

When God Calls You “Mighty”

Gideon was hunched low in the hollow of a winepress, sweat running down his temples, the smell of crushed grapes still clinging to the stones around him. The air was thick with dust. Every sound made him flinch,  a shifting branch, a goat’s distant bleat, the imagined thunder of approaching hooves. Each swing of the flail was small, cautious, almost hopeless. He wasn’t threshing wheat the way it was meant to be threshed. Wheat was supposed to be tossed high into the open air where the wind could separate grain from chaff.

But open fields weren’t safe anymore.

The Midianites had been raiding the land for years, sweeping in like locusts, taking everything they could lay hands on, livestock, harvests, tools, hope. The people of Israel had taken to hiding in caves and ravines just to survive. And so Gideon worked in secret, inside a winepress carved into the ground, just trying to salvage enough grain to live another day.

This was not the posture of a warrior, instead this was the posture of a man trying to disappear.

Gideon didn’t hear footsteps. No rustling. No voice clearing in greeting. The figure simply was there, standing at the edge of the winepress as though He had always been waiting. His robe was clean, too clean for a place like this. His posture was calm, unhurried, untouched by fear or hunger.

Gideon straightened slowly, heart pounding, flail hanging limp at his side.

“The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

The words did not match the moment. Gideon, dusty, anxious, and hiding, must have stared in disbelief. Mighty warrior? He was a man avoiding battle, not walking toward it. He was a man protecting crumbs, not claiming victory. Gideon said the most honest thing he could:

“If the Lord is with us, then why has all this happened?”

All his questions, all his doubt, all his disappointment poured out at once. Where was God in the famine? Where was God when the raiders came? Where was God when His people cried out in the night?

The stranger did not scold Gideon or silence his questions. God never shames the hurting. Instead, the reply came in a voice that was calm and steady, but carrying a kind of weight that made the very air seem to hold its breath:

“Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”

The words did not sound like encouragement, they sounded like an assignment. An impossible one. Gideon’s hand tightened on the flail. Save Israel? He had come to this winepress simply to keep himself and his family alive for one more day. His entire world had narrowed to survival. And now, in this dark, carved-out pit, God was naming him deliverer.

Not someone stronger.
Not someone braver.
Not someone already proven.

Gideon.

The truth of the words seemed to sink straight into his bones, heavy and undeniable, like something that changes a person from the inside out. His mouth went dry. His voice, when it finally came, was thin and almost breaking:

“But my clan is the weakest in Manasseh… and I am the least in my father’s house.”

(Judges 6:15)

It was not false humility. It was simply the truth of how he saw himself, a man whose past and circumstances had taught him to stay small. The kind of small that keeps its head down. The kind of small that doesn’t expect to be chosen. The kind of small that cannot imagine being used for anything that matters.

But God did not debate Gideon’s identity with him. He did not explain why Gideon was worthy. He did not point to hidden talent or latent courage waiting to emerge. He did not say, “No, Gideon, you are stronger than you think.”

He simply said:

“I will be with you.”
(Judges 6:16)

And in that one sentence, the calling shifted.
It was no longer about Gideon’s ability, or lack of it.
It was about God’s presence.

The task ahead was still overwhelming, but it was no longer impossible, because Gideon was not being asked to save Israel for God, but with Him. Deliverance would not come from Gideon’s strength but from God’s nearness.

Even so, Gideon did not leap from the winepress full of courage. He did not suddenly feel heroic or prepared. What took root in him first was smaller, quieter, more human.  It was a willingness to take the first step, even if that step was trembling.

And God, in His wisdom, did not send Gideon straight into battle. The first command was closer to home. He was told to tear down the altar of Baal his own family had protected, to confront fear, not out there on the battlefield, but here, in the place where he lived. Gideon did it under the cover of night because he was afraid, but he did it all the same. And God honored that kind of courage, the kind that acts even while the heart is still shaking.

Because calling does not begin with confidence.
It begins with obedience.
One small yes at a time.

Saying Yes to the Next Thing

When I awoke that Sunday morning, there was a quiet stirring inside me, not a plan, not a mission, not a vision with sharp edges or clear direction.  Just a whisper:

There is more.

Not more to accomplish.
Not more to earn.
Not more to prove.
Just… more of Him.

Just the next yes.

God rarely calls anyone to save the world in a single step.  He calls us to small faithfulness, one decision at a time.  Even with Gideon, the call was not to charge into battle with blazing courage. It started quietly, almost privately. His first assignment was not to face armies, but to tear down an altar in his own backyard. To make a single act of obedience in the dark, while his heart still trembled.

Maybe faith looks less like knowing the plan and more like trusting the Guide.  Maybe calling does not arrive with clarity, but with quiet invitation.  Maybe the life God is shaping in us begins not with answers, but with openness.

We do not become courageous all at once.  Instead, we learn to say yes in small ways.

Yes to listening.
Yes to slowing down.
Yes to compassion.
Yes to generosity.
Yes to quiet obedience.
Yes to the prompting we don’t fully understand yet.

Like Gideon, we don’t have to feel mighty to be called mighty.  We don’t have to feel strong to step forward.  We just have to stop arguing with the One who calls us.

And say yes to the next thing.

I awoke on this Monday morning with a lot of nerves, anxiety screaming through my mind. This is a hard week for me. Introverted by nature and happy to spend my days behind a screen with a keyboard, I find it difficult when I must play the role of an extrovert. Not that I’m complaining. I’m lucky there are people who want to be around me, who care about what I have to say.

But this week involves speaking publicly in front of about sixty people or so. With a microphone. In a suit. All very triggering for an introvert, even though I’m genuinely grateful for the opportunity.

Outside, the weather is beginning to change. Gone are the dog days of heated summer, and in their place comes that cool, crisp shift that always makes me breathe a little deeper. The air carries hints of wood smoke and the sound of leaves starting to rustle loose. I love fall, the way the world feels like it’s exhaling after holding its breath all summer long.

And maybe that’s what I’m trying to do too, exhale.

There’s a strange kind of grace in being asked to do something that scares you. It’s as if God says, “I know this isn’t your comfort zone, but I’ll meet you there.” The very thing that feels like weakness is often where He chooses to show His strength.

I keep thinking of 2 Corinthians 12:9“My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” I’ve read that verse hundreds of times, but this week it feels personal. Maybe courage isn’t the absence of nerves. Maybe it’s simply the decision to show up, trembling hands and all, and trust that grace will take over where confidence runs out.

So I’ll step forward, microphone, suit, and all, knowing that the God who paints the trees with color also promises to equip the people He calls. And when it’s all over, maybe I’ll find that courage was never about being fearless after all, but about being faithful.

The Reluctant Voice

The desert was quiet that day, the kind of quiet that hums with heat and wind and the far-off bleating of sheep. Dust swirled in lazy spirals at Moses’ feet as he guided his flock across the rocky hills of Midian, the sun heavy and relentless above him. It was an ordinary day for a man who had long since traded palace corridors for solitude, a man who had made peace with being unseen.

And then he saw it, a flicker of something impossible.

A bush, fully alive with fire. Not the dry crackle of desert brush going up in flame, but a steady blaze that glowed without burning. The branches curled and danced, yet never turned to ash. The light of it pulsed against the rocks, wild and holy. Moses stopped, squinting, the shepherd’s staff still in his hand. Curiosity drew him closer, a few hesitant steps across the sand, one hand shielding his eyes from the brightness.

Then came the voice.

“Moses, Moses.”

He froze. Every hair on his arms stood up.

“Here I am,” he managed to say.

“Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

And so he did, sandals off, bare feet pressed against the earth, standing before a fire that should not have existed and a God who had not spoken in centuries. The air itself seemed alive.

God introduced Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then laid out the unthinkable: Go to Pharaoh. Tell him to let My people go.

That’s when the panic started.

Who would want to go to Pharaoh and confront him? It sounded like a death sentence. But it wasn’t just the danger that terrified him, it was the familiarity. Moses had grown up in a palace just like Pharaoh’s, very likely the very same one. He knew the throne room’s cold stone and gold, the precise stillness of its guards, the way the air felt heavy with power.

The Pharaoh he was being sent to confront wasn’t a stranger, he was almost certainly family. Most historians believe this Pharaoh was Moses’ adoptive brother or at least a man from the same royal line. Moses would have known his face, his voice, his pride, his temper. He might even have remembered sitting at the same table with him as a boy, learning Egypt’s language and laws.

And now, after forty years in exile, God was sending him back there, to that same palace, to that same family, carrying the command to dismantle everything they stood for.

Worse still, Moses wasn’t returning as a hero. He was a fugitive. He had killed an Egyptian decades earlier and fled for his life. To walk back into Egypt was to walk straight into a place where he was wanted for murder. The fear must have been unbearable, the knowledge that obedience could very well cost him his life.

It’s one thing to be called somewhere new. It’s another thing entirely to be sent back, back into the place of your deepest failure, your greatest fear, your most painful memory.

Moses stood there, the desert wind tugging at his robe, the fire still burning steady. I wonder how long he stood in silence after God’s words faded into the air, how long it took for his pulse to slow, for him to catch his breath. Because when you’re asked to do something that scares you to death, time seems to stop. You hear your own heartbeat, and all the old fears come rushing back.

Moses found his voice again, though it came out small and unsteady.
“Who am I,” he asked, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

The question hung there in the heat, half disbelief, half plea.

And God’s answer came like a steady heartbeat in the silence:
“I will be with you.”

No list of credentials. No persuasive argument. Just His presence.

But Moses wasn’t done. Fear rarely gives up that easily.
“Suppose I go,” he said, “and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I tell them?”

And God replied with a name so vast it still echoes through every age:
“I AM WHO I AM. Tell them ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

The ground must have trembled beneath those words. Firelight flickered across Moses’ face, and still he hesitated.

“What if they don’t believe me? What if they say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”

So God gave him signs, the staff that turned to a serpent, the hand that turned leprous and then whole again, the promise of proof when his faith faltered.

But still, Moses stammered, “Pardon your servant, Lord… I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

And here, I imagine the voice of God softening, steady and patient:
“Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

Yet even then, Moses’ fear clung to him. He looked at the fire, at the holiness that did not consume, and whispered the words we’ve all said in our own ways:
“Please, Lord. Send someone else.”

Scripture says God’s anger burned against him, but not the kind of anger that destroys. More the ache of a Father who knows His child is capable of more than he believes. So God offered a mercy: “Your brother Aaron can speak well. He will go with you. I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do.”

And that was it. The conversation was over. The fire still burned. The call still stood.

Moses had run out of arguments, but God had not run out of grace.

Holy Ground of My Own

By the end of the week, the moment had come. I had practiced my speech, rehearsed my points, and gone over the opening line in my head more times than I could count. Usually, when I stand in front of people, my nerves take over, my throat tightens, my hands tremble, and I can feel my heart pounding in my ears. But this time felt different.

I stood when my name was called. The sound of chairs shifting and murmurs fading seemed to stretch into slow motion. The microphone waited, tall, black, ordinary, but it felt like a mountain. I walked toward it anyway.

I took one long breath. Then another.

And when I spoke, I heard my own voice, amplified, steady, clear. The sound startled me for a split second, but then it grounded me. My voice filled the room, and somehow, I didn’t shake. The words came as if they’d been waiting there all along.

As I kept speaking, a calmness began to spread through me, not the kind that comes from confidence, but the kind that comes from Presence. I even found myself smiling, adding a few small jokes that earned some laughter. The crowd leaned in. The tension that had lived in my shoulders all week quietly dissolved.

When I finished, there was a pause, and then applause. A rush of warmth moved through me, but not pride. Gratitude. Deep, quiet gratitude.

What I said wasn’t earth-shattering, but what happened inside me was. Knowing that I can lean hard on God in the places where I’m weakest, that’s the miracle. That’s the lesson Moses learned long ago, and the one I’m still learning.

Most people in that room will never know how much I battled just to take those steps forward, just to face the microphone. But I know. And I know who was with me.

He saw me through it.

He is so faithful, even when we don’t deserve it.

Our God doesn’t just send us into hard places; He goes with us. And sometimes, the holy ground isn’t a desert glowing with fire. Sometimes it’s right under our feet, in a conference room, behind a podium, in a trembling heart that finally finds its voice.

The time had come.

We had prayed and hoped for a last-minute change, but it didn’t come. I have been walking alongside two families from Ukraine, helping them settle into life here in the United States for the past few years. For one of them, their permission to stay was expiring. And now, it was no longer possible for them to remain.

So, before the departure and the heartbreak of separation, we decided to gather for a proper send-off, a final American meal at a local steakhouse. It felt like the right thing to do. If they were going to step into an uncertain future, they should at least leave with a memory of friendship, laughter, and a good meal. Yet beneath the clinking of glasses and the soft hum of conversation around us, there was no escaping the heaviness. Parents were going one direction, their adult son another. Not just goodbye, but goodbye and separation, scattered into different countries, different futures.

The room was dimly lit, the kind of warm glow that usually feels romantic or celebratory, but that night it carried a quiet ache. The flicker of candles danced across their faces as they leaned over plates of steak and potatoes. And then, in that small pocket of time, their words surprised me.

They said they were grateful.

Not bitter, not angry, not resentful. Grateful. They promised they would never speak ill of America, because here, they had experienced kindness. Yes, they were sad to leave, but their gratitude spilled out in waves. Again and again, they thanked me, not just for paperwork and rides and help with the details of life, but for standing with them, for seeing them. Their words pressed into me like a weight I wasn’t sure how to carry.

And then came the words I least expected: “We saw Christ through you, and it has made us rethink everything.”

I froze for a moment. It was a staggering compliment, especially because they were not Christians. I was humbled. The thought pressed on my heart: if they knew even a fraction of the goodness of Christ, they would never dare compare me to Him. And yet, somehow, in His mercy, God allowed me to be a glimpse of His love in their story. A shadow. A reflection. A flicker of His light in a dark, uncertain season.

Since returning from Guatemala, my emotions have been a whirlwind, already stretched thin with goodbyes, change, and the weight of transition. And that night, as I drove home and later prayed over this family, I found myself echoing the very same prayer a driver in Guatemala had once prayed over me. He had prayed with confidence over my pilot, over my journey, over God’s hand guiding the details I could not see. And there I was, whispering those same words over them, that God’s hand would be upon their journey, that His protection would cover their pilot and their flight, that He would lead them into the unknown with a care deeper than any of us could imagine.

God weaves threads between stories in ways we often don’t recognize until later. What was once spoken over me in a moment of sadness and sorrow became the prayer I now carried for someone else. And maybe that is how His love works, passed on, multiplied, echoing from one story into another.

Paul's Goodbye

The harbor described in Act 20 at Miletus was restless that morning. The cries of sailors echoed against the stone wharves, ropes groaned as they were pulled taut, and the smell of brine and tar hung thick in the air. A ship swayed gently against the dock, waiting for its passengers, waiting for Paul.

He had sent word to the elders of Ephesus to meet him there, too pressed by time to travel back to their city, yet too bound by love to leave without one last farewell. They came quickly, their sandals stirring the dust, their faces carrying the weight of men who knew this would be the final meeting with their beloved shepherd.

Paul stood among them, weathered by years of travel, persecution, and unrelenting devotion. His eyes were steady, but his heart heavy. He began to speak, his voice carrying over the clamor of the port, anchoring every soul to his words.

“You yourselves know,” he began, his hand lifting as if to point back over the years, “how I lived among you the whole time from the first day I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews.”

A murmur ran through the group. They remembered. They had seen his tears, heard his prayers, watched him endure. Paul’s gaze swept across them, and his voice deepened.

“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He paused, the breeze tugging at the edges of his cloak. “And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.”

The elders shifted uneasily, grief pressing against their chests. Paul’s eyes shone with a fire that no chain could quench. “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself,” he declared, “if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

A silence fell. The men looked at one another, their throats tight.

“And now,” Paul continued, his voice softening, “I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.”

At those words, the sorrow broke. The elders lowered their heads, some weeping openly, others pressing fists to their mouths to stifle sobs. The air itself seemed to grow heavy, thick with grief.

But Paul pressed on. His words, though tender, carried the urgency of a final charge. “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

He let the warning sink in, then lifted their eyes to hope. “And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

The men nodded, tears still spilling but hearts steadied by his faith. Paul reminded them of his own example: “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

When he had finished speaking, Paul sank to his knees there on the stone. The elders fell beside him, surrounding him in a circle of prayer. Their arms wrapped around him, their tears staining his shoulders, their voices breaking as they pleaded with God to keep him safe.

Luke records it simply, but the moment was anything but simple: “There was much weeping on the part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.”

At last, the ship’s captain called out, the sails straining against the wind. The elders walked with Paul to the water’s edge, their hands lingering on his arms until the last possible moment. And then, with one final embrace, they let go.

The ropes were loosed. The ship pushed off. And Paul was carried away, his figure growing smaller against the horizon, while the elders stood rooted on the shore, hearts heavy, yet strengthened by the charge he had given, and the grace of the God who would never leave them.

The Farewell