I remember like it was yesterday. Taken off guard, eyes tearing in the middle of my work day. I had never heard the words before. But as they danced along the radio waves they burned themselves on my heart.

She loves her mama's lemonade,
Hates the sound that goodbyes make.
She prays one day she'll find someone to need her.

She swears that there's no difference,
Between the lies and compliments.
It's all the same if everybody leaves her.

And every magazine tells her she's not good enough,
The pictures that she's seen make her cry.

She would change everything for happy ever after.
Caught in the in between, a beautiful disaster,
But she just needs someone to take her home.

Beautiful Disaster
by Jon McLaughlin

She's a beautiful disaster, and she is everywhere

I see her every day.

Online. At the grocery store. Walking her dog across the street.

I read her story in the headlines.

Suicide. Cutting. Body shaming. Rape. Teen pregnancy. Abuse. Trafficking victim. Orphan.

I see people shake their heads at her wondering what went wrong. I try not to shake them and scream.

We went wrong. We did this to her.

Church members. School teachers. Relatives she thought she could trust. We look, but we don't see. Smiling and nodding and moving right along. Clicking our tongues. But do we help? Do we love? Do we go beyond the how are you to find out what's really happening in their world? In their heart?

Do we go beyond the how are you to find out what's really happening in their world?

Maybe she is you

Praying that someone will want you, need you, love you. Feeling very much alone. Not measuring up to the ads on tv, the magazines, the Instagram models around you every day. Pressured on every side to give yourself over to the lust in another person's heart. Wearing a mask of normalcy and hoping that no one can see how you really feel. Willing to give up everything just to be happy. Just to be known. Just to be loved. Only seventeen, or twenty-three, or thirty-one...but oh, so tired.

You need to know...

You are not alone. I know it feels that way. I know it seems that there is not another soul on earth that understands you.

But you need to know, the God of creation formed you in love exactly how He wanted you to be. Then, knowing that sin would keep you from His presence, He sent His own Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for your sin. That penalty is death. Jesus died in your place. There is no greater love than His.

You are not alone. Jesus paid the penalty for your sin. There is no greater love than His.

Jeremiah 31:3 - I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (ESV)

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (ESV)

Psalm 147:2-4 - The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (ESV)

We are all God's daughters

He created us, but He also gives us a choice. To join His family or to go our own way. Where we start does not determine where we end.

We must give our hearts and souls to the One who loves us all with all He is. His Word says even now He is preparing a heavenly home for those who put their faith in Him.

Will you give Him your heart in return? It may be battered, bruised, and worn out from being used by those that promised love and didn't deliver—but He can make it whole again.

We have a responsibility to each other

Maybe you aren't the broken one. Or maybe you were and God healed you. You have a responsibility to show His love to the hurting around you.

You have a responsibility to show Jesus' love to the hurting around you.

Sometimes we need to pause long enough to see the pain behind the fake smile. It takes just a minute to give a hug, lift a prayer, or send a text. But it can mean the world to someone who just needed to know another living soul cares about them.

Be that person. Be the one to pull off the mask of "I'm okay" and share a much needed hug. We're all in this thing called life together.

Post first published on DonyaDunlap.com

In 1609, Galileo Galilei having heard of a new invention called the “Danish perspective glass” fashioned his version of what we call the telescope and began studying objects in the universe previously undetectable by the human eye. He recorded and published his findings, stirring the scientific and religious communities into a frenzy.

For thousands of years, humans had gazed into night skies in ignorance and awe. We witnessed the man in the moon without knowing the streaks and spots of his face are deep craters and soaring mountains. We didn’t know Jupiter had moons or that there were a total of eight planets (sorry Pluto) in the solar system that revolved around the sun and not the earth.
Since Galileo and other early astronomers, scientists have made great strides in discovering things in the "known" universe—things that have existed since God spoke them into being at the beginning of time. We marvel at black holes and glittering galaxies and wonder what else may lie beyond what our technology allows us to see.

Why all this splendor? Why did God create intricate solar systems only He can see? Psalm 19:1 ESV records the answer: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” The universe exists to bring glory to God and to remind us of His power and creativity. In a word, it makes Him happy.

Genesis 1:16 ESV records the creation of the stars almost as an afterthought. “And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.” Those ferocious balls of fire and gas, like our own sun that burns at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, are just one invention in a list of mysteries God has made. Scientists strive daily to learn more of the complexities of the universe, the planet, and even the human body—yet God is intimately familiar with it all.

Close on the heels of “why the universe” comes the question “why me?” King David asked it this way, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4 ESV) We, like pulsing quasars and speeding comets, exist not for the applause of men, but the pleasure of God.

It’s easy to forget this truth. When life on this fallen planet grieves us, we cry out to God, “Why me?” Even Job, one of the godliest men written about in Scripture, questioned why God didn’t let him die at birth. The loss of his family, his fortune, his friends, his health, and his reputation was too much for him. He couldn’t understand God’s plan in his pain. God’s response was to lift Job’s eyes to the heavens.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth (likely constellations) in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?”

For four chapters, God questions Job, reminding him of the vastness of creation and the mysteries of the universe far beyond Job’s ability to understand. The point was not to ridicule Job but to help him put God back at the center of his universe.

Job’s hardship had turned his focus inward. God reminded him that He is in control of the inner workings of creation and yet still has time to speak with us, to sit with us in our grieving, and to listen to our prayers. He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4). Like the Spirit who hovered over the face of the waters, vibrating with joy for all He was about to create out of the darkness, God is with us (Genesis 1:2). He is mighty to save us, rejoicing over us with gladness, quieting us with his love, and exulting over us with singing just as a mother does with her child in the long hours of the night (Zephaniah 3:17).

You will never fully understand the majesty of God, the vastness of His creation, or the hidden things He is planning for your life. But when the dark times come, look to the stars. Let their majesty fill you with wonder at the glory of God. Praise Him and pour out your heart to Him. He created you. He knows you better than you know yourself. He loves you. And He is always with you.

 -Written by Donya Dunlap

The summer after I graduated college, I worked as program staff at a Bible camp. One of my projects was to take a collection of old windows and turn them into giant picture frames that could be hung around the campus. Easier said than done. I made my project home in a dimly lit utility room in the girls’ dorms.

My first task was to remove the plaster holding each pane of glass into the grilles, either to remove broken panes or to give the photos a rim. Some plaster was soft and could easily be peeled away. Other plaster was hard and stubborn and could only be removed carefully by tapping a chisel lightly with a hammer. I remember laboring for over an hour on one particular pane, but only making a few inches headway. “How will I ever finish this?!” I wondered. The thought occurred to me that I could try sharpening my chisel, but it seemed like a waste of time. I couldn’t afford to step away and run up to the shop to do so; I was too far behind already. I kept at it.

Finally, I had to humbly acknowledge that what I was doing wasn’t working. I had to at least try something. I snatched the chisel and headed off to the shop. One of the site guys helped me use the grinder to sharpen my tool and I headed back to my lair, with little hope of an improved outcome. I settled into my stool, leaned over, and started tapping away with my hammer. To my surprise, whole sections started lifting! I moved along with incredible speed and finished the whole giant, 3-pane window in a half hour, a fraction of the time it had taken me previously to move just a few inches.

On Sunday, Pastor Ken talked about the importance of having both a strong internal and external life with the Lord. We must spend time with Christ so that He may be formed in us, remembering that apart from Him we can do nothing. At the same time, we must be willing to step out and be obedient to Christ in our actions and life, applying what He’s taught us in the stillness. We alone do not produce fruit that will last, Christ does in us and through us. But if we do not allow Him the chance to work in us, we will produce nothing of eternal value. Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

I learned a brilliant lesson that day in the utility room. Taking time to step away from work and allow ourselves to be sharpened is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. Our effectiveness utterly depends on it. Without taking ourselves before the Lord regularly for Him to work in us and transform us, we will wear ourselves out working and accomplishing nothing at all. But God has not asked us to work for its own sake, nor to work so others will approve of us, nor to work to make ourselves feel worthwhile; He has called us to work to accomplish His purposes in the earth. Had I set out with the goal of working to work, I could have easily reached my goal on my own. But if I had set out to complete that which was assigned to me, in my limited time to do so, I could not afford to be dull.

You cannot afford to be dull either. You have eternal purposes assigned to you. You have a limited window of time. Jesus calls you to come and abide and be transformed, continually, for its own sake, but also for the sake of His kingdom. Don’t underestimate His ability to work in and through you, if you will only give yourself over!

One of my most vivid memories of Bangkok was the distinct smell: greasy steam and smoke from the food vendors that lined the streets with their small metal carts and fryers, mingled with incense, the aroma of a warm, musky, overpowering perfume that always made you want to cough a little.

Whenever I smell incense, it whisks me back there to the streets, the sirens, the giant buses, the little mopeds, and…the altars. Everywhere. Altars on every block, in every business, and every home. Altars for all sorts of gods. Altars everywhere full of sacrifices like juice boxes, flowers, garlands, or food along with petitioning worshippers. It seemed like everywhere, all the time, people were bustling around creating, purchasing, or sacrificing special garlands made just for that purpose, striving to please the gods, if just for a little while. Hoping that their good deeds sufficiently outweighed their bad and won them the favor of whichever deity they served. A well-known belief called karma.

I hadn’t realized how dangerous the belief was until encountering women in the red-light districts and safe houses, those experiencing extreme forms of suffering and injustice, but whose suffering was often written off, believed to be deserved on account of past crimes. Why else would they be suffering, unless they had done something to deserve it? Karma. Imagine how difficult it would be to get help, get relief, get healing in a culture where everyone else thinks you deserve what you get. Hard.

Can you believe it? Isn’t it unimaginable to think that a sex slave deserves their station? Isn’t it unimaginable that people would really think this is how the world works? That every bad thing that happens is your fault. That you can earn God’s favor by your deeds. So thank goodness we’re over here in Christian land where such things don’t exist, right?

Well, that’s just it.

This past Sunday, Pastor Ken discussed faith in his sermon Advent – Part 2: Faith.
In his sermon, he shared how faith is how we hold on to hope. We know that God always fulfills His promises and faith is our “clinging” to that assurance. This trust—that God is unchanging and fully trustworthy—is like an anchor that keeps us from getting lost in the storms of life. No matter what happens, we know He is ultimately in control and with our welfare in mind. And along these lines, we learn that faith is the opposite of relying on our own effort. Faith is, in fact, admitting that we cannot accomplish that for which we hope. We are limited. Finite. Fluctuating. And rather weak.

And this is hard to admit, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easier to think that we were in control? I mean, really? Even if you say ‘no’, your human nature disagrees with you. Your personhood defies you. No matter what you want to believe, you gravitate towards wanting to be the captain of your own ship. To think that, if you just prayed the right prayer, served in the right ministries, tithed and gave sufficiently, attended the right worship night, went on the right mission trips, shared the right posts on Facebook, and scrupulously guarded your life from sin, that God would then bend to your wishes. We, brothers and sisters, Christians, we, gravitate towards karma, not faith.

Faith is scary. It’s wild. It means you have no control. It means your best will not merit you anything; you can’t achieve God’s favor with your works. It means your bright thoughts will not merit you anything; you can’t win God’s rewards with your theology. It means you are not the judge and that your condemnation and justification are out of your own hands.
It’s scary….but only if you don’t know the One in Whom you have faith. Faith, at its core, is an invitation. It is inextricably linked to love. Is it any wonder that a healthy marriage requires FAITHfulness, a form of loyalty and steadfastness?

See, I don’t fear divorce, not because my marriage is infallible, but because I know the one who loves me. In my marriage, I know there is a mutual commitment to love, not out of fear of being rejected or left behind, but out of chosen and deliberate devotion. It doesn’t mean the potential for divorce is removed; it simply means it’s irrelevant.  My husband could certainly choose to reject me, but I never worry about that. I have faith. I have faith in his love. I have faith in his love and promises to me. And this frees me to love him back, not in an effort to appease him or keep him from leaving me, but simply because I can. Because I can be swept up in the secure knowledge of who he is and who he is to me. This is, I think, the essence of faith.

Faith is our response to the unfathomable love of God towards us
 It’s the only rational response to so great a love, a desire, an adoration. In this place of love, fear is irrelevant. In this place, karma is no longer a temptation. In fact, in this place, those who embrace karma are greatly to be pitied—whether Hindu, Buddhist, or yes, Christian. Karma is missing the point. Karma is missing love. Karma is missing Christ.

Faith, however, doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. They will. Jesus promised that and led the way into the darkest of nights, bidding us to follow. Bad things will happen. They will. Some of them will happen to us. Some of them we will cause. Either way, faith means that we remain fervently loved by our Creator and that He will continue intervening on our behalf, regardless. Faith means we have confidence that one day our endurance will not be in vain, the Lover of our Souls will come back for us. Faith means we don’t think that good things or bad things represent God’s ultimate favor towards us. We are not blessed when good things happen to us. Did you hear that?! When good things happen to you and not someone else, it doesn’t mean God likes you better! And when good things happen to someone else and not you, it doesn’t mean God likes them better. We are blessed because we are loved by God and our destiny doesn’t depend on us, and we are blessed because He invites us to work out His will and purposes on this earth not for Him, but alongside Him. We are blessed simply because we are chosen.

If you have little faith, don’t be discouraged. This isn’t a judgment on you. It is just an invitation. Forget trying to have more faith. Instead, dwell on the wonder of Christ’s love for you and bask in His adoration. Read testimonies of His goodness and work throughout the world and the ages. Be immersed in His Word. Be amazed by His power. Learn His voice. Faith will follow.
And so, with this, Merry Christmas! Enjoy this season of anticipation of Advent, the coming of the Christ-child, your sweetest Lover and Friend. 

My daughter is a collector, though she doesn’t hold collectibles for long. I suppose you can forgive a two-year-old for that.

Pine cones and rocks and sticks and rocks and rocks are favored treasures to be picked up and carried during our afternoon family walks. She finds them with great joy, but will inevitably forget after we leave them outside the house when our walk is over.

But last week was different.

I let her carry the rocks inside and found an old baby food jar for her to start a collection that she can return to, build, and remember. Then it was Sunday.

Fathers Day Sunday did not have a sermon, but instead had testimonies from current and former Teen Challenge participants. Being set free by God and having the willingness to let go were common themes in the stories of victory over substance abuse and self-harm.
All of the participants found themselves trapped in a cycle of addiction, chasing a temporary fix of validation or an escape from anxiety.

Back home, my daughter wanted to examine her collection, carefully pouring the rocks into her hand, giving them to her mom and me, then depositing them gently back into the jar. Again. And again. And again.

But then she tried something different.

She reached her hand into the little jar to grab a rock, then tried to pull it back out. But her closed fist was too big to pull out of the jar.

I coached her on how to open her hand so she can first take out her hand, then take the rock out of the jar. But with great frustration, she kept grabbing the rock inside the jar, only to make futile attempts to pull her hand, and the rock, back out of the jar.

That’s when I realized that the Teen Challenge participants had finally learned how to take their hand out of the jar, but so many of us with still “normal” lives are stuck.

We are all looking for a rock: peace, fulfillment, joy, validation, love.

And we all have our jars: Drugs, self-harm, sex, TV, phones, work.

Not all jars are bad, but if you try to pull a rock out of the jar, you will only find that you can only have the rock if you stay in the jar. And the longer you stay in the jar, the less you get out of the rock. The more uncomfortable the jar becomes.

Some jars are so painful or uncool—like drugs, gambling, or self-harm—that people will reach a breaking point and seek help.

But other jars are just comfortable or cool enough—busyness, work, Netflix—that people don’t think or can’t admit that they have a problem. That they need to live in a jar to have a rock.

It might help for all of us jar-hands to know that there is good news: we have a Heavenly Father who by his Son can break any jar that is holding us captive, and has an unfathomable abundance of rocks to give us: love, joy, peace, patience, hope, satisfaction, and—best of all—himself.

What are your rocks?

And what are your jars?

Will you let Him set you free and give you good things?

Have you ever just wanted to….grumble? I mean, have you ever just felt like you kept pulling the short sticks and wondered if life was some kind of cruel joke? Like all the long sticks got pulled out before you ever entered the game? I was wondering how it would be today, showing up to church on Mother’s Day, a bittersweet day for me as I rejoice over my first child, grieve over the loss of the second, and painfully wait for a third who never comes. And so it may have seemed odd to some that the topic of today’s sermon was suffering, but it felt appropriate to me.
Pastor Ken took us back to the tale of the Israelites being rescued from slavery, how God “saw their affliction” and came to them, just as He saw the despair of the nations and sent Jesus, just like He sees our sufferings today and is not far from us.

God saw their affliction under the Egyptians and He came to them. He came to them and rescued them and they were upset about it! And they grumbled…every step of the way. And every time God miraculously provided for them—a path through the Red Sea, bread, meat, then water—they were amazed, but almost instantly doubted He would do so again. Ultimately, they self-sabotaged and compromised their promise of entering the promised land by their unbelief and so the promise that was meant for them, was given to their children instead. They died never seeing the goodness that was destined for them.

I have to admit, nowadays when I listen to the story of the Israelites, I side with the people a bit more than I did. Isn’t that crazy? Look at how pathetic they are! But I get them. I think about what it must have been like to be them. I mean, had they done anything to deserve the slavery? No, not really. At least the Bible doesn’t suggest it. In fact, it suggests the opposite—that God was upset over the way they were treated because it was wrong and so He did something about it. For how many years had they been learning that to be a Hebrew meant bad things would happen to you—you would be owned by someone else, your baby boys would be slaughtered en masse, you would be mistreated in every way possible. For years. Maybe for generations. How many died crying out, but never seeing deliverance? Their brains were probably altered by the trauma to see everything as a threat, to expect everything to be a threat. Hopeless. Helpless. Despairing. Depressed. Anxious. This is what it was to be a Hebrew…they probably thought.

And then. God comes. God moves. God rescues. And all of a sudden, they’re supposed to trust Him! WHERE WAS HE ALL THIS TIME?! Why now?! Their skin was probably still swollen with the welts of Egyptian whips. They could still feel the searing pain of their brothers and cousins and uncles who, as babies, had been murdered in their lifetime, perhaps even in their presence. Maybe they still had trouble sleeping because, even after all these years, the nightmares were all too vivid. Were they just supposed to forget all that instantly?

I wonder if God was so patient with their grumbling, understanding that they were less hard-hearted than hard-headed. They didn’t know how to receive goodness. What a scary thing to consider. Wasn’t this deliverance too good to be true? This kind of thing didn’t happen to them! Surely the other shoe would drop soon. It always had.

They needed more than a miracle. They needed to be saved not just from their circumstances, but from themselves…even the parts that weren’t their fault, the broken brain, the broken heart…and the parts that were their fault, the refusal to hope, to be vulnerable again, to make God in their own image and believe that He was like them.

Pastor Ken wrapped the sermon around to the same truth for us: more often than not, we need to be rescued from ourselves even more than our circumstances. Miracles don’t produce faith; in fact, scripture would suggest it is the opposite. So how do we get to that place? The place of faith? The place of trust? How do we get to the place of wanting a transformed heart more than the miracle?

I can’t say I’m completely there yet, but I think I found a clue:
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Sometimes we get our miracles (praise God!) and sometimes we don’t (praise God still!). Our faith is not built on the fulfilment of our desires or it wouldn’t really be faith. It is built on the choice to believe in the goodness and faithfulness of God, regardless of what happens. It is built on the person of Jesus “who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.”
Wow, He sure had transformed thinking, did He not?

I’m tired of suffering, but I’ll admit it has pushed me to change my mindset and challenged where I place my hope. I may never get the family I pictured in my head (although it’s not lost on me that the one I do have is amazing!!!), but my affliction doesn’t make God any less good. My lack of understanding doesn’t take away His faithfulness. My grief and outstanding prayers don’t unravel His kindness, nor His power. So my consolation is remembering my hope isn’t in this life. The goal is not for me to have everything the way I want it. My inheritance isn’t here. And my mission is still the same: to become like Jesus and glorify God in the nations. He is still with me.

And He is still with you.

“I’m going to run to Love, I’m going to run to Love, into the arms of my Father. And like a child who knows, my Father loves me so, I’m going to run, I’m going to run to Love.”



Whenever I see a 400 meter outdoor track, I start to feel a little queasy. It’s been over 10 years since I ran my last 400, but every spring the smell of freshly cut grass brings me straight back to the starting blocks, the tightness in my belly, the fluttering thoughts of “Why-did-I-do-this-to myself-I’m-quitting-next-year-it’s-too-late-to-save-myself” and BOOM!

The sound of gunfire fades immediately as my mind tunes out everything but the image of a finish line. The painful discipline of weeks of pushing my body and mind to the max in practice, allows me to drift into autopilot as I pass competitor after competitor and push harder and faster around the track until I reach the final curve. At this point, I make a conscious choice to defy the limits of my body blaring through my mind and run even faster, past Jello, wobbly legs, past the inability to breathe, past the remaining opponents standing in the gap between me and my gold medal, reminding myself when I want to collapse in my lane that is just 1 minute long. Just 60 seconds of pain. And the satisfaction of crossing that line first and laying sole claim to the glimmering medallion on the top of the podium drives the madness to continue the sport meet after meet, year after year.

I don’t think I would ever join track again, but the lessons it taught me about the value of discipline have remained vividly with me in life since. Pastor Ken’s (PK) sermon on the principles of studying scripture and waiting on the Lord, while not directly about discipline, caused me to reflect on the link between endurance and reward.

Starting off with the verse “Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14 NLT), PK dove into the importance of spending both quantity, as well as quality, of intentional and one-on-one time with the Lord in His Word. He steered us through the principles of “Don’t pluck, get stuck”, or being careful not to take individual scriptures out of context but to read passages fully to extract the whole message of the author. Then he encouraged us to “Ask for ID” or to be mindful of the genre of writing, whether poetry, narrative, law, etc. and not assume every account should be applied literally, since the Bible contains a great deal of metaphorical imagery as well as plenty accounts of people not following God. Next, we learned to “Interrogate the passage”, digging into the context of a section of scripture and pondering how characters might have been feeling, what relationships between characters were like, in which order events occurred, how actions affected outcomes, etc. Finally, he taught to “Pull the thread and use your tools”, or study the scriptures topically, and find multiple references to the same subject, like faith or leadership, to see what the overarching themes of the Word are regarding that topic.

The sermon focused on practical application of scripture-study, but I keep going back to the kick-off verse, “Wait patiently for the Lord…” and in that context the sermon felt more to me like a strength-building assignment, as though Pastor Ken were a track coach, giving me a work-out regime to prepare me for the next meet. It’s so easy to want to take short-cuts in life and spiritual life is no exception. When I’m struggling or suffering, I jump to asking for prayer from someone, listening to praise music, or even re-playing a favorite sermon—thinking these things will quickly and efficiently fill my empty, thirsty soul. And while good things, they cannot replace the discipline, nor the reward, of coming vulnerably before the Lord myself, meditating on His Word, and listening for His often still, small voice. But it is only in these precious moments alone with Him that I have found the deep healing and life that I was so hungry for and that no second-hand faith had the ability to produce.

I think it’s a general principle of life that rewards are linked to discipline. It is just the means by which all valuable things are obtained and maintained. You can’t expect to win a worthwhile race without continuous strengthening of your heart, mind, and muscles. And you can’t overcome the often intense struggles and suffering that life throws without a continuous strengthening of your heart, mind, and spiritual muscles through devouring the Word of God and the discipline of waiting patiently before Him.

It can be hard, at first, but if you just once “taste and see that the Lord is good”, you’ll begin to understand what drives the madness of passionate believers to seek the Lord day after day and year after year, as they “fix their eyes on Jesus,” the ultimate Goal and only, all-fulfilling Person. He is the prize whose obsession causes us to defy the impossible, to press on beyond our limits when others give up, to not be side-lined by the temptations of comfort and quitting, and to not even question why we wouldn’t waste a brief life in its very pursuit. What a mysterious invitational and incredible reward: The Presence of the Living God, the only and complete satisfaction of the hungry soul.

Much more worthwhile than even a whole box of forgotten, tarnishing, and tiny metal discs, don’t you think?