I don’t think you’ve really seen a person hungry until you’ve traveled to the Third World. In Haiti, where I grew up, you get used to seeing it every day — the empty look in someone’s eyes, the frailty you feel in a person’s arm as you shake their hand, the fuzzy, reddish hair and swollen bellies of children who play naked on unpaved city streets. Hunger is a way of life in Haiti. People sometimes go days without food and daily, the questions gnaw at people’s minds — Will I be able to make enough money today to put food on my family’s table? Will there be any left over for me? On some days, people succeed; on others, they “tighten their belts,” which is not a euphemism for frugality as in America. People literally cinch up their waists so that they will not feel the pangs of hunger.

I think about Haiti every time I read John 6, which finds Jesus traveling around Palestine, being followed by masses of defeated, hungry people amazed by the man who miraculously provided them with a free meal. (It is interesting to note that out of all of Jesus’ miracles, his feeding of the five thousand is the only one to be recorded in all four Gospels — in a land of hungry people, perhaps it was one of the stories about Jesus that got retold more than the others.) It certainly seems to have made an impact — after all, after a night spent crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and his disciples found the same crowd waiting for them on the other side. They had walked for miles just to see him. Jesus, however, used this opportunity to speak to the people about another kind of hunger and in so doing, he lost almost all of his newfound fame.

                                                                               ***

“Teacher, when did you get here,” the crowd asks excitedly upon meeting him in Capernaum. Jesus, however, ignores their question and cuts to the chase. “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”

The crowd’s curiosity is piqued. “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” they ask. What do we have to do to get the bread that’s better than bread?

“I will gladly tell you. This is the work of God (there’s only one), that you believe in the one whom God has sent.”

“Believe in you? That’s all we have to do? Well then, Jesus, do another miracle, and we’ll gladly believe in you! Here’s a hint as to what we’d like to see: The Scripture says, ‘Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness.’ If you want us to believe that you’re a prophet as great as Moses, feed us more than just one meal. Be our source of food for the rest of our lives. Then we’ll believe in you.” 

Jesus’ reply at this point, however, shows that he feels no obligation to live up to Moses’ example. In fact, this puts him into a different category from every other religious leader in history: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst.” 

This is not what the crowd wanted to hear. They immediately begin grumbling. “Isn’t this Jesus from Nazareth? Don’t we know his parents, Mary and Joseph? Where does this guy get off saying, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

This reaction surprises me, to be honest. They just saw him do a miracle. In fact, they just walked for miles around the Sea of Galilee in the hopes that he’d do another one. They are willing to accept him as a prophet, a new Moses even, but they refuse to accept him as anything more than that. (Isn’t that similar to how many people today react to Jesus, though? “Sure, he was a great moral teacher. He may even have been able to do some miraculous things, but He isn’t God. We can’t go that far.” People admire and respect Jesus up to the point where He transcends their categories and requires faith. At that point, they refuse to believe.)

Jesus’ extravagant claims do not stop there, however. “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” he says. He claims that God Himself draws people to acceptance of his teachings: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” He claims to be able to raise the dead. “And I will raise him up on the last day.” And, most astonishingly, he claims to have seen God. “No one has seen the Father except he who is from God — that one has seen the Father.” Can you imagine how difficult to process these claims would have been upon hearing them for the first time? It is no wonder that Jesus says that faith in Him is a gift from God! 

“The miracle you’re asking for was not something Moses did — it was a gift from my Father to your forefathers. Even so, it was not as good a gift as the one being given to you now. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. The one who eats of me will live forever. The bread I’m talking about is my own flesh.”

At this point, voices throughout the crowd are muttering and complaining. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” We came here for bread, Jesus, and you’re talking about cannibalizing you! Stop jerking us around — either feed us or leave us be. 

Jesus, however, ups the ante with a statement sure to antagonize a group full of Jewish people: “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life that will last forever, and I myself will raise them up on the last day.”

This statement pushes the crowd over the edge. Their Jewish Law forbids them even to consume animal blood with their meals! To consume a human being would be nauseating and completely out of the question. People are beginning to walk away now. The crowd is dwindling. Even many of Jesus’ disciples — those who followed Jesus around regularly, everywhere he went — are repulsed by what Jesus is saying: “This is a hard saying,” they complain. “Who can bear listening to it?” 

Jesus remains unfazed. “Are you offended by this? This is why I told you earlier that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my Father. It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” (Another extraordinary claim — the ability to respond in faith to Jesus’ teachings is a miraculous work God Himself.) Many of his disciples, unable to make that leap of faith walk away, never to see him again.

Jesus turns back to the Twelve and asks the question that is by now on everyone’s mind. “Do you all want to leave, too?” 

I imagine there must be a weighty silence, before Peter finally responds.

“Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

                                                                               ***

The two responses to Jesus Christ in this narrative are ultimately the only two responses to him that are possible. One either accepts or rejects His testimony about Himself. There is no third way. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, ”You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” Everyone in this chapter comes out on one side of that dichotomy or the other, and if Jesus was right, so will everyone reading this post.

If Jesus really is the bread of life, then that opens a window onto something else that must also be true, that there is within each of us a hunger deeper than hunger, a yearning to be full that cannot be satisfied by anything other than Him. Some of you might say, “I feel no hunger,” but neither does a person who has been starving for several weeks. It could be that your stomach has shriveled to the point where you must be nourished back to life before you can feel your need again. Your lack of hunger does not prove that you are not a creature who needs food to survive.

If you are hungry, then there is no other solution to hunger but to eat, but how do we “eat” spiritual food? Jesus Himself provides us with the answer: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Coming to Jesus, believing in Jesus, trusting His promises, responding as Peter did (“you have the words of life”) is what spiritual eating looks like. “Believe,” wrote St. Augustine, “and thou hast eaten.” Are you spiritually famished, fainting and anxious for your next meal? Is your hair red from malnutrition? Are your ribs showing? Christ is the bread of life. Come to him. Take of his body, eat, and live.

Who is Jesus Christ? Who did he believe himself to be?

While it is fashionable in this (and in every) day and age to see Jesus as a reflection of our own politics, philosophy, or highest ideals for ourselves, the most important question that must be asked when studying the life of the most influential human being in history is: Who did Jesus say that Jesus was? We simply cannot make sense of Him any other way. 

Jesus’ verdict concerning himself in Scripture is breathtaking in its audacity and scope: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). When we consider the source of the claim, it quickly becomes clear that Jesus’ words simply cannot be written off as the wild-eyed ravings of a street preacher, either, the sort of thing that one would hear routinely from bearded transients wearing sandwich boards on city street corners. After all, if Charles Manson claimed to be the Son of God, that would be one thing, but if Martin Luther King, Jr., had claimed it, that would have been quite another. It would still be an incredible claim, the sort of thing one could barely believe to be true, but a claim coming from someone whose teachings were as inspirational and profound as Dr. King’s, whose moral character was as proven as King’s was, and whose commitment to his cause led ultimately to his being imprisoned, abused, and ultimately killed for its sake, as King’s did, would have to be reckoned with in a completely different way than the claim of a madman. However difficult it might be to process Jesus’ claims about Himself, Jesus’ character, example, and commitment make clear that we must do him the honor of trying, and that means taking Him on his own terms, letting Him define to us who He is, rather than defining Him in our own image.

The subsequent series of blog posts will be my modest attempt to do just that. Using the seven “I am” statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John as a springboard, I will attempt to let Jesus define to us who He in His own words, offering very little in the way of interpretation. All I ask is that you come with an open heart and an open mind, willing to engage honestly with Jesus as we seek together to answer the question “Who Is Jesus?”

Tomorrow: “I am the Bread of Life”

In honor of NC bluegrass legend Doc Watson, who was hospitalized today and is in critical condition, here’s an excerpt from his 1988 interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air:

GROSS: When your son Merle died, was it hard for you to go back on the road afterwards?

Mr. WATSON: If you’ll pardon a little intimacy here, I’ll tell you something that happened, or I wouldn’t have.

Between the time he was killed and his funeral, I dreamed I was in a dark desert, and it was so hot, you couldn’t breathe. And the sand was pulling me down like if you were in quicksand. And that big, strong hand reached back and said, come on, dad, you can make it. And he brought me, led me out to where it was cool. There was a cool - sunny, but there was a cool breeze.

And I waked up, and I thought, well, I’ll try. And I took up the last job on that particular tour that we’d canceled. And my friend Jack Lawrence had been working some while Merle was off the road with us, for quite a while, and Jack stayed on as the other guitarist.

And I’m kind of glad I did. If I had stayed off the road a month, I never would’ve come back. It was so hard, you - well, no, you couldn’t know, Terry, but it was really hard to go back out there without him.

GROSS: I guess that dream kind of gave you permission, in a way, to do it.

Mr. WATSON: I believe it was God-sent. I think the dream was.

Listen to the whole thing.

North Carolinians will head to the polls tomorrow to make a number of small decisions in primaries and local elections, and one big one — an up-or-down vote on Amendment One, which would define marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.

The amendment has drawn nationwide attention, with such figures as Bill and Chelsea Clinton lobbying voters against it and the Rev. Billy Graham supporting it. Proponents of same-sex marriage have notched some major victories in recent years (most notably last year in New York), and they are confident that their opponents are caught on the “wrong side of history.” I suspect that many Christians and conservatives share this dour assessment — N.C. House Speaker Thom Thillis, himself a conservative Republican, speculated in March that if this amendment passes, it will be “repealed within 20 years” because it does not have widespread support among young voters.

As a member of the Millennial generation who voted for Amendment One, I do not share his pessimism. I am a Christian who believes that the nature of marriage is rooted in the will and nature of God Himself and has been revealed to us in His authoritative, inerrant Word. Homosexual behavior is sinful, a result of humanity’s rebellion against its Creator. Furthermore, as a firm believer in human depravity (the only Christian doctrine which can be “empirically proven,” according to G.K. Chesterton), I am deeply skeptical of any rhetoric about the “wrong side of history,” growing as it does out of unproven notions of inevitable human progress. Public opinion does not always move inexorably in one direction — in fact, it rarely moves the same way in any given generation, a truth made abundantly clear by the untimely demise of the eugenics movement in the 1950’s (a movement to whose victims NC began paying reparations this year) as well as the more recent trend toward pro-life beliefs among to 18- to 29-year-olds. As C.S. Lewis said, “To move with the times is inevitably to go where the times always go.”

Public opinion can change, since people change their minds. Nevertheless, the trend to which Speaker Tillis alludes is real. Those who wish to turn the tide of public opinion over the next 20 years will have their work cut out for them. For those who wish to do so in North Carolina, here are ten issues that the Church of North Carolina needs to address by 2032:

1. Frame the Biblical argument against same-sex marriage in terms of the Biblical metanarrative, not individual proof-texts.

Too many Christians can quote proof-texts on homosexuality without being able to articulate the Gospel or situate themselves within redemptive history. (How often have you heard the rejoinder against Levitical prohibitions agaist homosexuality that Leviticus also prohibits the consumption of shellfish and the mixing of fibers in one’s clothing? Would you know how to respond?) The Biblical understanding of marriage and sexuality sounds like needless legalism unless we understand the purpose of marriage and sexuality. The Biblical vision for sexuality is impossible unless we understand and experience the Gospel of grace.

2. Stop hinging the entire argument on “The Bible says.”

Proponents of Amendment One have missed golden opportunities at persuading people by falling back on Biblical arguments in front of secular audiences. We need to be able to appeal to reason as well as Scripture. Beginning with the Pauline premise that God’s law has been written upon the heart of every human being (Rom. 1), Princeton legal professor Robert George has done an exceptional job at articulating a legal case against same-sex marriage using only natural law. In a Bible-belt state as influenced by fundamentalism as North Carolina, the church has much to learn from those who reason regularly in spheres where Biblical authority is not universally acknowledged.

3. Continue to make the case in public, however, for the authority and reliability of Scripture.

Over and over again, I’ve heard liberal Christians and unbelievers alike brush the Bible off as an irrelevant, antique document that we couldn’t possibly apply literally to modern people. There are good answers to the arguments against Scripture’s authority and reliability, but pastors and laypeople need to invest their time and resources into learning them and being able to communicate them well, which leads me to my next point.

4. Invest in a well-educated clergy.

It is essential that denominations and local churches commit to giving their clergy a solid theological education, so that the people of God can be equipped to deal with the pressures of the culture around them. I long to see the day when preachers like Joel Osteen are ancient history. The church in North Carolina is deeply broken, and if we are going to rebuild it, we must first rebuild and revitalize the broken pulpits across this state.

5. Reject a truncated view of church and society.

At multiple points in redemptive history (Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah), God’s people have been placed into pagan societies as leaven. In church history, the church has been at its best when it is a force for social transformation within sinful cultures. God created the state as His minister for rewarding good and punishing evil (1 Pet 2:14), and the New Testament records multiple instances of civil officials being saved without ever hinting that they left their positions of influence. Taking our cue from past giants such as William Wilberforce, we ought to be salt and light in a broken culture, preserving what is good while shedding light upon the dark places in a fallen society.

6. Confess, repent, and forsake the church’s ongoing sins against homosexual people.

Those who strive to follow Christ’s teachings need to acknowledge that there are many Christians who do not follow Christ’s example of compassion toward those caught in sin. Recent sermons like the one a Fayetteville pastor recently preached, encouraging parents to “punch” kids exhibiting effeminate tendencies, utterly misrepresent Christ to the world and betray the Gospel of grace. We need to repudiate their views, forcefully and often.

7. Create cultures of grace where those who wrestle with homosexuality can be transparent and be healed.

Christian pastors in North Carolina need to pastor against the grain of both redneck culture and sexual libertinism, fostering cultures of grace where people can confess their sin and be sure that they’ll find mercy and accountability (even if it takes them years to change), not judgmentalism.

8. Create church cultures that honor celibate Christians.

Contrary to what our culture teaches us, sex is not an essential part of life. People can live without it, and have for entire periods of church history. Scripture does not give us an “out” for indulging same-sex attraction, but the church should treat those who choose to crucify their same-sex desires and live holy, celibate lives with as much esteem as those who choose to marry.

9. Obey the Bible’s teaching on divorce and apply church discipline to those who disobey it.

One persistent theme I’ve heard among supporters of gay marriage is, “How would gay people getting married affect the state of marriage in this country any more than divorce has?” Answer: it wouldn’t. The divorce rate in our country is at about 50%. To our shame, the divorce rate is same within the church as without. In the larger culture, this phenomenon is owing to the liberalization of divorce laws in the 1960’s and 1970’s, which makes it possible to get divorced for pretty much any reason without consequences. Within the church, the matching divorce rate surely owes more to the fact that so many churches have adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward something Jesus addressed directly. Churches need to take Jesus seriously, disciplining members who sin and calling them to repentance, refusing to remarry those who have divorced under unbiblical circumstances, and refusing to accept as members those people who come to our churches from other churches that allowed them to disobey God.

10. Come together.

Ultimately, the answer to what ails our society is spiritual revival, and I doubt very seriously that that will happen without the church being unified. A house divided will not stand, and a church that is not on mission together fails to reflect the unity of the Triune God and will fall apart. North Carolina’s cities need regularly designated times for local churches to come together and seek God’s face, exalting His name over our cities, strategically planning evangelistic outreach, and working in unison to meet the needs of the poor and needy in their communities. If in 2032, the church is more fragmented than it is in 2012, we can expect to find a state full of shattered communities. Who knows, however, what a united church could do in twenty years? “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chr. 7:14)

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with basketball. That started when someone sent my brother Gabe and I a videotape of the 1995 NBA Finals. We must have watched those videos a hundred times, falling in love with players like a very young Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Clyde “the Glide” Drexler. We sat transfixed, watching the Magic blow a 20-point lead in Game 1 and seeing unlucky Nick Anderson brick four free throws in crunch time that would have sealed the deal before Olajuwon tipped home the game winner in overtime. Those videos turned us from children unaware that basketball existed into avid fans, thirsty for the next game.

The following year, we followed on TV as Michael Jordan roared back from a brief retirement and asserted his complete dominance over the game. The Bulls posted the best regular-season record in history that year (72-10) and went on to stomp the Seattle SuperSonics in the Finals. Gabe and I ate every minute of it up — we got a basketball hoop as a gift around the same time, and we spent hours outside mimicking our favorite players, pretending to be sportcasters as we called our own one-on-one games. “Stockton, hits Malone in the post, who spins to the baseline and LAYS it in for two!” We would work on our jumpshots during the school year and hope that we could cover ourselves in glory by winning the 3-on-3 championships at basketball camp the following summer.

Our enthusiasm must have been contagious. Watching the playoffs became a rallying point for our family. My entire family would literally make a break for the door after service ended on church nights, trying to get into the car before someone could intercept my dad with a problem or question or a request for money so that we could get home and catch the second half of the game. We always rooted against Jordan, even though he was from North Carolina and even though he broke our hearts again and again and again. It was just so much more fun to root for the underdog. 

Jordan famously hit the winning shot in 1998 with his hand locked into the shooter’s follow-though. I guess he must have figured he couldn’t top himself after that since he retired again immediately afterwards. The league went into lockout the following year. By the time that play finally resumed, it was obvious to everyone that things just weren’t the same. I entered high school that year and lost interest, making new friends who didn’t think calling your own one-on-one games with your brother in your front yard was cool. I really wouldn’t get back into the game until the year after I graduated college, when a 13-game-winning streak by the Trail Blazers (I was living in Portland by that time) captured the whole city’s attention and captured my affection once again. I went to the Rose Garden several times that year to see them play live, and kept up with them on TV the next couple of years while I lived in Kentucky before finally losing interest in the Blazers this year. 

Even though the Blazers an annual heartbreak, I still love the game of basketball. Bill Walton once compared it to jazz, and to some extent, this is true. It’s a fast-paced, free-wheeling, improvisational sport, where one member of the band can suddenly go from zero to hero, creating something spectacular out of thin air by venturing a brilliant solo performance. As the NBA Playoffs begin again, I find myself reliving the special joy this time of year always used to bring, the time of year when school was almost out, the weather was almost perfect, and on the hardwood under the bright lights, almost anything could, and usually did, happen.

I don’t listen to a lot of country music (and by country, I mean real country like Merle and Cash, not the overproduced noise coming out of Nashville in recent decades), but every once in a while I find that a need for it resurfaces in my life. There’s a rootedness to country — a connection to the land, an affection for a simpler, older way of life, and a reverence for God, family, and country — that I appreciate and wish I had had more of in my upbringing. The main reason I like country, however, is that there is a brutal honesty to it, a belief in hard realities like sin, death, justice, and grace that resonates with my experience of the world. Take the existence of the subgenre of the “death row ballad,” songs written from the perspective of men convicted for crimes for which they are fully guilty and whose victims they can never repay, of which Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is a classic example:

The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un’s dream of growing up to ride;
On a freight train leaving town,
Not knowing where I’m bound,
No-one could change my mind but Mama tried. 
One and only rebel child,
From a family, meek and mild:
My Mama seemed to know what lay in store.
Despite all my Sunday learning,
Towards the bad, I kept on turning.
‘Til Mama couldn’t hold me anymore.

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame ‘cos Mama tried.

What is remarkable about these lyrics from the perspective of someone writing in the 21st century is the stark absence of any postmodern fudging on the question of good and evil. There was good and bad, a right way and a wrong way, and the narrator chose the wrong way. He doesn’t blame anyone but himself — there’s no hint here of his blaming his actions on a terrible childhood (though the second verse reveals that he had one) or institutionalized injustice or any other such familiar scapegoat. Ultimately, the fateful decisions that led to the man’s crimes were his and his alone.

Another good example of this type of song is “I Hung My Head” by Johnny Cash, the story of a young boy who carelessly fires his rifle at a distant rider just to practice his aim, hits him, and ends by reaping the ultimate consequence for a moment’s thoughtless crime. 

Early one morning
With time to kill
I borrowed Jeb’s rifle
And sat on a hill
I saw a lone rider
Crossing the plain
I drew a bead on him
To practice my aim

My brother’s rifle
Went off in my hand
A shot rang out
Across the land
The horse, he kept running
The rider was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

The man in the story runs at first from the consequences of his crime, but eventually is caught and forced to come face to face with the unchangeable fact that the wrong he has done actually happened:

I set off running
To wake from the dream
My brother’s rifle
Went into the sheen
I kept on running
Into the south lands
That’s where they found me
My head in my hands

…

I felt the power
Of death and life
I orphaned his children
I widowed his wife
I begged their forgiveness
I wish I was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

Compare this perspective of sin and guilt with that of a more recent (and equally well-written) song written by Kathleen Edwards, called “Six O’Clock News”:

Copper on the corner and he loaded two rounds
And I can’t even get inside to talk you down
Peter, sweet baby, where’d you get that gun?
You spend half your life trying to turn the other half around

…

Did you lose your head when the farm went down?
Was it when your daddy died after he moved to town
And I know your momma calls you good for nothing
She says her baby is a failer and she don’t want you calling

There’s a different dynamic at play in Edwards’ lyrics from the previous two. Instead of Haggard’s “toward the bad, I kept turning,” a lyric that brings in a Christian understanding of the power of sin and the free choice of the sinner to evil, Edwards turns to the language of mental illness (“did you lose your head?”) instead, and hints at reasons behind the killer’s actions which pull at the heartstrings and tempt us toward empathy — the demise of the man’s livelihood, the death of his father, his mother’s verbal abuse. Granted, “Six O’Clock News” is written from the perspective of a man’s lover and not the man himself, and so naturally is more sympathetic, but none of the possible reasons for the man’s crime even begins to lessen the radical evil of taking innocent lives. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men…” 

A disastrous reality of our postmodern, post-Christian, overly psychologized age is that we have almost completely lost the vocabulary of sin and judgment, guilt and repentance, and the weightiness of life and death. In its limited way, death row balladry gives that back to us, shedding light upon the inexplicable, inexcusable radical evil that we all find lurking within ourselves, and bringing us before a judgment seat trembling before the one “with whom we have to do.” Is this not what a generation awash in relativism, self-help, and self-esteem so desperately needs? I think it is, if for no other reason than that it is impossible to believe Christ to be a “great Savior,” in the words of converted 18th-century slave trader John Newton, if we do not also come to believe the first half of his famous maxim: “I am a great sinner.”

Originally posted on May 24, 2009 at Tin Roof Chorus.

I was watching the end of Big Fish last night, the part where Billy Crudup is carrying his father down to the river to fulfill his dying request. As they arrive, everyone his father has ever known–circus freaks, small-town Southern belles, high-school basketball players in uniform, and fellow soldiers from the Korean War–is standing on the riverbank, all of them waving goodbye. It’s an emotional scene and I was close to tears.

As the credits rolled, I happened to glance out the window, suddenly becoming aware that the parking lot was being bathed in an apocalyptic red glow. The intensity of the light was so abnormal that I thought it was the orange of the street-lamps at first. It took me a second to realize that it was actually the hue of the sky.

Running outside, I was awestruck by one of the most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen. Intending to capture the moment on film, I dashed back inside and grabbed my camera, but campus had too many buildings and trees in the way to get a good shot. So I started walking down Main Street, past the skateboard kids, small-town shopfronts, and Memorial Day flags billowing in the breeze, trying to get far enough away from town to where I could get a clean shot of the sky. I realized even as I was walking, however, that the light was dying and I had very little time.

It was at this point that I began to be seized with a sense of desperation. I broke into a full sprint, turning the head of an old man along the way who probably wondered where a young man in a T-shirt and gym shorts could be running to at 9:00 in the evening. By the time I reached the end of the road, the sun had dropped below the horizon. I began to take pictures, but nothing showing up in the LCD looked very good. It was too dark by then for the camera to make sense of what was going on. In my disappointment, another thought came to me, “Maybe I’m not meant to capture this, but only to enjoy it.”

So I gave up trying to capture the moment and veered off the road instead, down a gravel path and up a soft rise to a field of freshly mown grass. Finding a seat at the far end, I stared out at the rolling Kentucky countryside and began to join in the chorus the sky had already initiated, singing hymns of praise and voicing prayers aloud.

“Lord, please let me touch as many lives as the man in the movie,” I prayed. “May the end of my life be as beautiful as this sunset.”

I had no idea what any of this was supposed to mean, only that the Lord’s hand was in it. I’ve been sensing Him at work lately in the creases of my life, authoring a story that will be beautiful in the telling. I don’t where any of this is headed right now, only that I am chasing down the sun, heart racing with joy, with miles to go before I sleep.

On a bright December morning.
I am passing storefront churches,
roadside diners, empty sidewalks, 
a monument to an old war
spooling traffic ‘round the circle
that stands at the center of town.

I didn’t have to come this way.
I don’t know what I’m looking for —
the return address, I suppose,
to your letters, the ones I keep
stashed in the top drawer of my desk.
I recall the name of your street, 
but not how to get there from here.
I pass a church, the one perhaps 
that sent curly-haired, blue-eyed you
to camp the summer that your head
slipped under the crook of my arm
and you slept against me as rain
slid across the window in sheets?

A gap between two homes opens
onto the piedmont’s blue shimmer.
“Nice town,” I mumble to no one.
You left it for good years ago.
Sailing through a red light, I’m back
in open country, surrounded 
by miles of pine trees and regret.

The day I lost you,
I went to the railyard and cried, 
my head upon my hands.

My granddad once told me of wounds 
he brought home with him from the war,
wounds he forgets he has until 
they sing with pain on a cold day.
I give up the search for your house,
the street where you no longer live.
All the while, this wound is singing,
a hymn to unforgotten love.

Yesterday, I sold the first and only vehicle I have ever owned — my bright red Isuzu Trooper. A tow truck driver came and picked it up at the Meineke in Black Mountain, where the Trooper had been sitting for over a week since the timing belt broke and it sputtered to a halt on I-240 en route to work.  I had put the Trooper up on Craigslist after finding a new car, secretly hoping that someone else would love it enough to sink the time and money into restoring it. Instead, a tow truck driver handed me five hundred bucks cash before unceremoniously loading it onto the back of his truck and driving it to a scrapyard in Asheville to be picked through by people searching for spare parts for their beaters. He took seven years’ worth of memories with him.

I purchased the Trooper in the summer of 2005 from a private owner in Portland, Oregon. I drove all over the east side of the city after buying it, struck by the sheer wonder of being able to go wherever I wanted, when I wanted to. I got a job as a shipping clerk downtown at the end of that summer and began to feel a sense of kinship with the city as I sat in rush-hour traffic every evening. The Trooper was my companion on lonely night drives around the city, my trusty steed on roadtrips to Seattle, the Coast, Mount St. Helens, and Canada with friends and family. It took my friend Richard, my brother Gabe, and I across the Golden Gate Bridge and around San Francisco when we drove there on a whim. And in the summer of 2008, it became my means of getting out of Oregon and driving all the way across America on a search for God knows what. About six months later, I drove the Trooper through the Blue Ridge Mountains into a new chapter of my life in Kentucky. Two years after that, I drove it back up into the Blue Ridge to start a new life in North Carolina.

All told, the Trooper saw its fair share of big cities — Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., to name a few — and twenty or so states. I drove it through snow, rain, and ice, and I drove it windows down on summer days at the beach. I listened to music that formed my heart and sermons that shaped my soul in it. I drove it to two graduations and countless weddings, to four new jobs and three new hometowns. It held my life within its four metal walls, and in the end, it gave me everything it had left. As the tow truck driver pulled away, I felt the moment poignantly — it’s amazing how quickly an era can come to an end, and how much it surprises us every time one does.