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Remembering can be a solo thing. We can stroll down memory lane on our own, but when I sit down for coffee with a lifelong friend, and my story-remembering meets her story-remembering, we aren’t just sharing our shared history, we are forging a deeper bond of friendship.

The church growth movement has led to weaker community, weaker theological acuity, weaker biblical knowledge, and little understanding or appreciation of the historic liturgies of the church. With so many fewer connections between the church and its members, it should be no wonder that many are fading away from the church altogether.

Gratitude to God has always moved the saints to communion in acts of love for neighbor. She’d learned that in catechism, and thought Harold heard this too along the way, maybe even on her living room carpet in his younger years. “Don’t forget Harold, this is our Father's world. Even when the world and all that’s wrong with it seems strong, he’s still the ruler, right? Don’t let your heart sink. He reigns. Let the heavens ring and all earth…

I wondered what it does to a kid growing up with a horizon of wall, day after day. I wondered which country the massive white message in bold white letters embedded on the mountainside beyond Juarez was for: "la Biblia es la verdad, leela.” “The Bible is the truth. Read it.”

Many people find that their autism diagnosis makes sense, in retrospect, of a lot of confusing previous experiences, and that has been the case with my son’s diagnosis. As his parent, I am understanding his infancy and childhood with a fresh perspective and renewed insight.  And his diagnosis has also given me a fresh perspective on Jesus.

If we listen closely, we may find that God does not view people as problems to be solved, and that right answers are often an illusion. We may find that the gift of salvation was never something to be earned by our hands — or rationalized by our words. We may find that for the Spirit to speak, we may need to shut our mouths.

Different living room, different street, a whole new reality: I’m disoriented as I hear the high pitched upward inflected call of a bird I am not familiar with. Though I hear him frequently, I have not yet been able to spot him in the tall tree he hides in. His call is not invitational, not even a flirtation. It’s a tease. He taunts, “You can hear me; you will never see me.”

For six days, my world narrowed to my small plot of land on this small planet of ours and my view narrowed to what lay at my knees. The narrower my focus, the wider my world became. I saw things that filled me with wonder and left me wondering. My yard became a door and I moved further up and further into a Narnia beyond.

This is the point: Job is potentially every person. Maybe you are Job, or will be Job, or I will. Maybe some people spend their whole life as Job. Maybe some of us have, somewhere along the way, just our fifteen minutes of Job-dom. What then? Will we be baffled and bitter because we are stuck in a theology of sub-biblical intelligence that tells us that God guarantees flourishing to God’s people? Will we be unable to suffer, unable to…

I refuse, anymore, to spit at God.  I refuse to see anyone as a barnacle. I long for everyone to be fully and joyfully on deck and 100% in the conversation about our destination.