I don’t know what it is about the season, but something about fall soothes my soul. I get nostalgic and think about all the happy places, people, and events that I’ve known in my life. There’s a particular feeling and scent that comes with fall that awakens my senses.

I understand that this is false fall, that temporary blip on the calendar when it gets cooler outside and the breezes get crisper. I know next week will be warmer and less fall-ish. Still, my hope for real fall remains alive. Plus, I get all things fall — like pumpkin spice — and as a reminder.

At least it’s not 95 degrees and sweltering outside.

Yeah, I get it. It’s frustrating and tiring and seemingly never-ending. Just a few months ago, it felt like we were almost out of the pandemic. It felt like words like mask mandate, social distancing, and quarantine were about to become past tense. Then that variation hit. Then another variation hit.

It’s hard to keep hope alive when the current pandemonium feels like it will never end. Part of me believes that we will always be in some kind of a holding pattern, collectively holding our breath, waiting for the next variant or the next outbreak or the next scaleback.

But it’s easy to forget that those who call on the name of Jesus serve a Savior who overcame the grave. We follow a God who specialized in making impossibilities into possibilities. God is still able to do more than we can ask or think, but sometimes, it takes us doing the asking and thinking. God typically doesn’t answer the prayers we don’t pray when our prayers are safe and generic rather than bold and daring.

I pray every night for an end to the pandemic. I pray for God to make an end of the coronavirus. if God can take a valley of dry bones and raise it into a living, breathing army, surely He can rid the world of a virus. It’s a bold ask, but I’d rather pray boldly and risk God saying no than to not pray and always wonder what would have happened. And I apologize in advance for any inadvertently squirrely theology.

You can never go wrong praying God’s promises and God’s words back to God. You can never go wrong praying prayers found in Scripture. That’s definitely not squirrely theology. That’s biblical.

I think sometimes the idea of Christian maturity is presented as the idea that as I grow in my faith, I become more and more independent of God and need Him less and less. It becomes more and more about proper moral behavior.

The truth is that the more I walk with the Lord, the more I see of my own sinfulness. The more I see of my own inadequacy and shortcomings. The more, not less, I see that I need God — not just on Sundays for one hour a week, but for all 168 hours of the week, for every week.

Christians aren’t perfect people. They aren’t folks who have completely figured out this life stuff and know more than everybody else. They’re the ones who know they’re as messed up as anyone else and know what they deserve, but also they’re the ones who have seen firsthand the transforming power of that undeserved favor called grace and the unmerited gift of mercy.

We should be the quickest to forgive anything done to us because we’ve been fully and completely forgiven of a much larger debt. Our lives should reflect a 24/7 radical display of the glory and goodness of God in such a way that the people around us are compelled to know Him as we do.

But we very often don’t. We find that even to love God, we need God’s own love in us. To serve God, we need God in us giving us the ability and desire. We need the power of the risen Christ to be Christians.

So this is our perennial Declaration of Dependence. We need God. I need God.

Several months ago, I purchased a ticket to see Eric Clapton at the Bridgestone Arena for September 21. Tonight was that night. And yes, it was fantastic.

I really wanted to see Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and brother of the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan. I didn’t know what to expect from a 76 year old version of the guitar legend, but I knew that I probably wouldn’t get many more chances to see him live in concert.

Whatever expectations I had were utterly surpassed and obliterated. He was in vintage form and his backing band was superb. I even recognized Paul Carrack as the organist/vocalist who sang lead on the very last song.

I didn’t even care that I sat in the uber-nosebleed section, two rows from the very back. It’s a good thing that I’m not overly acrophobic, because those were some steep stairs up that third level. But I was in the building. That was all that mattered.

It will be worth it even tomorrow when I will most likely be a member of the walking dead, fueled by lots of coffee and good memories.

The problem I’m seeing is that American Christianity for the most part is too busy trying to be relevant and not faithful to the teachings and beliefs of the very apostles that sat at the feet of Jesus. Too many churches have conformed to this world so that their teaching is no longer distinguishable from the teaching of the world. They have traded in the gospel of hope for a message of tolerance, giving up the very word of salvation that can actually change people’s lives and give them the purpose and meaning that we all so desperately need.

If we’re not careful, we will soon become irrelevant and obsolete. The world won’t hate us because we’re too different, but because we’re not different enough — or in some cases, there will be no difference at all.

The message that sets us apart is that old tried and true John 3:16 that says that God so loved this fallen and broken world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever recognizes his or her own sinfulness — and we’ve all sinned — and believes in God’s Son as the remedy for sin, will not be eternally lost but will have eternal and abundant life now and in the life to come.

But what we’ve done is recreated the Son of God in our own image — either as a passive anything goes leftist who will tolerate any abhorrent behavior of ours or as a judgy moralist right-winger who is all about pointing out every single mistake we’ve ever made to punish us for them. We’ve in essence tamed the Lion of Judah to fit within our political and ideological framework, rather than submitting our politics and ideologies to His reign and rule.

As Dorothy Sayers said, “The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore – on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mile,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”

The Jesus who came hung out with prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts. He forgave the woman caught in the act of adultery. Yes, He met people where they were, as they were, but He didn’t leave them there. Those prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts didn’t stay prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts any longer. He also told that woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more, not living by the old way she knew but by a new way that He had shown her and had empowered her through His presence to live out.

That’s the gospel — not conforming to the world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds through the hope of a living and risen Christ.

One of my favorite discoveries is when I get up to go potty, look at the clock on my phone, and realize that I still have three hours left of sleep. The worst is when I look at my phone and it’s 4:59 am with my alarm set to go off at 5 am. That makes me mad. Do I get out of bed early and get a head start on the day? Heck no. I stay in bed and try to cherish that last minute of sleep, annoyed as I am.

Another good feeling is when I take a nap in the afternoon on a Saturday or a Sunday and lie down for what seems like a minute, but then I realize 45 minutes have gone by. When I was younger, I’d have to set an alarm to wake myself up from a nap, or I would spend the rest of the day confused about who I was and what year it was. Now, I can pretty much guarantee that I can wake up in an hour or less.

The moral of the story? I like my sleep.

I know that the title is Prayer of an Unknown Solder, but you don’t have to have served in the military in any capacity to relate to this prayer. The gist is that God often answers our prayers by giving us what we need instead of what we want. He gives us what we would have asked for in the first place if we had known all that He knows about us and our circumstances. His gifts and answers to prayer often take into account the bigger picture that we simply do not see most of the time.

“O my Father, give me eyes to see, a heart to respond, and hands and feet to serve you wherever you encounter me! Make me a billboard of your grace, a living advertisement for the riches of your compassion. I long to hear you say to me one day, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ And I pray that today I would be that faithful servant who does well at doing good. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen” (Max Lucado).

As I see it, it doesn’t matter which side of the mask or vaccine debate you fall on. It doesn’t matter if you have all the facts and figures and arguments on your side. If you don’t have love, if you’re not coming from a heart of loving compassion mirroring the heart of God, it’s worth nothing. Your words mean nothing.

Your shaming and name-calling won’t bring back a single person who has died during the pandemic. All your rage and anger won’t change the number of people who are testing positive or who are in the ICU on ventilators. Most likely, all your yelling won’t change anybody’s mind. So choose to be loving and compassionate in your words. Choose to be as merciful to others, regardless of their viewpoints, as Jesus was to you when you were yet sinners and strangers to God.

Remember as always that Christ forgave His enemies, even as they were in the very act of murdering Him. Jesus told us that God would forgive us in the same way that we forgive others.

Oh yeah, and be kind.

I don’t know that I really have anything to add to this. It’s just about perfect. I’m thankful that I don’t have to live in shame anymore. Sometimes, I still do, but it’s a choice and not a mandate. Jesus has set me free.

I don’t know where this is, or if this is even a real place, but I want it. I want my bedroom one day to look like this. There’s not really a spiritual point to this post. I’m just letting you know about one of my more shallow life goals. That’s all.

Carry about your day.