My parents texted me a few weeks back and asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Birthday presents aren’t quite as exciting in your late 30s. My oldest son, whose birthday is just a few days before my own, asks for toys and Lego sets. Alright, in full disclosure, I have very recently asked to receive Lego sets for birthdays. But I wasn’t feeling that this year and I always ask for books. So I told them that I was trying to save up for a new bike and so money to go towards that would be greatly appreciated.

“You don’t want your old bike?” Mom responded.

This isn’t the first time she has asked me if I wanted my old bike. Frankly, I wasn’t sure it was in decent shape. I probably haven’t touched the thing in over 20 years. But it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. My dad took it for a short ride. The tires were surprisingly good, the gears were a bit of a question mark, but it was decent. I figured I’d give it a shot. Mom and Dad put it on their bike rack and drove it up here from South Carolina when they came to visit us for our May birthdays.

It’s been awhile since bike riding was a regular part of my life. When we lived in Columbia, I would ride it all around my neighborhood; pretending that I was going fast enough to travel through time like Marty McFly. When we moved to Spartanburg, we lived on a curvy and narrow street on which teenagers in pickup trucks would do their best NASCAR impersonations. Riding a bike on that road felt like courting death. So I didn’t ride my bike too much after 3rd grade; not even when, as a teenager, I got the dark granite Murray that my dad set down in our Nashville driveway.

“Save us now!”

That is a cry that starts in the heart of peasants in 1st Century Palestine and it hangs in the air circling and reverberating around the globe some twenty centuries later. We still want to be saved; from Rome, from heartbreak, from hunger, from war, from pandemic, from violence, from hatred, from ourselves. And we still cry out.

Often that for which we cry out is not going to save us. In Jerusalem, they wanted a conquering king to overthrow the Empire that oppressed them. They wanted and we want a blow in the cycle of conquering and vengeance that keeps on turning. We still often want an earthly kingdom that will establish rule for people like us. A kingdom that will rule by power, by sword, by gun. We want a leader on a war horse and the eradication of our enemies.

Patience is difficult. If there is something that we do not like or with which we are not comfortable, we don’t usually want to stick with it. I get that. It makes complete sense. Yet just because we want something to be over doesn’t mean that it’s over. Just because it becomes more than we want to deal with or we lose interest that doesn’t mean we’re done with it or it’s done with us.

The people following Moses became impatient on the way. They were witnesses to their misery in Egypt and to the incredible acts of God that rescued them. But the wilderness was difficult. They had what they needed but they were uncomfortable. They had food, but it wasn’t good enough food. “Why did you bring us out here to die?” they asked. They weren’t going to die, but things got tough and it felt like they were.

According to Numbers, God sent poisonous snakes to set the people straight. Did God do this? The reader can judge for themselves. I have a hard time believing God does something like this. Partly because we seem to do a pretty good job inviting the poisonous snakes to the party ourselves. Our impatience clouds our judgment and then it bites us in the butt.

A funny thing has happened in perpetual reassessment of faith in adulthood: I believe in total depravity. Not necessarily in the theological construct that posits that we all are born into corruption because of original sin. One of the most consistent parts of my faith journey is that hardcore Calvinism has always seemed problematic to me. I just mean that I believe that we as humans are really, really screwed up. I believe we all hold that divine spark from God too; that Imago Dei.

But, good Lord, we are a messed up people.

You can look around for ample evidence. I won’t point it out to you, because I could look within for evidence as well. There is something askew and off the mark about us. There is something about us that is not quite as it should be. Now because we are made in God’s image, there is that capacity within us to be more like what we should be. We just often cannot or will not access it.

In early June, the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery spurred a group of high schoolers to plan a Black Lives Matter march. They didn't know if anyone would show up. 10,000 people took to the streets that day and lifted their voices in peaceful protest.

Peaceful.

It’s an interesting word in the context of 10,000 people pulsing through downtown Nashville. That show of righteous anger does not really paint the picture of peace. I guess you could split hairs to say that it was non-violent and that is somehow different than peaceful. But the mandate from those young women beforehand was that this would be a peaceful protest. And so it was.

Yet the chant that still rings in my ears six months later is No justice! No peace! Again and again it would ring out; its staccato cadence bouncing off the buildings. No justice! No peace! Each syllable like a punch; a fierce passion jabbed into speech. No justice! No peace!

The second Sunday of Advent is about peace and it’s keeping me up at night. I grew up in a context where the stuff of Christianity was almost all personal. The primary concern was to make sure that your individual relationship with God was in the right alignment. If that personal relationship was right then you could personally experience hope, joy, love. And peace.

I was six years old when Hurricane Hugo tore through South Carolina. We lived in Columbia at the time and so we were spared the storm’s full wrath. My brother, newborn sister, and I all slept in my parents’ room that night. Even as they taped up all the windows in our house, Mom and Dad had exuded a calm that we would be okay and we were. But I remember the howling winds through the night; the sound was like a gash being ripped in creation itself.

I felt vulnerable and small and scared. The world could have come undone.

The tricky thing about Advent is there is more than a little about this time of year that is about the world coming undone. There is an untamed ferocity to the season that we often bury under twinkling lights, sleigh bells, and children’s choirs. The first Sunday—the beginning of a new year in the church—is about hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. A time-displaced hope for the coming Christ child. A future hope for when all things will be made right. But it is all hope with a jagged edge.

Where do we go from here? That question seems to follow us around. After all, each morning presents new forks in the road. What kind of people are we going to be? Empathetic or hateful? Full of hope or cynicism? Looking our for others or only for ourselves? Those choices profoundly direct the trajectories of our lives and those around us. And each day provides a new opportunity for that.

But the question of where we go from here always seems weightier in moments of great transition. The road seems to bend in dramatically divergent directions. When Joshua was at the end of his days leading the people of Israel, he gathered them together with directions on which road they ought to take.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Choose this day whom you will serve.

October turns over to November with two significant days that often get buried under a pile of Halloween candy. The 31st is Reformation Day, which remembers Martin Luther nailing 95 theses on the Wittenberg church door protesting the shortcomings he saw in the church of his day. This action is considered the symbolic catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, a movement that dramatically transformed not just the Christian church, but all of Western Civilization.

Then today is All Saints Day. If you want to get into the weeds concerning a church holiday (and I always do), some celebrate All Saints Day as a memory of all the faithful who have gone before us. Others celebrate solely the canonized saints and then remember the rest on All Souls Day the next day. Because of my priesthood-of-all-believers-confessing Baptist roots, I tend towards remembering everyone on the same day. The way I see it, the lessons I learn from St. Francis of Assisi and my Grandma are equally profound and important.

Reformation Day and All Saints Day hold together our past, present, and future. The animating force behind the Reformation is that the church should always be moving forward to God’s calling of us. Since we are all flawed individuals, the Christian institutions are always stumbling in the vocation of loving God and neighbor. Thus we always need to take sober stock of the church’s actions and reform for a more Christlike tomorrow. All Saints celebrates the hope, courage, conviction, and failures of past Christians who can illuminate that way forward.

I make up TV shows in my head all the time. I had this idea for one called God Cops. It would be a normal police procedural, but the crimes investigated were violations of the Ten Commandments.

Just imagine the “Good Cop, Bad Cop” interrogation of a man who allegedly did some work on the Sabbath. Or the precinct’s frustration when someone who used God’s name in vain is back on the street because the judge rules that commandment is more about misrepresenting God than an exclamation. Or a cool, aviator glasses-wearing, mustache-sporting detective sliding across the hood of the car to take down a perp looking covetously at his neighbor’s cow all while a funky guitar riff is punctuated by a blast of horns.

It would have been glorious and would have made so, so many people angry. The inspiration behind this satiric ridiculousness was that people often seem really eager to police religious adherence. It is as if their whole conception at the root of following God is a notion of crime and punishment. You obey the commandments so the Almighty doesn’t throw the book at you and there are scores of people who believe they are deputized to carry that out.

Jonah is a children’s Bible story staple because of its big fish. Someone decided long ago that if an animal is in a tale then it must be a great story to tell to kids. This is a terrible idea and Noah’s Ark is at the top of the list why. But Jonah has a large sea creature and he learns a lesson so we make that exclusive content of children’s church and don’t really pay it any heed as adults.

That’s a mistake because Jonah is a fascinating little story with a nasty little protagonist who learns a lesson yet not the lesson and a God who is filled to the brim with mercy.

When I was told this story in church as a kid, it was said that Jonah ran because he was scared. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he was afraid to deliver the message. This isn’t true; at least not how it was framed to me. Jonah says so himself. He ran because he was afraid that God would forgive the people of Nineveh and Jonah did not want to see that happen. This prophet would rather disobey God—risking his life and the life of some unwitting sailors at sea—than see people he considered his enemies receive grace and restoration.

This is a story we should read regularly as adults.