All of You
Where Love Takes Root in the Deepest Place
There’s a phrase Paul repeats three times in two verses, and it’s the kind of line you skim past until it taps you on the shoulder:
“All of you.”
He’s writing from prison. Chained. Cut off from almost everything familiar.
And yet he says it like a benediction: I hold all of you in my heart… I long for all of you… I care for all of you.
Really, Paul? All of them?
Even the difficult ones? The ones who drain the room? The ones who argue, complain, or test your last nerve? And Paul answers with that stubborn, beautiful certainty: Yes. All of you.
Our English translations make it sound like Paul is describing emotion — “I feel this way about you.” But the word he uses, phroneō, is deeper than feeling. It’s the mindset, the orientation of the whole self — the place where decisions are made and loyalties formed.
Paul isn’t saying, “I feel warmly about you today.” He’s saying, “My whole being leans toward you. You matter to me. My life is tied to yours.”
That’s not sentiment. That’s love with roots.
Then Paul uses another word — koinos
— meaning “shared” or “held in common.”
He’s reminding them (and us) that grace creates its own kind of family.
Not the tidy, polite version — the beautiful, annoying, complicated version.
We don’t get to choose who grace binds us to.
We only get to choose whether we show up to it.
Finally Paul reaches for the deepest word he can find — splagchnon.
The gut. The bowels. The place where your deepest feelings live.
We might say it like this: “I feel this love for you in my gut.”
But even here, Paul refuses to make the love about himself. He doesn’t say, “I long for you with my gut.” He says, “I long for you with the splagchnon of Christ.”
As if to confess: “I’m not loving you out of my own strength. Christ is loving you through me.”
And honestly — that’s the only way “all of you” ever becomes possible.
There’s a line in this passage — “all of you” — that I didn’t fully understand until much later in life. And strangely enough, I didn’t understand it completely until after my biological father died.
I spent years trying to sort out how to feel about a man who refused to acknowledge my existence. I wanted some kind of reconciliation — or at least some inner peace — but it never came. Not from him, anyway.
And now his ashes sit in my closet.
That’s its own kind of unfinished story — one I never quite know what to do with. How do you hold someone in your heart who never made space for you in theirs? How do you love someone who kept the door closed? How do you make peace with a relationship that never even had the chance to begin?
For a long time, I couldn’t.
But after he died, something shifted — slowly, quietly, almost without my permission. Not forgiveness wrapped in a bow or tied up neat.. Not closure. Just a loosening. A softening in a place I’d kept boarded up.
And I realized the compassion that began to grow in me wasn’t mine. It wasn’t something I manufactured through effort or maturity. It was Christ doing something in me I could never do on my own.
The love I couldn’t find while he was alive began to take shape only after he was gone.
Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he said he longed for the Philippians from his splagchnon — that deep, gut-level place where Christ’s transforming work actually happens. Because sometimes the hardest people to love become the very places where Christ does His most surprising work.
Maybe “all of you” even includes the ones who ignored us, or hurt us, or never became who we hoped they would be.
Maybe the altar this time isn’t a table or a church. Maybe it’s a closet holding ashes and questions — a place where grief and grace sit side by side.
Maybe it’s the place where Christ heals a relationship we never got to finish, and teaches us how to love someone we never fully knew.
Maybe that is the Unlikely Altar.
Because the sacred shows up there too — in the tension, in the ache, in the deep-down places where Christ is still doing the good work.
And if Christ can create love in a prison cell, and in a grieving heart,
He can create it in us, too.
No one warns you about the nights. People talk about the firsts. The first holiday. The first birthday. The first anniversary. But few talk about the first night. Or the second. Or the hundredth. Because night is different. During the day, grief has manners. It waits its turn. You answer texts. You run errands. You smile when you’re supposed to. You can almost convince yourself you’re doing okay. But at night, grief becomes bold. It becomes rude. All those manners are stripped away. When the house goes quiet, grief doesn’t whisper anymore. It speaks loud and clear. The other side of the bed stays empty. Not symbolically empty, but actually empty. Cold where warmth used to be. Still, where breath once rose and fell in the dark. You reach without thinking, then remember once again that she isn’t there. He isn’t coming back. The bed used to be a shared place. A place of conversation. A place where laughter echoed in the room. A place of intimacy — where you could be fully vulnerable and fully alive. A place where prayers were shared and whispered. A place where silence could simply be, without needing explanation. But now that same bed feels oversized. Like a room built for two that only one person is allowed to enter. Some nights you sleep on the edge, clinging to what feels familiar. Some nights you sleep in the middle, hoping closeness might still be possible. And if you’re honest, some nights you don’t sleep at all. Let’s tell it like it is. Night doesn’t ask how you’re holding up. It quietly tells the truth. And the truth is, you aren’t holding up all that well. You lie there listening to the sounds of a house that suddenly feels like a stranger. Every creak feels louder. Every tick of the clock is heavier. This is where loneliness settles in. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just steadily. People think loneliness lives in the heart. But at night, loneliness lives in the body. It’s the tightness that settles in your chest. The knots that twist your stomach. It’s the questions that arrive at 2:17 in the morning. What if I forget the sound of their voice? Their laugh? How long will this ache last? Is this what the rest of my life looks like? Night has a way of magnifying everything grief touches. Yes, I know people tell you that you are not alone. Friends and family remind you that God is with you. And they mean well, they really do. But at night, faith can feel thin. Even the promises can feel quiet. That doesn’t mean faith is gone. It means it’s quieter than it used to be. Faith after loss often changes its tone. It becomes quieter. Less certain. More honest. The confident prayers from before may give way to borrowed ones. Or to silence. Or to a single whispered name in the dark. If faith feels fragile at night, that doesn’t mean it’s gone. It means it’s carrying weight. This is the part we don’t talk about enough. Night is brutal. But believe it or not, night is also sacred. There is the lamp left on because total darkness feels unbearable. Or that favorite chair that still holds his shape, the one no one else can sit in. And the blanket, the one you reach for because it still carries her scent. These small things become altars. Unlikely Altars , but altars all the same. Quiet ones. This is where love still shows up. Not to fix the pain. Not to hurry healing. Just to sit with you while the world sleeps. Please hear this clearly. If the nights are lonely, you are not broken. If sleep comes in fragments, you are not failing. If the quiet feels louder than the day, you are not doing grief wrong. What you are doing is not weakness. You are loving someone who mattered. You are learning how to breathe in a house that remembers. And even when the room feels empty, love has not left it. Not really.
Every December, the argument returns like a familiar carol sung a little too loud. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Some folks hold tight to their cocoa mugs and say, “ No way. ” Others smile the way you smile when the argument is already settled in your heart. I’ve come to believe the debate survives because it isn’t really about explosions or one-liners. It’s about where Christmas actually finds us. When I was preaching, Christmas was rarely quiet. Four or five services on Christmas Eve. Programs to assemble. Bulletins to proof. Candles to count. Microphones to fix. Holy night by way of logistics. I loved the people. I believed the message. But if I’m honest, there were years when I was just muscling through it all, trying to sound joyful while quietly counting the hours until December 26th. Not because I didn’t care. Because I was tired. Christmas had become something I delivered more than something I received. And then, late. After the sanctuaries were dark. After the last “ Merry Christmas ” was said. After the robe was hung back up. Die Hard would sometimes flicker onto the screen. No sermon. No sanctuary. Just a tired preacher on a couch watching a tired man crawl through air ducts, barefoot, scraped up, and refusing to quit. That’s when Christmas found me. First, the setting. Christmas Eve. Office party. Tinsel, teddy bears, and awkward small talk. The soundtrack includes sleigh bells and gunfire, which feels honest if we’re being real about the season. Love arrives on a plane. Redemption arrives barefoot. Second, the plot. A man flies across the country to fix a marriage. He brings a gun, sure, but mostly he brings humility. He learns to say the right name. He learns to ask for help. He learns that reconciliation costs something. If that’s not Advent, I’m not sure what is. Third, the theology of it all. Christmas, at its heart, insists that hope shows up where it shouldn’t. In a stable. In a cubicle farm. In a high-rise named Nakatomi. Grace breaks in during a holiday party and doesn’t bother to RSVP. This is why Die Hard feels like an altar to me. Not a cathedral altar with candles and quiet. An Unlikely Altar . The kind you stumble into while holding snacks. The kind that surprises you with meaning between explosions and one-liners. Because the movie isn’t really about violence. It’s about stubborn love. It’s about a man who keeps crawling through ducts because quitting would be easier, but it would be less faithful. It’s about choosing a relationship over pride. It’s about saying, “ I was wrong, ” and meaning it, even when the building is on fire. And yes, there is a Christmas miracle. Snow falls in Los Angeles. Paper snow, but still. A family is restored. A villain falls. A limo driver gets a tip. The season delivers what it always promises: not perfection, but presence. So, light the tree. Pour something festive. Put Die Hard on the screen and let it preach. Let it remind you that Christmas shows up loud and sideways, that love sometimes limps, and that grace can absolutely wear a tank top. An Unlikely Altar. A Holy night. Yippee-ki-yay, AMEN! 🎄💥
I don’t know your name, but I know this moment. You opened the conversation. You hesitated. And then life stepped in. You know, that happens more often than you might think. I’ve sat at kitchen tables where someone said, “ We meant to do this .” I’ve stood beside families who whispered, “ They kept saying they’d get to it. ” I’ve watched love carry grief—and then watched grief carry bills, decisions, and questions that felt impossibly unfair. This isn’t a letter written to rush you. It’s written because I’ve seen what happens when no one ever circles back. I once stood with a family the morning after a death. The house was quiet in that way only grief can make it. Coffee untouched. Phones buzzing with questions no one wanted to answer yet. Someone finally asked, “ Is there anything in place? ” But there wasn’t What followed wasn’t just sadness. It was scrambling. Credit cards. Awkward conversations. A weight added to a moment already heavy with love and loss. But there are those times when I have seen another scene. I’ve been with families where one small thing was already taken care of. Not everything. Just enough. And in those rooms, grief was still heavy—after all, love always makes it heavy—but it wasn’t tangled up with panic or uncertainty. That’s why this matters to me. Not because I sell final expense insurance. But because I’ve watched what happens when love prepares the way—and when it doesn’t get the chance. If you paused because the conversation felt heavy, I understand. If you paused because life got loud, I understand that, too. If you paused because you told yourself, “ I’ll come back to this ,” I’ve heard that sentence more times than I can count. This isn’t about fear. It’s about care. It’s about peace. It’s about love. Final expense planning isn’t about planning your death. It’s about caring for the people who will still be here when you’re gone. It’s about making sure grief doesn’t have to carry more than it already will. Love will always make grief heavy. A plan simply keeps other burdens from piling on. If you never come back to this conversation, I hope you still hear the heart behind it. And if someday you do return, I hope you know the door was always open. Because this work—this quiet, unseen preparation—is one of the last ways love shows up. And that is no small gift.