Unlikely Altars

I could write about Cherie DeVaux, and honestly, I probably should. She made history Saturday at Churchill Downs — the first woman ever to train a Kentucky Derby winner in 152 years of trying. Golden Tempo came from dead last with 23-1 odds and crossed the finish line while Cherie stood in the winner's circle holding her nephew and crying the kind of tears you simply cannot manufacture. That's a real story, a genuinely good one, and it deserves its own altar. But I keep thinking about something else entirely. Every year, the Kentucky Derby does something to me that has nothing to do with the race itself. It's the pageantry. The hats that took three weeks to find. The mint juleps, the singing of My Old Kentucky Home , the roses, the trumpet call, the way a hundred thousand people dress up and gather and hold their breath together for exactly two minutes. There is something deeply human about all of that — something that looks, if you squint a little, like worship. I have come to believe that we need ritual; we always have and probably always will. We mark things with ceremony because some moments are simply too large to let pass without acknowledgment, and Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May is one of the last places in America where everybody agrees, without argument, without explanation, to stop, dress up, and pay attention together. And then on Saturday, just before the gates opened, a horse named Great White reared up, fell backward, and flipped. He wasn't even supposed to be there. Great White got into the Derby field on Wednesday, just three days before the race, as a late entry after another horse was injured. A door opened that wasn't supposed to open. An unexpected chance, the kind that doesn't come looking for you twice. His trainer had him ready, and his jockey was up. The roses were on the table, the crowd was holding its breath, and the pageantry was in full, glorious swing. And right there at the threshold of the gate, not inside it, not pointed toward the finish line, but right there at the edge of the only moment his entire life had been building toward - - something spooked him. His body said no. He weighs 1,370 pounds. And fear? Fear stopped him cold. The chance of a lifetime was gone before it ever began. “It’s the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance.” One chance. One Saturday. One gate. And just like that, it was over before it ever began. I’ve loved that line from Dan Fogelberg for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt it quite like I did on Saturday evening. The jockey walked away unhurt, which matters more than the race ever could. And Great White was reported to be perfectly fine afterward, unaware of what the moment had cost him, which is either mercy or heartbreak, depending on how you look at it. He will never know what he missed. He will never carry the weight of that threshold. He just is, somewhere in a stall right now, exactly the horse he was on Friday - - ready, capable, and unaware. I couldn't stop thinking about him. Not because it's a clean tragedy with a tidy moral, but because I have stood at enough gravesides to recognize that story. I officiate funerals, and I have sat with enough families to have lost count of the ones where fear made the call at the gate. It wasn't made by a failure or by lack of preparation. It wasn’t even bad luck, not exactly. Just fear, arriving at the worst possible moment, at the threshold of the thing they'd been pointed toward their whole life. The conversation they kept meaning to have. The relationship they almost repaired. The door that opened unexpectedly on a Wednesday and closed forever by Saturday. The pageantry of the world rolled on without them, the way it always does, and they never got their two minutes. Here is what I want to say to you today, and I want to say it as someone who has stood in those rooms and felt that grief: some of you still have your gate in front of you. The unexpected door is still open. The chance you didn't see coming is still there, waiting for you to stop letting fear make the call. Because fear will always find something to spook at. It will find a reason why this isn't the right moment, why you aren't quite ready, why it would be better to wait for a Saturday with better conditions, calmer nerves, and more certainty. Fear is patient and persuasive , and it knows exactly where to find you — right there at the threshold, when the gate is finally close enough to touch. But the roses don't wait. The trumpet doesn't play twice. And I have sat with too many people in too much grief over unlived moments to let this Derby pass without saying it plainly. Whatever is waiting on the other side of your gate — run toward it. Not because the fear goes away. It probably won't. But because the chance of a lifetime doesn't come back around, and somewhere on the other side of that threshold is the thing you were made for. God meets you there, at the gate, in the fear, in the unexpected chance you didn't see coming. That's where He does some of His best work — not in the winner's circle, not in the pageantry, but right there in the trembling, terrifying, holy threshold moment. That's an Unlikely Altar if I've ever seen one. Not the winner's circle. Not the roses. Not the pageantry. Just a trembling creature at a threshold, and a God who showed up anyway. If that's where you are today, standing at the gate, heart pounding, door open, fear loud - - May you know, may you remember, may you never forget: you were made for this moment. And you are not alone in it.

There is a word in the Hebrew Bible that appears more than 150 times, and we have never found an adequate way to translate it into English. The word is chesedh . We try. We use mercy, lovingkindness, steadfast love, and compassion. And every translation captures something true. But none of them capture everything. Because chesedh isn't just a feeling, an attitude, or even a virtue, it's the word the writers of Scripture used over and over again to describe the defining characteristic of God — the way God moves toward people, especially people who have no reason to expect it. And there is a related word, rahamim , which means something even more visceral. It comes from the Hebrew word for womb . It's the kind of love a mother has for the child she carried — not distant, or theoretical, but rather physical and active. It is a love that cannot stay still when the one it loves is suffering. That's what Jesus was talking about when He said, " Blessed are the merciful. " It’s not pity, and it’s more than just feeling sorry for someone from a safe distance. And it surely isn't just some kind thought sent in the general direction of someone's pain. Chesedh . Rahamim . It is a love that gets up and moves. Now imagine you are sitting on that hillside, the day Jesus said those words. You are not there because life is going well. You are there because you are out of other options, and something about this carpenter from Nazareth made you think — maybe. Just maybe He is the One. You are a fisherman with calloused hands who has been told your whole life that God is for the educated and the clean. You are a woman who has been publicly shamed and hasn't forgotten the faces of the people who did it. You are a tax collector who knows exactly what your neighbors think of you. You are a mother whose child is sick and who has been told, quietly and not so quietly, that this is what you deserve. You have heard religious teachers your whole life. You know how this usually goes. They tell you what God requires. But more than that, they like to remind you that you fall short. And they remind you again and again and again. So when Jesus says, " Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy, " what runs through your heart? Probably not faith; at least not yet. Probably something closer to — so what? Nobody has ever shown me that. Why would I believe it now? And yet you stay. Something keeps you on that hillside. Maybe it's hunger. The rahamim kind — deep, desperate, from somewhere in your core. The longing for someone to finally mean it. In November 2008, a high school football team from Gainesville, Texas, took the field for what should have been just another road game. Gainesville State had fourteen players, wore seven-year-old pads and hand-me-down helmets. And they were winless with a 0-8 record. When Gainesville State arrived at games, they were escorted by security guards who removed their handcuffs before kickoff. You see, Gainesville State is a juvenile correctional facility. Their players are there by court order — drugs, assaults, robberies. Many of their families have disowned them. They play every game on the road, so there are no home crowds and no one is cheering their names. Their opponent that night was Faith Christian School — seventy players, eleven coaches, the latest equipment, and hundreds of involved parents. Before the game, Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, sent an email to his fans. He asked them to do something unusual. Half of them, he said, would sit on the visiting side. They would learn the names of the Gainesville players. And they would cheer for them. When the Gainesville Tornados took the field, they ran through a banner that read Go Tornados. Two hundred strangers cheered their names. Faith's own cheerleaders led cheers for the opposing team. One Gainesville player said, “ We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to games. But these people, they were yellin' for us. By our names. ” Faith won 33 to 14. It didn't matter. Because at the end of the game, when the teams gathered to pray, a Gainesville player named Isaiah asked to lead. And this is what he prayed: “ Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there were so many people in the world that cared about us. ” That is chesedh. You see, it’s not just feeling sorry for kids in a hard situation. It’s not writing a check from a comfortable distance. But it is about a large group of people who chose to get into the skin of fourteen young men who had never been cheered for and cheered for them anyway. And it changed Isaiah. You can hear it in his prayer. Something broke open in him that night that had never been open before. That is what mercy does when it is real. Isaiah didn't just feel better that night. For maybe the first time in his life, he felt what grace actually feels like, with skin on it. And you don't walk away from that as the same person. They will receive mercy. That crowd on the hillside didn't know what to do with that promise yet. But maybe — just maybe — some of them had felt something like what that young man Isaiah felt. The shock of being cheered for by people who had no reason to cheer. The disorientation of being treated like you matter by people who didn't have to. And maybe that's what finally made them believe it was possible. Chesedh doesn't always look like 200 fans on the bleachers. Sometimes it looks like a cup of cold water handed to a stranger who is thirsty. Doesn't seem like much and is often barely worth mentioning. But to the one drinking it — standing there parched, overlooked, and not expecting anything from anyone — that cup is the whole character of God made visible in one ordinary moment. That's the Unlikely Altar for this one. It isn’t some grand gesture or a stadium full of people. It is the moment when someone who has never been shown mercy receives it — and something in them shifts permanently. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Not because mercy is a transaction. Not because you give it and get it back like change. But because when you live chesedh — when you get into someone's skin and choose to move toward them instead of away — you find yourself swimming in the same love that has been moving toward you your whole life. Even when you didn't know it. Even when you were the one on the visiting side, wondering if anyone would ever cheer your name. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — there is a love that will not stay at a distance. It has a Hebrew name we cannot fully translate. It comes from the womb. It moves toward the ones everyone else has written off. And somewhere today, in the most ordinary and unexpected moment, it is looking for a way to show up through you. Blessed are the merciful. Go cheer somebody's name.

You weren't thinking about death. You were scrolling. Maybe it was late, and the TV was on in the background, but you were only half watching. Or maybe you were looking at pictures of the grandkids, or a video somebody shared, or just moving your thumb out of habit the way most of us do when the day gets quiet. And then the ad appeared. You could have kept scrolling. And to be honest, most people do. But there was something about the ad that made you stop. Maybe it was the word family or the word burden. Maybe it was a face that showed up uninvited in the back of your mind — someone you love, someone you'd do almost anything for — and for just a moment, you let yourself think about what you might be leaving them to carry. So you filled out the form. Now here's what I've learned after months of calling the names on that list: most people can't tell you exactly why they stopped. Some stopped out of fear. The fear of dying before things are in order, or the moment they realize what a funeral actually costs. Fear has a way of moving us before we fully understand what we're doing. Others stopped out of love. They see something like that and think of their spouse, or their kids, or a grandchild who would be left to figure things out on a day when thinking clearly isn't exactly easy. And some stopped because the form was there and it was simple, and maybe it passed a quiet moment without asking too much in return. I don't know which one you were. Maybe all, or perhaps none of the above. But I do know this: you typed your name, filled in the numbers, named someone you care about, and hit submit. And whatever was behind that — fear, love, or just a quiet Tuesday afternoon — something in you moved. And I want to be honest with you about something. I'm not calling because I need the commission to survive. I don't. I'm calling because I officiate funerals, and I stand with grieving families several times a week. I've seen what happens when nothing is in place. I've watched the frustration, the stress, the quiet panic behind the decisions that have to be made quickly and paid for just as fast. And once you've seen that up close, you don't really get to unsee it. Now, I might be wrong, but I don't think that form was just about information. I think somewhere along the way, you've seen a GoFundMe for a funeral. Maybe you shared it. Maybe you gave five or ten dollars because you knew the family and it felt like the least you could do. And somewhere in that moment, without even putting it into words, you thought: I don't want that to be my people. I don't want my kids passing the digital hat while they're still trying to figure out how to get through the week without me. I don't want my spouse choosing between burying me with dignity and keeping the lights on. I don't want the people I love most asking strangers for help on the worst day of their lives. Just so you know, that isn't fear talking. That's love — the kind of love that thinks ahead. And a love like that is quietly one of the most faithful things a person can do. So here's where I come in. I'm the guy who calls. You may have seen my number and let it go to voicemail. You may have read my text and meant to respond. You may have genuinely forgotten you ever filled out the form in the first place, because life got loud again the moment you put your phone down, and the stillness disappeared. I understand all of that. I really do. But I keep calling. Not to pressure you or hit some quota. I keep calling because I've stood at too many gravesides and sat with too many families trying to figure things out in real time. And there is a difference when things have been taken care of. Love will always make grief heavy — nothing changes that — but when the practical pieces are already in place, there's a little more room to breathe. And I wonder if part of you already knows that. Here's the question I keep coming back to, and I ask it with nothing but care and concern: when your loved ones are sitting in the funeral home, what will you have left them to carry? Not your furniture. I mean the practical weight of your absence. The bills that still arrive. The funeral that still has to happen. The decisions that still have to be made by people who are already carrying more than they know how to hold. You had a moment — maybe just thirty seconds on a Tuesday night — when you let yourself think about that. When love or fear or something that felt like both moved your hand and you filled out a form. That moment was worth something. It still is. The form was just the beginning. The conversation is where it becomes real. And whenever you're ready for that conversation — unhurried, no pressure, just honest — I'll be here.

This past week I was filling my Jeep with gas, on my way to officiate a funeral, when I saw him. I don’t think he saw me watching, but I did. He was standing off to the side of the parking lot, half-turned away from the store, rummaging through a trash can until he pulled out a crumpled McDonald’s bag. He opened it right there and started eating what looked like leftover fries. Cold. Greasy. Whatever someone else didn’t finish. Cars kept moving in and out. The pump kept clicking. Life didn’t slow down for him. I probably should have walked inside, bought him a decent meal and a Coke, handed it to him like it was nothing. But I didn’t. He went on his way, eating fries from a trash can. I got back in my Jeep, pulled out of the station, and headed toward a room where people would be gathered to remember someone they loved. And somewhere between the gas station and that funeral, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Not just what he was doing… but what it stirred in me. That quiet, uncomfortable mix of heartbreak and guilt and the deep-down sense that something about the world is just not the way it’s supposed to be. And as I drove, a familiar phrase kept finding its way back into my head, like it had been waiting for me to notice it again. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Most of us have heard those words before. We’ve heard them enough that they can start to feel like something soft, something spiritual, something that belongs in a sermon or stitched onto a pillow somewhere. But I wonder if we’ve ever really let them land. Because righteousness, the way Jesus is talking about it, isn’t about being good or moral or checking the right boxes. It’s bigger than that. It’s about things being made right. It’s about the world looking the way God intends it to look… whole, just, restored. It’s about what Scripture calls shalom. Because if you remember who was sitting on that hillside listening to Him, this would not have felt abstract at all. These weren’t people who had just finished a nice lunch. They were fishermen, farmers, and laborers. People who knew what it felt like to go to bed hungry. People who understood thirst not as a metaphor, but as something your body feels when it hasn’t had enough for too long. So when Jesus said hunger and thirst, they didn’t need an explanation. They felt it. And then He takes that feeling — that desperate, undignified, I-will-dig-through-a-trash-can-if-I-have-to kind of hunger — and says that is what your longing for righteousness should feel like. Not polite. Not distant. Not theoretical. But a desperate craving. Sometimes that hunger shows up on a global scale, and it hits you like a fist. It’s the footage you can’t quite turn away from. Children in places whose names we struggle to pronounce, drinking water that would make us sick. It’s the moment when numbers stop feeling like numbers because you’ve seen a face, or a story, or a man in a parking lot eating cold fries out of someone else’s leftovers. It’s the part of you that knows, deep down, that the world has enough — enough food, enough water, enough resources — and yet somehow it doesn’t reach the people who need it most. That gap between what is and what should be… that ache… that’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. That’s a longing for shalom. Sometimes the hunger is quieter than that. I have sat in rooms where a marriage was coming apart, and what always surprises me is how little noise it makes. You expect shouting, doors slamming, something you can point to. But more often it’s just a heaviness. A silence that settles in between two people who used to know how to reach each other and somewhere along the way forgot. You can feel the absence of wholeness like it’s taking up space in the room. And if you’ve ever been there, you know the feeling. That deep, steady ache that things could be different. That somehow the distance could be crossed. That healing might still be possible. That’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. That longing for two people to find their way back… that’s a desire for shalom. And sometimes the hunger is the most personal thing in the world. Maybe it’s not something out there or between two people. Maybe it’s inside you. The habits you keep circling back to. The patterns you’ve tried to break more times than you can count. The quiet voice that wonders if this is just who you are now. And yet… underneath all of that… there is still something in you that hasn’t given up. Something that still wants to be whole. Something that still longs for things to be made right. Even when it’s tired. Even when it feels worn down. That longing… that refusal to settle… that is hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Jesus looks at that person — not cleaned up, not finished, not figured out — and says makarios. Not “happy.” Not “fortunate.” Something closer to… God is with you. God is on your side. Right there in the hunger. Right there in the longing. Right there in the place where you know things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, and you haven’t stopped caring. Which means maybe that moment at the gas station wasn’t just something to feel bad about and move past. The hunger itself is an unlikely altar. Maybe the ache you feel when you see something broken — in the world, in others, in yourself — is not something to avoid or explain away, but something to pay attention to. Because that ache might be the very place where God is already at work in you. The place where your soul is learning to want what God wants. And maybe being filled doesn’t always mean everything gets fixed all at once. Maybe sometimes it looks like this: You don’t stop noticing. You don’t stop caring. You don’t stop longing for things to be made right. And somewhere in that hunger… you find that you are not alone. You never were.

There’s a certain kind of strength that tends to get most of the attention in this world, and you don’t have to look very hard to recognize it. It’s the voice that fills a room without asking permission, the kind that makes people turn their heads before they’ve even decided if they agree. It’s the swing that tries to send the ball over the left field fence, preferably with enough distance to make people stand up before it even lands. That kind of strength is visible, measurable, and makes for good highlights. Somewhere along the way, most of us quietly absorbed the idea that this is what strength is supposed to look like. But every now and then, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice a different kind of strength moving through the very same space, and it’s easy to miss because it doesn’t announce itself. It shows up in the person who could say something sharp and decides not to, or in the moment when someone clearly has the upper hand and realizes that winning isn’t actually the most important thing happening in the room. It’s the kind of strength that doesn’t need to prove anything because it already knows what it’s carrying, and if you blink, you can miss it entirely. Baseball has a way of revealing that kind of strength, usually when nobody is expecting it, and I remember one of those moments pretty clearly. It was Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, bottom of the ninth inning, with the Yankees leading by two runs and Mariano Rivera on the mound, which in those days felt about as close to automatic as baseball ever gets. When Rivera came in, games didn’t so much continue as they slowly came to a conclusion. Arizona managed to get a runner on base, which was already more hope than most teams found in that situation, and then Jay Bell stepped in to pinch-hit for Randy Johnson. He was a guy who knew how to swing the bat, fourteen home runs that year, over seventy runs driven in, and enough experience to understand exactly what October pressure feels like when it settles into your chest. And somewhere in that moment, whether it came from the dugout or from some instinct inside him, he squared around and bunted. It didn’t work the way you might draw it up. The runner was thrown out at third, and if you just glance at the box score, it probably looks like a mistake. The kind of decision that makes you wonder what he was thinking. Except the inning didn’t end, and that matters. Because the next batter, Tony Womack, doubled and tied the game, and a few moments later, Luis Gonzalez ended the World Series with a soft single that barely made it out of the infield. Everybody remembers the Gonzalez hit, but almost nobody remembers the bunt, which is often how this kind of strength works. Sometimes the strongest player on the field is the one who knows when not to swing. Even when everything in you wants to, even when it doesn’t work out cleanly, and even when it looks, at least for a moment, like you got it wrong. And it turns out Jesus had something to say about that kind of strength. “Blessed are the meek.” Most of us hear the word "meek" and picture someone who gets overlooked or pushed around. We often think of someone who doesn’t have much presence, while louder people take up all the oxygen in the room. But that’s not what Jesus was describing. The word He uses is praus , a word that was used in the first century for a wild horse that had been trained, not broken or diminished, but still strong. A horse still capable of running full speed, still a warhorse, just one that had learned when to run and when to stand still. And Jesus looks at that kind of person and says makarios . Not “happy” or “fortunate,” at least not in the way we usually mean those words. Something closer to this: God is with you . God is on your side . Not because you are the loudest or the strongest or the one who swings the hardest, but because you have learned something the world keeps forgetting. Jesus lived that kind of strength. He didn’t avoid conflict, but He also wasn’t interested in winning it the way everyone else was. And there’s a difference there that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. He carried power without needing to prove it. That might be the clearest sign that it was real to begin with. Somehow, Jesus knew not only what He could do but when not to do it. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Not conquer it, which is how we usually imagine strength working, but inherit it, which means it comes as a gift rather than something you muscle your way into. I’ll be honest with you, this is one of the Beatitudes I am still learning how to live into, because the bunt does not come naturally to me. My first instinct is usually to swing away, the kind of swing that either clears the fence or leaves you walking back to the dugout wondering what just happened. Restraint is something I have to choose, and I don’t always choose it well. And that might be the clearest sign that it was real all along. Maybe “blessed are the meek” isn’t describing people who have already figured this out so much as it’s inviting the rest of us to keep learning how to choose differently, even when the swing feels more satisfying and even when we have every reason to let it go. The Unlikely Altar for the meek isn’t something you can photograph or circle on a map, because it doesn’t stay still long enough for that. It shows up in the space between what flashes through your mind and what finally comes out of your mouth, in that quiet moment where you realize you could go one way and, almost gently, decide to go another. And more often than we notice, that’s exactly where God meets us, not in the noise of the moment but in the choosing of it, in the restraint that nobody else may ever see but that somehow still changes everything. Blessed are the meek, not because they are weak, but because they know they could swing and choose what matters more. Because sometimes the strongest thing you can do is not swing at all.

Over the years, I have stood at countless gravesides, either as a pastor or as a celebrant, I have learned a profound truth. Every family handles grief differently. And you can see it in the way they stand and in the silence that sits over them like a pall. And even though I have witnessed it many times, I am never ready for the parents. I have watched a mom and dad lower a casket so small it breaks something in the air around it. There are no words. No theology can make sense of it. The flowers on top of the casket seem almost cruel in their brightness. And the dirt - well, it is just dirt. Then there are the parents who stand on the edge of that hole, trying to make sense of the senseless. When I watch the family and friends standing at the grave, I feel the full weight of what it means to be human, which is to say, the full weight of what it means to love something you cannot keep. And somewhere in the back of my mind, in those moments, I hear a question I have never been able to answer, standing there in the grass: What does God say to this? Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them…Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. If you have ever stood at a grave and someone turned to you and said those words, I imagine you might have felt something catch in your throat. Please understand, not because the words are wrong. But because in that moment, with the dirt still fresh and the flowers still bright and the people you love still unable to make their feet move toward the car, comfort feels very far away. And if someone had leaned over and whispered, "Happy are those who mourn,” — you might have said a few words you would regret later, then walked away. And you would have had every right to. But please know that is not what Jesus said. He said makarios . And makarios doesn't mean happy. It never did. It means something closer to — God is with you . Right here at the grave. Right now, in the midst of the hurt and the questions. In the moment when no words can make any sense. Jesus says, Makarios … He doesn’t say, "Let's wait till the grief gets easier. ” He doesn’t say, “Time heals all wounds.” And He doesn’t say, “You will get over this.” He simply says, “Blessed are those that mourn…” The theologian Frederick Dale Bruner said that when Jesus used the word makarios , which is translated to blessed , he was reminding the people that God is with them. It is as if God taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, “I am with you.” And you know what I hold onto every funeral I stand with families? I hold on to the belief, in ways I can’t fully understand or explain, that those words are true. Okay, maybe God doesn’t just whisper them, He proclaims them in a big voice, bigger than the smallest casket even. He states them in such a way that they echo through every graveyard and every tomb. “Even in this moment, especially in this moment, I am with you. I am on your side!” You see, I believe that because the God of Easter is not a God who watches grief from a distance and then sends an email. He is a God who came down, who stood at His own Son's grave. Who knows what those parents are feeling — not as theology, not as doctrine — but from the core of His being. That is what Easter means even at the hardest grave. Not that death didn't happen. Not that the pain disappears with the sunrise. But that the God who walked out of the tomb on Sunday morning did it for exactly this moment. For the parents at the smallest grave. For the widow who can't make her feet move. For everyone standing in the grass, wondering what God could possibly say to this. He says, "I am with you." Even now. Maybe especially now. And I'll tell you something I don't always say out loud. When I get in my Jeep after a graveside service and drive away, I sometimes wonder. And I hope. I hope that God does more than whisper. But then I remember Easter. It doesn't look like holy ground. It doesn't feel like it either. But it is. But maybe that is exactly where the God of Easter shows up. Not after the grief passes. Not when the marker is finally in place, and the grass has grown back, and people have stopped bringing casseroles. But right there in the silence that sits over a family like a pall. In the moment when love has nowhere left to go. The grave is an Unlikely Altar . But Easter was an unlikely morning. On this Easter, may we know, may we remember, may we never forget — we have a God who doesn’t watch from a distance. Our God comes down and stands at the grave. And in a voice bigger than any casket, bigger than any grief, bigger than any question we have ever carried, He proclaims: I am with you. Even now. Maybe especially now. He is risen. And that changes everything.

There is a particular view from the dugout bench that only the not-so-good know well. It's the view from the end of the bench. The splinters you've memorized. The dirt at your feet you've studied longer than the game itself. You can see everything from there — the field, the action, the players who belong — but you are not in it. You are watching. Waiting. Wondering if your name will ever be called. I spent a lot of time on that bench. Last one picked. Wrong end of the dugout. The kid coaches sighed about and teammates learned not to throw to. You don't forget that feeling. The quiet ache of not measuring up. The sense that some people just get it — and you don't. You don't have to play baseball to know that bench. Most of us have sat on some version of it. That's exactly where the people on that hillside were. Not metaphorically but literally. The religious system of the first century had a very clear pecking order — and most of the people who followed Jesus to that hillside weren't anywhere near the top of it. They were fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors. They were the people who'd been told, quietly and not so quietly, that God had higher standards than they were meeting. Then Jesus sat down. And He looked at that crowd — that tired, hoping, half-believing crowd — and said: Blessed . Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the ones who've been pushed around for trying to do right. The Greek word is makarios . And no matter what you have heard, the word does not mean happy. These people weren't happy. They were worn down and wondering if God had forgotten them. Theologian Frederick Dale Bruner called the word, Blessed, as if God is whispering: I'm with you . And that is what Jesus was doing on that hillside. He wasn’t handing out merit badges. He was declaring something that the whole religious system around him refused to say: You are already loved. God is already on your side. Please understand that, in saying that, Jesus was making an extremely radical claim. It was an expensive thing to say. That's the part we can easily miss when we read the Beatitudes, especially when we read them in any other season but Lent and Good Friday. We hear blessed, which makes us feel warm. And maybe we should. But Good Friday asks a question the Beatitudes don't answer on their own: What did it cost Jesus to make that claim? Because grace isn't cheap . It never was, and it never will be. When Jesus said, " Blessed are the poor in spirit " — He knew what was coming. When He looked at that crowd of people the world had written off and said you belong to the kingdom of heaven — He knew the price of that declaration. He knew that He was the One who was going to pay it. Every person He called blessed — every fisherman, every grieving mother, every doubter sitting in the back of that hillside crowd — the grace extended to them had a cost. And Jesus carried it; He carried it alone. To a hill less pastoral than the one where He preached. Then to a cross and eventually to three hours of darkness and a cry that still echoes: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Love isn't cheap. It's the most expensive thing there is. And on Good Friday, we don't look away from that cost; we have to sit with it. We let it be as heavy as it actually was. The cross isn't a footnote to the Sermon on the Mount. It's the answer to it. Jesus could say blessed to the last-picked, the overlooked, the not-good-enough — because He was willing to pay what it cost to make that true. You know, if I am honest, there are still more days than I would like to admit when I feel like I've been sent back to the bench. The world says that I am too old; it loves to remind me of every mistake, every error, I have ever made. Or maybe it's not the world, maybe it’s me telling myself that I am not good enough anymore; that I am damaged goods. Maybe there are days when you feel the same way. The Unlikely Altar just might be the thing I disliked the most — t he bench . Splinters and dirt. The wrong end of the dugout. But maybe that's exactly where we meet the God of Good Friday. Not in the robes and the formality. Not in the times we had it all together. But in the waiting. The wondering. The hurt. The loneliness. The not-quite-good-enough. Shhh…do you hear it? That voice is calling you and me — not because we are good enough, but because Someone chose to pay the price and declare to the world: you matter. I matter. We matter. And can you imagine what would happen if you actually believed that? On this Good Friday, may we know, may we remember, may we never forget that there is nothing you can do — nothing — to ever make God love you less. Because when God sees you, He doesn't see the mistakes you have made. He simply says you are nothing but the best of the best of the best.

Every year, the week of Opening Day , I watch the movie, Field of Dreams . It's a ritual and it is pretty non-negotiable. And because I am going to cry, I watch it alone. When I say cry, I am not talking about some polite tear or two. I am talking about the kind of crying that sneaks up on you even though you know exactly what's coming — because you've seen it more times than you can count and it wrecks you every single time. You probably know the ending. Ray Kinsella, standing in a cornfield in Iowa, realizes the young ballplayer who has walked out of the corn is his father — his father as a young man, before life got complicated, before things went wrong. And after everything — after all the wondering and the waiting and the not knowing — Ray looks at him and says, voice barely holding together: "Hey Dad... wanna have a catch?" I lose it every time -- I mean every single time. Because I know that question. I have carried it my whole life. I just never had anywhere to put it. My father's name was Larry. He left when I was very young — so young that I have no memory of him. I don’t remember his voice or his face or the smell of him or his laugh. I mean he was there (I guess), and then he wasn't, like a foul ball that disappears into the stands and doesn't come back. You can't grieve what you don't understand. And for a long time I didn't understand what was missing. I just knew something was. Baseball found me somewhere in that emptiness. I can't explain it exactly — the game just had a steadiness to it that nothing else did. Maybe it was the long season; the fact there was always another game the next day. Or maybe it is the way failure is built right into the game's DNA, and you're considered great if you succeed three times out of ten. There was grace in that. There was room in that for a kid who was still figuring out what he was made of without a father around to tell him. You know, I never had a catch with Larry. Not once. He was gone before that could happen, and there was no cornfield waiting for us, no magic that could bring him back across the years to stand in my backyard on a summer evening and throw me the ball. For a long time I thought that was simply the wound I would carry. The unanswered question. The catch that never happened. And maybe it is. Some absences don't fill — they just become something you learn to live alongside, like a room in your house you don't go into very often but never quite forget is there. I've written about THE glove before — Larry’s glove . ( Some of you know this story. ) But Opening Day has me reaching for it again, the way you reach for certain things when the season turns. It’s a worn left-handed glove that I found years ago in a box among papers and old certificates — the only thing he left behind besides the questions. It sits in my office now. I see it every single day. It never fit right. It never could — he was a southpaw and I never knew that about him until I slipped my hand inside and felt the wrongness of it. A left-handed glove for a right-handed boy whose father never stayed long enough to find out which hand he threw with. That glove is my Unlikely Altar . The one I didn't choose and can't seem to put away. The one that sits there quietly every morning when I come in to write, or get on the phones, holding all the questions I never got to ask, reminding me of the catch that never happened. But then one afternoon, not so long ago, something happened. I was in the backyard with one of my adult sons. We grabbed gloves and I tossed him a ball. He threw it back. And just like that, without any ceremony or swelling music or ghosts emerging from the corn, we were having a catch. No soundtrack. No magic. Just a dad and his kid, the ball moving back and forth between them in the late afternoon light. That backyard didn't give me my dad. It didn't fix the absence or answer the question I've been carrying since before I knew I was carrying it. But it did something else. It rewrote the ending. It said the story that started with a father who left doesn't have to end there. That I get to choose something different. The catch I never had with Larry became the catch I get to have with my boys. And somewhere in that exchange — the ball leaving my hand, crossing the space between us, landing safe in his glove — I felt something I can only call grace. Grace found in reconciliation. Not with the man I never knew, but with the story itself. With the fact that it didn't break me. With the fact that I'm here, throwing the ball, showing up. Maybe that is why I love Opening Day so much. It is like the Resurrection itself. It gives us the chance to rewrite our story . You see, on Opening Day every single team is in first place. There are no losers yet and no broken hearts. No October collapses to recover from. Just thirty ball clubs and thirty sets of fans walking back in through the gates believing — fully, without reservation — that this is the year. The slate is wiped clean, the thing you were sure was finished turning out to not be finished at all. Hope springs eternal, they say — and they've been saying it for years because it keeps being true. Every Opening Day, the whole beautiful impossible season begins again. It is all about grace and second chances. But more than that, it is like a right-handed boy who spent a lifetime reaching for a catch he thought he'd never have — and then one ordinary afternoon, in a backyard with his son, discovered he already had everything he'd been looking for. Happy Opening Day. Go find someone to have a catch with. I have a feeling somebody out there needs it as much as you do.

I wasn't expecting it, but then again the best moments rarely announce themselves. I posted something on Facebook and, Atticus, one of my favorite young people from my years doing youth ministry in College Station left a comment that made me think. He called his generation the Sandwich Generation — squeezed from both ends, caring for aging parents while still raising their own families — and something that stayed with me long after I put my phone down. I've known this kid since he was a teenager, back in those College Station days when youth ministry meant late nights, bad pizza, and conversations that somehow managed to be both ridiculous and surprisingly deep all at the same time. He was one of those guys you just knew was going to turn out well. And now here he is, grown, living in the middle of exactly the kind of season that doesn't show up on anyone's life plan. Caring for parents who need more than they used to. Raising his own family while trying to hold both ends of the rope without letting either one slip. I looked at his comment for a long time. Not because it surprised me that life had brought him here, but because it reminded me that the hard seasons find everyone eventually. The S andwich Generation doesn't get talked about enough, and when it does it usually gets reduced to logistics. The doctor's appointments and the school pickups. The phone calls from a parent that come at inconvenient times and the homework that still needs checking after a long day. The calendar that never quite has enough room for everything that needs to fit inside it. But the logistics are actually the easier part. So what is the hard part? It's the emotional weight of standing in the middle of two kinds of love at the same time. The love that looks backward toward the people who raised you, watching them need you in ways that feel unfamiliar and perhaps a bit frightening. And the love that looks forward toward the people you are raising, trying to give them enough of you when you are not always sure how much you have left. Both of those loves are real and they are both sometimes demanding. Most days you are doing your best to honor both of them without dropping either one, which is its own kind of exhausting that is very hard to explain to someone who has never stood exactly where you are standing. And here is what I have learned from watching people carry this particular weight. The squeezing feeling — that sense of being needed from both directions at once — is not a sign that something has gone wrong in your life. It is actually a sign of something that has gone very right. You are exhausted because you love people who are worth being exhausted for. The parent who needs more of you than they used to is the same person who showed up for you before you knew enough to be grateful for it. The kids who need more of you than you sometimes feel like you have are the same people who will one day carry your story forward into a world you will never see. The sandwich is not a burden that landed on you by accident. It is the shape that love takes in the middle of a life well lived. And maybe that is the Unlikely Altar hiding in plain sight. Not in a sanctuary or a quiet moment of prayer, though those matter too. But right there in the middle of the calendar that has too much in it. Right there in the phone call from your parent that came at an inconvenient time. Right there in the homework that still needs checking at the end of a long day. Grace has a way of showing up exactly where love is working hardest . And you, standing in the middle of all of it, are standing on holy ground whether it feels that way or not.