The Cheer

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.

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Something Made You Stop

By Leaving a Little More Peace Behind. • April 26, 2026

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.

Cold Fries

By On Shalom, Cold Fries, and the Ache that Might Be Holy • April 19, 2026

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.

The Bunt

By The Strength to Hold Back • April 10, 2026

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.

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