Saturday, July 18, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Listen to Gamache and talking with Jesus
Woe to those who plan iniquity,
and work out evil on their couches;
In the morning light they accomplish it
when it lies within their power.
Golf on Saturday morning during the Open, held this year at Royal Birkdale north of Manchester, England. Six hours (or five?) earlier there than here …  I wake up thinking of more than one way to start the day. Randa TV offers a free live feed and those wonderful accents fill up my senses.
But last night, resting in the exhaustion that is inevitable when I spend all day with amazing people – Lyft drivers, cardiac rehab nurses and patients, friends Sheryl and Jason over the online air, an afternoon with Craig who drove me to my last scheduled post-surgery appointment. This one alone together in the room with Dr. Liu, who sent me into this surgical odyssey in March and now in July injects a note of caution about swimming but said that if it doesn’t hurt, then some sleeping on my side in bed is OK. He called me a rockstar and signed my pillow.
OK, Lord. I didn’t quite believe him. But he did look me in the eyes. And memories of Dr. Liu in the hospital … “create in me a clean heart, oh Lord” and his eyes were warm … giving us short-term disability cards for our car year after year … prescribing “miracle” meds that kept my body healthy for several years … now his friendship alongside his expertise. (He’s the rockstar.)
Nothing to it, David. Enjoy the words.
Lunch at Salata near our apartment, which employs two of Lyft driver Walter’s sons from Uruguay, my first and so-far favorite Lyft driver. His wife died in bed, and he was beside her. His third son and two granddaughters live in Uruguay, and his other, younger sons, work in Austin for Salata. Craig has been there before, and we decided to make lunch there. Filled up bowls with incredibly fresh food, wrap it up in a giant cucumber tortilla, and … just try eating it all at once.
No chance. But the flavors sang in my mouth and I ate the second half at home, while I considered the possibility of actually sleeping after a day with friends, clients, drivers and you, Lord. In Illinois Margaret made it to the Crystal Lake noon concert-by-the-water, blues guitar for an hour with our friend Nancy, while Marc’s friend Dan replaced our leaking ancient water heater with a new one, that already brings us joy. Margaret sent me pictures. What a day she had!
Hey, I guess your senses were filling up with all those boys and girls, growing into men and women, that I’m so proud of, and so frustrated by, and so patient with. My people, the children I made and will not forsake.
How about this Hardy haiku, Lord, that Chris in India shared with me the other day?
Where do you find joy
In a forest of suffering …
Joy is the soil.
I think of the Mississippi Delta and its famous fifteen feet of black, rich loam crumbling with promise in your hand, left by the Mississippi River over centuries and then mostly destroyed in a few decades. Careless cotton farmers. Where have all the flowers gone? Well, that’s on us. But still …
I watched that soil dying, David, and wept. My children’s insistence on accomplishment, on getting rich, serving up unpalatable food on plantations built on pride and denial, so many shoulders bent and broken, black people and black loam, who cares about the future? Sinners. The movie has it right.
The pillars of the earth have never been lodged on porticoes facing every direction except east.
But still, even now, in just a little while, the loam can return. I am stronger than life, David. I love you. I have always loved the people, even when you drank the poison and poisoned the earth, and bent the backs of others.
I haven’t loved them. Or myself, when I forget or even purposely take advantage. I want to fight back. Then it’s not long before I forget the “soil” I walk on and am growing in.
There you go. Joy is the soil. I am the black, nutrient-filled loam that you and all your brothers and sisters are planted in.
But the forest of suffering, it’s more real than real for so many. Like the Gaza kid who determines his future with a soccer ball, nothing left but stumps of both legs and just one arm. Who am I to say anything much right now? I’m not suffering, and they are. I am bound and determined to keep my mouth shut about how much I care about their pain, when I mostly do nothing.
Stay bound. And stay awake, David. I know y’all better than you know yourselves.
Louise Penny’s ongoing creation – Gamache, the Quebec Sureté genius who solves murders and absorbs the residue left alongside the solution, teaches those willing to listen, the “soil” of being a detective. Four words to practice sometimes saying to others, and to always remember, especially in your own particular darkness at 3 am.
I don’t know.
I need help.
I’m sorry.
I was wrong.
Like the soil, these words endure, and they promise to minimize denial in me and encourage hope in those enduring pain, suffering, loss. Jesus, what do you think?
IT’S TRUE FOR ME …
I don’t know.
I need help.
I’m sorry.
I was wrong.
If it’s true for me, David, it’s also true for you. And in my more honest moments, I don’t know. I do need help. I am sorry. And I was wrong. Your theology allows for all of this, and even if it didn’t, how could I have created you in my image and not been there myself?
OK, Lord. You sound like you really mean it. But my “theology” often takes me into the throne room of a lofty, image-bearing Maker who makes no mistakes, who loves his children from a distance (just wait till we get to heaven, and then we’ll all be fine), punishes us sometimes but who is always right.
OK … I see … no wonder I have trouble with temptation to be judge and executioner of so many in my mind. I think I might have the Image I’m made from … wrong.
So. Say it again. About me this time, and our relationship.
I don’t know I need help I’m sorry … I was wrong! If I say it fast enough, I can get it all out before I even begin to defend my own perfection.
Our friend St. Paul’s “perfection in weakness” – that idea didn’t just come from him. From me, and my own rich experience of being your Father. Don’t ever be afraid to tell me what you see. I can learn from you, David, far more quickly even than you can learn from me. I was begotten, not made, they said. Ex nihilo … out of nothing. No thing created the creator … all the more reason to stay alert, watchful, patient with my own mistakes so you can watch and learn.
I feel a spiritual plow breaking some old dead soil in me, changing the way I thought I knew you. I think I know what lies beneath. Always always, you have called it joy. Can I borrow that word for my life-long day?
Of course. It belongs to you. It’s rich. Thank you for sharing it with me …
I will not contend or cry out,
nor will anyone hear my voice in the streets.
A bruised reed I will not break,
a smoldering wick I will not quench,
and I will bring justice to victory.
And in my name all of you will hope.
(Micah 2, Psalm 10, 2 Corinthians 5, Matthew 12)
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