I’d intended to take the remainder of 2024 away from here. It’d been an exhausting year by July—the loss of a dear family friend, both mothers taking bad falls, just to name two—and little did I know what the latter half of that year would bring—deaths, restructuring. Entering 2025, I figured by Lent or spring to be back here regularly in my little corner of the internet.
Of course, by then there had been an election, a new administration, and policies and actions that came daily and which I found, by and large, disturbing and repulsive. I do what I can to keep day to day politics out of what I post here. Only if it directly involves faith or Scripture do I even consider it, and then carefully. Today’s outrages and dramas have a habit of losing meaning when they fade into the past, and so too do attempts to discuss them in light of the aforementioned faith and Scripture.
The year of 2025 brought a new struggle for me. Along with my own directive not to chase the latest outrage came the sense that many of the items that appeared in the daily news feed were ones that demanded comment. When the stranger amongst us is being arrested, imprisoned, even deported without due process and with a measure of celebration, it feels as though the command to remember that we too have been strangers should lead one to speak. When violence is wielded as a tool of the state, it’s hard not to put something to paper in memory of the One who was killed by the reigning power of the time (killed because they were afraid of him).
Yet, at the same time, it was all too much to discuss. It wasn’t a desire to avoid it (though events and concerns at our family level have taken priority in my mind and heart). It was a feeling that I wasn’t sure how to write without a rant. As many social media or blog posts show, there’s very little skill needed to put rage into word. I could spin half a year’s worth, probably, in the time it’s taking me to write this post. It’s a lot more difficult to take the moment, and hold it in hand with the story of grace and faith and love and attempt to make some sense out of it.
Certainly, there was the option to write without reference to or with very vague remark about current affairs. But, doing so did and does feel like putting my theological head in the sand while repeating that this too shall pass. It will, of course, as all things and moments do, but of some moments history asks later if we spoke or stayed silent.
So, I spent last year, apart from a couple of posts, struggling with how to say what I felt Scripture compelled me to say. There are false starts and drafts that start strong to fade out after a hundred words saved from last year. Some were sermons attempting to disguise themselves as devotions. Others were ideas for which I found no words to articulate, at least at that time.
What this means is that much has happened in this country that I have discussed in prayer but not put on paper. There’s no great audience out there expecting me to speak, nor am I under any obligation to do so. But my conscience remains bothered when I think of all that has happened and that I did not in some way say in writing that they were wrong. And, more so, leave a space where I didn’t attempt to speak hope.
So, going forward, my desire for the days ahead is to find the words or at least some words to say in light of the current climate. I may not manage to do so every week, and most certainly won’t do so in response to every wave in the deluge of news that greets us each morning and evening. But, I’m going to try.
It is likely that much of it won’t be good and some of it will be said with less grace and love that I want. But they’ll be here, attempts instead of silence.
And, perhaps, they’ll help some of you find words that lead to hope, and faith, and, always, love.