Modern culture tends to divide suffering into two categories: meaningless tragedy to be escaped as quickly as possible, or inspirational hardship packaged into motivational slogans. Neither view is particularly honest. The older vision was harsher, stranger, and, I think, truer. Scripture repeatedly returns to the wilderness. Humanity is expelled east of Eden, back to the wilderness from whence God had moved them. Israel wanders in the desert. Prophets flee into lonely places. Christ is driven into the wilderness before beginning His ministry. Even after the Resurrection, the Christian life is never described as a return to comfortable innocence, but as a pilgrimage, exile, endurance, carrying a cross. This is deeply inconvenient theology. Most of us would prefer God to reveal Himself through uninterrupted prosperity, emotional certainty, and obvious answers. Yet the Biblical pattern suggests that comfort often obscures what adversity reveals. In the Book of Hosea, God says something almost alarming: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” The wilderness is not described merely as punishment, but as severe mercy. A stripping away. A removal of illusions. Civilization fills our ears with noise; the desert leaves a man alone with reality. That does not make suffering good in itself. The Bible is far too honest for that. Death remains an enemy. Grief remains grief. Christ weeps at Lazarus’ tomb even knowing resurrection is moments away, because he feels the pain of those who don’t know. But Christianity has always insisted on a dangerous possibility: affliction may become revelation. That idea echoes powerfully through the music of Daniel Amos, particularly in the song The Uses of Adversity:
That is not the voice of someone glorifying misery. It is the voice of someone recognizing that certainty is not the same thing as faith. Faith that has never wrestled with doubt is often merely inherited confidence. Untested assumptions. A house never examined because no storm has yet arrived. The modern world tends to imagine skepticism as difficult and belief as easy. Yet existentially, the opposite is often true. Cynicism demands very little from us. Hope demands endurance. Love demands vulnerability. Faithfulness demands persistence long after emotional reassurance has vanished. Steve Taylor’s Harder to Believe Than Not To puts it:
That last line lands because it rejects sentimental religion. There are seasons when faith does not feel triumphant or emotionally satisfying. There are nights where God seems hidden behind thunderclouds, where prayers echo back unanswered, where one kneels in Gethsemane wondering whether abandonment itself has become the final truth. And yet Christianity stubbornly places its central revelation not in worldly victory, but in crucifixion. Not the avoidance of suffering. Transformation through suffering. The Cross does not teach us to love pain. It teaches us that love can endure pain without being conquered by it. The distinction matters. The Dark Night of the Soul, by 16th-century Spanish mystic Juan de la Cruz, is not, as people think, about depression. It’s about God coming to meet his beloved in the darkness. It’s a poem about faith, even in the darkest times. There is a great danger in romanticizing adversity. Some wounds are simply wounds. Some tragedies remain mysteries this side of eternity. The Book of Job exists largely to demolish simplistic explanations for suffering. The friends who insist they understand exactly why Job suffers are rebuked by God in the end. Sometimes the only honest answer is silence. But silence is not the same thing as meaninglessness. Again and again, both Scripture and human experience suggest that adversity can uncover truths prosperity conceals. Hardship exposes idols. Failure humiliates pride. Grief clarifies love. Mortality forces the soul to ask whether anything eternal exists beneath the noise and appetite of ordinary life. And strangely enough, many who have walked through great suffering emerge not emptied of wonder, but more capable of perceiving it. The wilderness that first appeared barren becomes charged with presence. As another Daniel Amos lyric says:
That may be the deepest lesson adversity teaches: reality is not divided neatly between sacred moments and godless ones. The holy may remain hidden even in sorrow, exile, uncertainty, and failure. Perhaps especially there. The old sacramental imagination understood this better than we do. It saw “sermons in stones,” holiness in ordinary bread and wine, traces of eternity in strangers’ faces, in rainstorms, in laughter, in tears. Not because suffering itself is sacred, but because God has never confined Himself to comfort. We spend much of our lives trying to escape vulnerability, limitation, and dependence. Yet those very things may be what crack open the illusion of self-sufficiency and make a genuine encounter possible. The wilderness hurts because it removes distractions. But once the noise dies down, one begins to hear things otherwise drowned out. A voice in the silence. Water in dry places. The sound of one’s own soul. And perhaps, faintly at first, the presence of God Himself.
In His Name, Mikal
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I’d been browsing homes on Redfin for months, and the results in our price range were underwhelming. But this house! This yard! This magical tree! I started fantasizing about our future, tree-saturated existence. If I were going to give up year-round beach weather and my friends and family, then gosh darn it, there better be trees!
And now we’re here. The house is real. The life is real. The walks to school and work and the lake and library are real. The leaves and sunlight, and sense of home are real. Two Months Ago Wind whipped across the baseball field, and a flash of lightning struck in the distance. “We’re calling it,” the team mom reported to the parents in the bleachers. We schlepped our field dinners and my son’s baseball gear back to the car as thunder echoed. I was happy for the shortened game, happy to get home before bedtime, happy to have more time to prep for my first art show that would take place the following day. At home, the wind howled, and rumbles of thunder lasted longer than I thought possible. The kids begged to watch a show, and I added last-minute price stickers to my art prints. My husband was performing in a local community theater show, so it was just me and the kids until after bedtime. The thunder progressively grew louder, longer, and closer to the flashes of lightning. Then a thunderclap pierced the sky at the same time I heard a sickening crack, crack, crash, boom. Heart thumping, I gingerly opened the back door. In the twilight dark, I could barely see that a massive branch of our beloved tree had crashed down across the yard, onto the fence, and into the neighbor’s yard.
I am a sucker for anxiety, for making up what-ifs and fears of making a mistake. This physical fear sank into my bones. A pit pounded in my stomach. The word harrowing kept coming to mind. Are we safe here? In our own home? I herded the kids into my room and told them to put on a funny show while I called the power company and the non-emergency police line for a welfare check on the neighbors. I was embarrassed to tell the dispatcher that I didn’t know the neighbor’s address or last name — that I was too scared to venture out in the storm and check on them myself. When my husband finally got home from his show, I breathed a sigh of relief, but the pit in my stomach remained. Are we safe here?
“It’s a crying shame, but this tree has got to come down. It’s in imminent danger of falling on the house. Could be five minutes, could be two years.” Imminent danger of falling on the house. This is not something you can unhear. And though we’d been staying at the house, blissfully ignorant, this was a risk we weren’t willing to take. We scheduled the full removal, and I walked around in a daze. Insurance covered the cleanup of the branch that fell but wouldn’t cover any of the tree removal. So now we had to pay — a lot — to destroy my favorite part of our home. This was a Wednesday. My in-laws were en route from San Diego and supposed to stay with us — at our now death-trap house. The tree removal wouldn’t start until the following Wednesday. A week, an Airbnb generously paid for my in-laws, and a sleepover at a friend's house later, the tree guys came with their lifts and chainsaws, and crane. Buzz of chainsaw bite of blades thump of falling branches dappled light succumbs to sky By this point, my desire to sleep in my own bed outweighed my grief over the tree. By Wednesday night, they’d hacked off all the branches and leaves, and our yard was a graveyard of logs and sawdust. I almost drove past my house because I didn’t recognize it without the cradle of leaves. No more dappled shade and dancing shadows. No more magic. So much sky. Sky I didn’t want. Sky I didn’t ask for. Sky I resented for its sunset beauty.
I didn’t want to look at the bright side. I didn’t want a blank slate of a yard. I didn’t want to start over. I wanted to be sad. I still want to be sad. Moments of gratitude find me anyway. I attended a writing workshop on the Art of Noticing. The facilitator asked us to take a photo of something close by. I noticed the window in front of my son’s desk in the office. Green leaves rustled in the breeze, vines crept up the side of the house, lilac trees bordered our side yard.
We held a goodbye ceremony for the tree. We shared favorite memories and gave it one last hug. We marked the moment. Tears fell as we remembered the good.
My mom and I planted flowers in the empty beds. I am planning to paint flowers on the back fence with the support of artsy and non-artsy-but-willing-to-help friends.
media is filled with camping trips, lake days, backyard barbecues, and smiling family photos. It's easy to believe that everyone else is living the "perfect summer." But the truth is, summer isn't the same for everyone. For some, it's a welcome breath of fresh air. The pace slows. The evenings stretch a little longer. There is time to hike a favorite trail, watch the sunset over Lake Coeur d'Alene, listen to birds sing with a morning cup of coffee, or simply enjoy the incredible beauty God has woven into North Idaho. For others, summer can feel surprisingly lonely. The routines that once anchored the week disappear. School is out. Friends travel. Schedules become unpredictable. Kids miss classmates. Adults miss the steady rhythm of work or regular gatherings. Some carry grief that feels especially noticeable during seasons when everyone else seems to be celebrating. Wherever you find yourself this summer, God meets you there. One of the beautiful things about Scripture is that it never asks us to pretend. God welcomes our joy, our exhaustion, our gratitude, our uncertainty, and everything in between. Every season has gifts. Every season has challenges. And through every season, God faithfully walks beside us. That's why community matters so deeply. At First Pres, our LOVE1st mission reminds us that we love because God first loves us. God's love isn't something we earn or manufacture. We receive it first—and then it overflows into the way we care for one another. We were never meant to navigate life's seasons alone. Whether your summer feels full or empty, exciting or ordinary, there is always room at God's table and within this community. As summer continues, consider creating a few intentional rhythms that help you notice God's presence and stay connected with others. Rhythms don't have to be complicated. Often, it's the small, repeated practices that quietly shape our hearts. Your At-Home Summer Rhythm Challenge. Choose three rhythms to practice for the remainder of the summer. Ask yourself: What helps me experience God's love? What helps me share that love with others? Some ideas include:
These aren't tasks to complete perfectly. They're invitations to slow down, notice God's grace, and remember that love grows through intentional presence. This summer, may we make room for both celebration and honesty. May we notice God's fingerprints in mountain views, conversations around the dinner table, laughter with children, quiet moments of prayer, and even the places where we long for deeper connection. Whatever this season holds for you, know this: you do not walk it alone. Summer Rhythm Breath Prayer Breathe in: I’m loved by You. Breathe out: Help me live Your love. May each breath remind us that we are deeply loved by God—and because of that love, we are free to love one another.
In His Name, Kierstie
For amber waves of grain
What a magnificent array of sights we enjoy from the wheat fields of the Palouse to the corn fields in Iowa, and hay growing absolutely everywhere. When the wind is just right, the undulating waves of grain are a spectacle to behold. For purple mountain majesties On any given sunset evening, the purple mountain majesties can be seen from Glacier, the Tetons, the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Baker, and so many more mountain ranges that we can only describe as majestic. Above the fruited plain The citrus crops in Florida, the nut trees in California, pineapples in Hawaii, and the peppers grown in New Mexico are cherished all over the world. Our diverse climate allows us to enjoy a cornucopia of produce that has all come from our very own fruited plains. America, America There is no place quite like it. In America’s very short history, we have achieved advances in technology, medicine, education, athletics, the arts, and cultural enrichment like no other place on the planet. God shed His grace on thee Visit the Appalachian Trail, the Grand Canyon, the mighty Mississippi River, the Everglades, Niagara Falls, Death Valley, or any of our magnificent cities populated with people who have history and stories to tell of family roots that began in so many other parts of the world. Surely God did shed His grace on America as a land of opportunity to be shared by all of us. And crown thy good with Brotherhood Perhaps more than any other nation on earth, America has the unique opportunity to demonstrate that the rights and freedoms guaranteed by our founding documents can truly be realized. Just imagine crowning all the good that America has to offer with Brotherhood. From Sea to Shining Sea In His name, Craig |
