FEBRUARY 3, 2026

 

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

― Winston S. Churchill

EXODUS 31-33

7Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. 8And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. 9As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. 10Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. 11The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.(33:7-11)

MATTHEW 22:23-46

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^c 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^d 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

JOURNAL 

Yesterday was a tough word, and as tough as God can be, Scripture is just as full of His compassion, gentleness, and understanding. Even though God is furious with the Israelites for making the golden calf, He continues to engage Moses in relationship and conversation. He allows Moses to voice his fears and struggles, and God actually relents and changes the course of His initial punishment.

That is the relational heart of God, and it is exactly what Jesus affirms when He answers the Pharisees. God wants our heart, fully and honestly, and He wants us to love others with that same love. God holds a standard of perfection while possessing a heart of deep love. Often those two seem impossible to reconcile within the same being, yet that is the miracle and grace of God. That grace shows up not only in the grand moments of redemption, but in the smallest, quietest moments of everyday life.

I have often wondered what great cause I am fighting for in my life. There are times when I wish I lived inside an epic moment of history, because the day-to-day can feel ordinary or even trivial. I think that is why I love war movies. In them, every choice matters, every word carries weight, and every moment feels meaningful, especially when life or death is at stake.

One of the most poignant moments in Darkest Hour is when Churchill rides the train and speaks with ordinary people while standing on the brink of a decision that could change the course of history. What he discovers is that the heart of the fight exists everywhere, even in the words and courage of a young girl. Inspiration often comes from the most unexpected places. That scene always reminds me of Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life, of leaving “footprints on the sands of time,” so that another, seeing them, might take heart again.

That is why every day, every moment matters. I am writing history every single day. How I respond, how I fight, how I trust, how I persist will become an example to someone, whether that is me, a friend, a spouse, a child, a student, or even a stranger. The way I handle small moments of adversity sets the standard for how I will face larger ones.

Daily victories are not small at all. Doing something hard when it would be easier to avoid it. Learning something new instead of staying comfortable. Choosing to forgive, or having the humility to ask for forgiveness. Pursuing honesty and truth even when it costs something. These are monumental wins. They shape the soul, strengthen the heart, and prepare us for battles we cannot yet see.

I know the big, epic moments will come. But the small victories of today may very well be the inspiration that fuels tomorrow’s defining battles, whether that is for a job, a marriage, a child, a calling, a country, or even life itself. No moment is trivial. No effort is wasted. Every contest, every frustration, every faithful step forward matters. 

10And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 PETER 5:10-11

FEBRUARY 2, 2026

 “Life is unfair to everyone in different aspects. Someone is emotionally broke, someone is financially broke. Just that, while complaining always remember there are millions still struggling to be you or what you are.”

― Nitya Prakash

EXODUS 29-30

10“Bring the bull to the front of the tent of meeting, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head. 11Slaughter it in the Lord’s presence at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 12Take some of the bull’s blood and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and pour out the rest of it at the base of the altar. 13Then take all the fat on the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them, and burn them on the altar. 14But burn the bull’s flesh and its hide and its intestines outside the camp. It is a sin offering.^b(29:10-14)

MATTHEW 22:1-22

8“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14“For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

JOURNAL 

The unfairness of life is something I have wrestled with for as long as I can remember. I have often tried to use faith or spirituality as a way to soften it or even avoid it. If I’m honest, much of my faith at different points has been driven by a desire for protection from pain, from loss, from uncertainty, from what might happen next. But when I actually sit with Scripture, that illusion fades. The Bible never suggests life will be fair. Good people suffer. Bad people sometimes thrive. Everyone carries a burden of some kind. Jesus never promises to remove hardship. Instead, He tells us to count the cost and to follow Him anyway.

God never asks me to carry tomorrow. He does not give me the strength to solve what is coming or the clarity to control outcomes. He gives me energy, grace, and courage for today. When I try to live ahead of myself by anticipating pain, rehearsing failure, or fearing loss, I exhaust strength I was never meant to have yet. Faith is not about predicting or preventing suffering. It is about trusting that today I am fully equipped. Tomorrow will have its own provision, but that belongs to God, not me.

This changes how I understand the promise of faith. The gift is not protection from pain but relationship with the Creator. He gives enough strength to tell the truth today, enough love to respond with grace today, and enough discipline to choose what is right today. He does not overwhelm me with the weight of a lifetime. He asks for faithfulness in the narrow space of now.  

Scripture makes it clear that faithfulness is not necessarily rewarded on our timeline. Hebrews reminds me that many lived faithfully, suffered deeply, and never saw what they hoped for. And yet they were commended. Their lives mattered not because of visible success, but because they trusted God one day at a time. That reframes everything. I do not need to see the ending. I only need to live today well. If my life plays even a small role in God’s greater story, then today is where that role is played.

God does however, give me moments of joy, beauty, and meaning each day, not by removing hard things, but by meeting me in them. He is bigger than pain, failure, and unfairness. Joy therefore is not the absence of the hard but rather the peace that comes in facing difficulty honestly in love and persistence. 

 36Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were put to death by stoning;^e they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

HEBREWS 11:36-40

FEBRUARY 1, 2026

  “This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” 

― Alan W. Watts

EXODUS 27-28

9“Make a courtyard for the tabernacle. The south side shall be a hundred cubits^c long and is to have curtains of finely twisted linen, 10with twenty posts and twenty bronze bases and with silver hooks and bands on the posts. 11The north side shall also be a hundred cubits long and is to have curtains, with twenty posts and twenty bronze bases and with silver hooks and bands on the posts.(27:9-11)

MATTHEW 21:23-46

28“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

29“ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

30“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

31“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

JOURNAL 

God’s gift of imagination is not a set of blueprints I am supposed to force into reality. It is more like a series of glimpses, hints of beauty and goodness that remind me there is meaning ahead without telling me exactly how to get there. Plans and dreams are invitations to hope, not concrete instructions to be muscled into existence. They lift my eyes, but they do not replace my feet. I can only walk in the ground that exists, and that ground is today.

It strikes me that when God gave instructions for the tabernacle he was specific, detailed, careful. Yet the people still had to build it one post, one curtain, one hook at a time. No one could construct the whole courtyard in a single moment. Obedience was always present tense. The vision was complete, but the work was daily. In the same way, I may be given a sense of calling or direction, but my part is always the next faithful action, not the finished structure.

Jesus’ story of the two sons makes this plain. What matters is not the polished yes spoken in advance, but the muddy feet that actually walk into the vineyard today. A future promise of obedience means nothing if it never turns into present movement. Faith has hands and legs. It shows up.

So the question is less about what grand life I am constructing and more about what simple act of obedience sits in front of me right now. If I wake up grateful for the day as a gift from God, my actions naturally bend toward honoring him. If I wake up absorbed in regret, envy, or self-made agendas, my steps drift the other way. This is not complicated theology. It is the plain logic of the heart directing the feet.

Dreaming about tomorrow is not wrong. It is God’s kindness letting me glimpse that goodness awaits. But those glimpses are meant to be surrendered back to him so that I am free to engage fully with what is in my hands. The real work, and strangely the real play, is complete attention to the present task. When I am wholly engaged with what I am doing now, obedience stops feeling like heavy labor and starts feeling like joyful participation in something alive.

To hear the word and not do it is like seeing myself clearly for a moment and then choosing to forget who I am. To do it is to remain present, to let today shape me through action. Not try, not intend, not promise later, but actually go into the vineyard now.

I cannot build the whole future courtyard today. I can set the next post. I can hang the next curtain. I can take the next honest, obedient step. The imagined future is God’s promise. This day is my place to respond. When I treat today as both gift and playground, a field where obedience and joy meet, the burden of forcing outcomes disappears.

All I am asked to do is what the Father says today and then to do it.

22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

JAMES 1:22-25

JANUARY 31, 2026

  The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination. How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like...” 

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

EXODUS 25-26

1The Lord said to Moses, 2“Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.(25:1-2)

MATTHEW 21:1-22

12Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13“It is written,”he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’^e but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’^f ”

14The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

16“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.

“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,

“ ‘From the lips of children and infants

you, Lord, have called forth your praise’^g ?”

17And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.

JOURNAL 

Today becomes less intimidating when I stop trying to live an entire lifetime at once and instead receive it as an offering, like the one God asked of Israel, given not under pressure but from a heart that is willing. The future stretches far beyond my sight and that is exactly where it belongs, held by God and not by me. What rests in my hands is this single day, this chance to answer the quiet invitation to live truthfully, love generously, and walk in obedience even when it cuts against my comfort.

C.S. Lewis wrote that true surrender to God must sometimes be done in the absence of inclination, even in defiance of it. That exposes how shallow my idea of surrender can be when it is tied only to what feels good or natural. Real obedience may ache. It may look like clearing the tables in my own heart the way Jesus cleared the temple, overturning the places where fear, pride, and self protection have set up profitable little markets. Yet what follows that upheaval is healing and praise. The lame walk, the blind see, and children sing. When what is false is driven out, what is whole is welcomed in.

The temple scene feels like a vision of what a single day can become when it is surrendered. Not a marketplace of anxieties about thirty or forty imagined years, but a house of prayer, alive with restoration and joy. That kind of day is not created by long range control but by present obedience. God asked for offerings from those whose hearts prompted them to give. He still does. The gift is not my projected future. The gift is my willing today.

When I ask what I am aspiring to create, the answer cannot be a distant, polished version of my life that I am trying to force into existence. It must be this day lived fully before God. Jesus had a mission, but he also walked step by step in trust of the Father. Moses built the tabernacle according to a pattern shown to him, piece by piece, not all at once. The path of faith is always walked in present tense. Without a burning yes to today, I drift into comfort and avoidance. With it, even small acts become holy work.

Failures and disappointments try to convince me that my best days are behind me or too far ahead to matter now. Christ’s cleansing of the temple stands against that lie. It is a wakeup call that hope is not stored in some future rescue but activated in present surrender. Each day can be epic in its authenticity when I choose truth over hiding, love over withdrawal, courage over ease.

Working with all my heart as unto the Lord does not require certainty about tomorrow. It requires faithfulness right now. Tomorrow is surrendered to God. Today is entrusted to me. In that trust there is surprising freedom to create, to confront what must be confronted, to rejoice like the children in the courts, and to obey even when obedience costs something.

A lifetime may feel impossible, but a day offered freely is not. When this day is lived as prayer, as offering, as honest service to Christ, it is enough. And somehow, in God’s hands, a string of surrendered todays becomes the very future I was never meant to control.

23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

COLOSSIANS 3:23-24

JANUARY 30, 2026

  “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave...Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. ” 

― Henry David Thoreau

EXODUS 22-24

21“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

22“Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.(22:21-22)

MATTHEW 20:17-34

24When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. 25Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

JOURNAL 

Today is its own life. It is not a waiting room for tomorrow or a shadow of yesterday. What I do with this day is the only place where love can actually move, where goodness can actually spread. When I let worry about the future take over, I drift away from the people and needs right in front of me. Ambition and plans are useful, but they must never replace the simple calling to care, serve, and notice.

The words about protecting the vulnerable and the call of Jesus to choose the place of a servant both pull me back to this moment. Greatness is not somewhere out ahead of me. It is hidden inside ordinary acts of mercy and humility offered now. Every interaction is a chance either to add light to the world or to leave shadows untouched.

I write these things down because I forget how sacred an ordinary day really is. When life is difficult I want to escape it, and when life is easy I am tempted to coast through it. Both steal the same treasure. Today holds the opportunity to connect heart to heart, to encourage someone who is weary, to stand beside someone who feels alone. That is how the spirit of goodness moves outward and the spirit of darkness loses ground.

Freedom is not permission to drift into myself. It is the power to give myself away in love. To love my neighbor is to treat this day as precious and active, to spend it building connection instead of postponing it. If I want to see more light in the world, it begins with fully living the life that is in front of me right now.

13You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh^a ; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”^b 

GALATIANS 5:13-15