I filled out my bracket
with confidence and care—
but heaven is not won
by predictions.
The Judge does not consult
my rankings.
He only asks:
What did you do
with the grace
you were given?
Walk with the Paradoxical Pastoralist—where Laudato si', honest questions, and Lectio Divina meet.
I filled out my bracket
with confidence and care—
but heaven is not won
by predictions.
The Judge does not consult
my rankings.
He only asks:
What did you do
with the grace
you were given?
I say I am doing well—
and perhaps I am.
But Christ asks a deeper question
than grammar can answer.
Not “How are you?”
but
“Do you want to be well?”
Life writes its plans in pencil,
God answers them in ink.
We promise perfect faith—
unless the world interrupts.
But grace waits patiently
somewhere along the road
between prayer
and home.
Parents learn the strangest truth of all:
children are not merely born to them—
they are born for them.
For a child can open blind eyes
more surely than clay and water,
and teach a grown man to see
the Kingdom of God.
I stood behind the pew in prayer,
Quite proud of how I placed me there;
Yet God prefers the sinners plea
To any righteous position be.
While nations rage and bombs above
Proclaim the ancient law of shove,
Christ whispers still what wars remove—
The world is only saved by love.
I raced to meet the Lord in haste,
My charity left on the interstate;
For Christ I drove—but truth revealed:
The road to grace is slowly sealed.
The law I feared as chains of stone
Was love I’d never fully known;
Christ did not break the law in two—
He showed what love could make it do.
My ledger swells with borrowed grace,
Yet still I claim another’s place;
Lord wipe the books my pride has kept—
For mercy paid my endless debt.
My fist once preached a sermon loud,
A dent beneath a holy shroud;
But Christ walked calm through rage and cry—
And taught my anger how to die.