Romans 8: 1-13 (links validated 2/18/26a)

The famous Jewish refugee Anne Frank wrote in her diary about her diary. It hints that she expected to die before she got old. In her entry she noted, “I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for giving me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me.”

Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue’s Khosru is an Iranian refugee who attends school in Oklahoma. His description of a Persian rugs’ flaw sounds a bit like Paul’s description of the mind of death. Khosru writes about Persian rugs: “No matter which grade or pattern — no matter even if the greatest grandmother in the whole world wove it — every rug has a Persian flaw. “The artisans of Kashan and Isfahan and Tabriz and Mashhad knew that only God was perfect — the only one who could listen to and speak the perfect truth. To remind themselves, and to show their humility, they would purposefully include one missed knot in every rug, one imperfection.” Khosru further muses, “I think it’s pretty funny that people would mistake themselves for perfect if they didn’t include a hole in a rug. But that’s the whole point of the Persian flaw — it’s there to remind you of all the flaws, and even the flaw that makes you unable to see them in the first place.”

Backrooms, the psychological horror movie made by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Preston, is turning out to be the unlikely hit of the summer. Without belaboring the point or giving too many spoilers, the premise is something like this: We see the story unfold through the perspective of Clark, a failed architect and failing furniture store owner. Clark is a divorced man with a drinking problem who has been living in his store because he has nowhere else to go. And yet he is resolutely unable to grasp, really grasp, that he is the one who got himself into this predicament. He blames everyone but himself. One thing leads to another, and Clark falls into an alternate dimension in the basement of his store, room after room of featureless yellow corridors lit by buzzing fluorescent lights. There are monsters in this suburban maze, but these monsters come from what you bring with you: your burdens, fears, and shame – and yes, your sins. In the end (spoiler alert), Clark chooses to stay in the Backrooms, where he can be just as monstrous as he wants to be. He tells his therapist, who by the end of the movie has been pulled into the Backrooms with him, “I don’t think I want to change. I like it in here.” His therapist replies, “I can’t save anyone. It’s just not up to me.”...

In his book, A Rumor of War, Phillip Caputo writes about how his training as a Marine affected his mindset. A year before going through bootcamp, he notes, “I would have seen the rolling Virginia countryside through the eyes of an English major who enjoyed reading the Romantic poets. “Now I had the clearer, more pragmatic vision of an infantry officer. Landscape was no longer scenery to me, it was terrain, and I judged it for tactical rather than for aesthetic value. Having been drilled constantly to look for concealment and cover, I could see dips and folds in a stretch of ground that would have appeared utterly flat to a civilian. If I saw a hill –‘high ground’ – I automatically began planning how to attack or defend it …”

Mary* was the victim of almost unspeakable childhood abuse. Her (ostensibly Christian) father, brothers, and a man for whose family members she babysat already sexually abused her. Their ways with her were marked by death, hostility to God and obstinate refusal to submit to God’s law. Those men scarred her physically, emotionally and spiritually. Their abuse of Mary distorted her mind and view of the world. God, however, graciously asserted God’s control over Mary, her mind and view of the world. God produced physical, emotional and spiritual health in her. Her whole person bore deep scars for the rest of her life. Yet God so graciously filled Mary’s life that she found peace not just with God, but also, in varying degrees with the men who’d so horrifically abused her.

Albert Camus’ novel, The Fall, introduces its readers to a successful man named Jean-Baptiste. He says, “I was altogether in harmony with life; my company was in demand … to tell the truth, I looked upon myself as something of a superman.” A walk home through Paris’ streets one night, however, rattles his conceit. Just after Jean-Baptiste passes a young woman standing on a bridge, he hears her fall into the water. However, he doesn’t stop, even when he hears her call out for help. He simply returns to his home and refuses to report the incident to anyone. Afterwards, Jean-Baptiste wrestles with his failure to try to save the drowning woman...

During a recent Olympic Games, the Huffington Post ran an article about the brain-training secrets of the athletes. Gold medal champions know how to train their minds like they train their bodies. Using mental exercises, they’ve learned to tune out distractions, reduce stress and focus on staying on top of their game. Using mental imagery, they visualize their performance in exacting detail, for studies have found that mental practice is almost as effective as physical training. Olympians meditate to calm themselves down. When they get into a “flow mindset,” they say they’re “in the zone.”...

Back in Kindergarten, maybe you did a craft in school as a Christmas present for your parents. Perhaps it was a papier mâché ornament for the Christmas tree. Years later maybe you took another look at that ornament: it’s not round by a long shot but kind of funky-shaped. There are clumps of glue here and there and several places where your paintbrush failed to make contact, leaving bare spots where you can still read the classified section of the newspaper you used. But when you handed your folks that trinket, their eyes shined. They took the gold and crystal Saks Fifth Avenue tree ornament that Aunt Louis had bought in New York City and stuck it on the back of the tree so that your ornament could be front and center. “Do you like it, Daddy?” you maybe asked. “Honey, it’s just perfect.” When you are in your father’s love, that’s the kind of answer you always hear. “Do you love me, Father?” “Honey, you’re just perfect.” In Christ it will always be so.

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It isn’t a Christian movie and it is not about a character who seems to have much religion of any kind. Still, there is something so striking about the end of the movie American Beauty when the lead character—his voice coming from beyond the grave as it turned out—expresses a kind of gratitude for life that almost makes his heart burst like a balloon with too much air in it. Seems to me that sums up what Christians who know the love of Christ Jesus their Lord should feel at all times. Here is a piece that talks about this film. I think it gives us much to ponder.

Sid Burgess, pastor of Edgewood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, has a vision of a banner for his church. That banner would be right on the corner, where the traffic light gives drivers a few minutes to read it. It would simply say “No Condemnation. Sundays, 9:30 a.m.” He imagines a stranger driving down the street day after day, fascinated by a church that would proclaim “No condemnation” – because all the churches he has known about have been full of condemnation – for others. In the 60’s, there was ‘criticism of civil rights leaders, peace proponents and liberal “do-gooders;”’ in the 70’s, condemnation of “intellectuals and divorcees, women taking on leadership roles.” He figured if the churches condemned all those people, sooner or later it certainly would condemn him! But he sees this banner every day, and in spite of his continuing experience of churchly condemnation, these days “condemning sex in general and homosexuals in particular, plus drinking and gambling and even Walt Disney.” So he enters the church, curious about the “catch” to that “No Condemnation.” Maybe what they mean, if he could read the fine print, is “No condemnation of good people. No criticism of folks who can say the right words and know when to stand and when to sit and what to wear and how to write the big checks.”