John  Ruskin was considered the brightest mind of the 19th century, and what a joy it is to read his thoughts on just about anything! And he wrote on almost everything!

In this quote he considers that life's confusion, suffering, and seeming lack of purpose are not meaningless. 

Rather, they serve a deeper purpose in shaping the soul.

THE UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

So much of life,

in spite of its glimpses of joy and light, 

seems so aimless, so perplexed, 

so unaccountable, with its mysterious satisfactions, 

its disproportionate sorrows. 

But the best and noblest of men have seemed to see in it 

a chance of having something done for our spirits which can be done in no other way. 

It is a discipline, when all is said and done. 

But there is something deeper than that. 

"Depend upon it," said old Carlyle, 

"the brave man has some how or other to give his life away."

We are called upon to make an unconditional surrender. 

It is a surrender to a great and awful Will, 

of whose workings we know little, 

but which means to triumph, 

whatever we may do to hinder or delay its purpose.

But sooner or later we must yield our wills up, 

and not simply out of tame and fearful submission, 

but because we see at last that His Will behind all things is 

greater, 

purer, 

more beautiful, 

more holy than anything we can imagine or express. 

There is no peace without that surrender, 

though it cannot be made at once;

there is in most of us a fibre of self-will, 

of hardness, of stubbornness which we cannot break, 

but which God may be trusted to break for us, 

if we desire it to be broken. 

If the light is clouded, and the joy is blotted out, and the energy burns low, it is a sign not that we have failed, 

but that the mind of God is bent still more urgently upon us. 

What we may pray for and desire is courage, 

to live eagerly in joy and not less eagerly in sorrow; 

to be temperate in happiness 

and courageous in trouble.

John Ruskin, A Study in Personality.

 

The Holy Ache - Epithymía

She was there

when the ruach of God

stirred the dust,

a whisper of desire,

a holy ache,

woven into the soul.

Before the fall,

before the shame,

before the grasping,

there was longing.

A pull toward the Other.

A hunger not of lack,

but of love.

In the cool of the evening,

they walked with God.

Naked.

Unashamed.

Every ache was an invitation.

Every desire,

a direction.

But we forgot.

We traded wonder for knowledge,

mystery for mastery.

We left the garden,

not just with thorns in our heels

but with a dislocated hunger

gnawing in our bones.

Now,

we chase shadows in neon temples.

Scroll.

Swipe.

Consume.

We feed on illusions

and call it satisfaction.

Even our prayers feel

packaged.

Predictable.

Safe.

We do not wait anymore.

We click.

And so desire,

that once holy ache,

becomes compulsion.

We light incense to the

gods of dopamine

and name it freedom.

We ask the algorithm to soothe us.

We drink,

not because we thirst,

but because we cannot bear the silence.

But still,

something stirs.

A deeper ache,

a quieter hunger.

It comes in the stillness,

between breath and breath,

between grief and grace.

It comes when the addict

lights a candle instead of a pipe.

When the lonely one

lifts bread to her lips,

not to fill the stomach,

but to remember love.

Every ache is an altar.

Every hunger,

a bell,

calling us not to indulgence,

but to the slow Eucharist

of being known.

We lift our hearts.

We bring our ache.

We say with trembling lips:

Lord, I am not worthy,

but only say the word.

For this is no shameful thing,

to long,

to yearn,

to ache.

It is the soul’s memory of Eden.

It is the ember of glory

still glowing beneath the rubble.

And so I offer this ache

not to the market,

not to the screen,

not to the dragon

in the pixel,

but to the One

who kissed dust into life,

who became flesh

to bear our ache in his own.

O Beloved,

I have desired with desire,

not always rightly,

not always gently,

but I bring it now

as offering.

Let it burn holy.

And one day,

when time is torn

and all things made whole,

when the ache gives way

to the Answer,

we will feast.

And longing will sing.

And the fire of our ache

will become

the flame of communion,

joy without end.

—

Holy One,

in the depths of our restless longing,

teach us to hold desire with grace,

not as a hunger that devours,

but as a flame that illuminates the path to you.

Turn our compulsions into worship,

our restless ache into patient hope,

our shadowed cravings into the bright fire of love.

Come, kindle in us a desire for justice,

a yearning for mercy,

and a holy ache for your kingdom.

Until that day when all longing is fulfilled,

walk with us in the silence between breaths,

and let our hearts be restless only for you.

Praise be to you,

Jesus.

Creation groans.

Our hearts yearn.

For your return.

Amen.

Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025

Artwork: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve

Arthur Trevethin Nowell, 1897

When Secretary Walsingham arrived at retirement age,

he retired to the country to spend his days in quiet.

Some of his former companions came to see him,

and tried to cheer him in his melancholy.

He answered,

"No, I am not melancholy, but I am serious;

and it is very proper that we should be so!

Ah, my friends, while we laugh everything is serious about us.

God is serious, who exercises his patience towards us;

Christ is serious, who shed his atoning blood for us;

the Holy Ghost is serious, who strives against the stubbornness of our hearts;

the Holy Scriptures are serious books;

they present to our thoughts the most serious concerns in all the world;

the holy sacraments represent very serious and awful matters;

the whole creation is serious in serving God and us;

all in heaven are serous.

How then can we be merry and trifling?"

 Let’s discuss a Biblical topic – Vomit

I came across this verse and knew it had to be important because of its deliberate repulsive image.

Is. 28:8 “All the tables are covered with vomit and there is not a spot without filth!”

This is such a repulsive image, meant to shock us, meant to stop us so we can use our imaginations to consider how this message could apply to us?

There are other verses where vomit is used to grab our immediate attention. In Jer. 48:26 - Concerning Moab.

"Moab also shall wallow in his vomit..."

This is intentionally humiliating imagery.

The nation that once boasted of its greatness would become an object of shame. A drunkard lying in his own vomit is a picture of complete disgrace, self-inflicted ruin, and public humiliation.

Using such shocking imagery covers several truths -

Pride ultimately degrades the one who embraces it.

Sin contains the seeds of its own humiliation.

Those who exalt themselves will eventually be brought low.

Jesus said - "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled,

and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I'm sure other verses come to mind using these startling and jarring words of warning.

The Bible breaks through our polished and sophisticated handling of Gospel truth, draws back the curtain, and lays bare or sins.

 I’m reading “Florence Nightingale: A Biography” by Annie Matheson free online by way of “The Project Gutenberg.” In chapter 8 is the call to Florence Nightingale to run the hospital during the war. 

“Dear Miss Nightingale, —You will have seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the hospital of Scutari. The other alleged deficiencies, namely, of medical men, lint, sheets, etc., must, if they ever existed, have been remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the army amounted to one to every ninety-five men in the whole force, being nearly double what we have ever had before; the deficiency of female nurses is undoubted; none but male nurses have ever been admitted to military hospitals. It would be impossible to carry about a large staff of female nurses with an army in the field. But at Scutari, having now a fixed hospital, no military reason exists against the introduction; and I am confident they might be introduced with great benefit, for hospital orderlies must be very rough hands, and most of them, on such an occasion as this, very inexperienced ones.

I receive numbers of offers from ladies to go out, but they are ladies who have no conception of what a hospital is, nor of the nature of its duties; and they would, when the time came, either recoil from the work or be entirely useless, and consequently, what is worse, entirely in the way; nor would these ladies probably even understand the necessity, especially in a military hospital, of strict obedience to rule, etc....

There is but one person in England that I know of who would be capable of organizing and superintending such a scheme, and I have been several times on the point of asking you hypothetically if, supposing the attempt were made, you would undertake to direct it. The selection of the rank and file of nurses would be difficult—no one knows that better than yourself. The difficulty of finding women equal to the task, after all, full of horror, and requiring, besides knowledge and goodwill, great knowledge and great courage, will be great; the task of ruling them and introducing system among them great; and not the least will be the difficulty of making the whole work smoothly with the medical and military authorities out there.

“This is what makes it so important that the experiment should be carried out by one with administrative capacity and experience. 

A number of sentimental, enthusiastic ladies turned loose in the hospital at Scutari would probably after a few days be mises à la porte (Ushered out) by those whose business they would interrupt, and whose authority they would dispute.

“My question simply is—would you listen to the request to go out and supervise the whole thing? 

You are the only person who can judge for yourself which of conflicting or incompatible duties is the first or the highest; but I think I must not conceal from you that upon your decision will depend the ultimate success or failure of the plan.... Will you let me have a line at the War Office, to let me know?”

Of course, history records she said yes. 

In choosing the nurses to go with her she once wrote to Sir Bartle Frere of “that careless and ignorant person called the Devil,” and she did not want any of his careless and ignorant disciples to go out with her among her chosen band. 

Nor did she want any incompetent sentimentalists of the kind brought before us in that delightful story of our own South African War, of the soldier who gave thanks for the offer to wash his face, but confessed that fourteen other ladies had already offered the same service.

 

Indeed, the rather garish merriment of that little tale seems almost out of place when we recall the rotting filth and unspeakable stench of blood and misery in which the men wounded in the Crimea were lying wrapped from head to foot. 

No antiseptic surgery, no decent sanitation, no means of ordinary cleanliness, were as yet found for our poor soldiers, and Kinglake assures us that all the efforts of masculine organization, seeking to serve the crowded hospitals with something called a laundry, had only succeeded in washing seven shirts for the entire army!

Miss Nightingale knew a little of the vastness of her undertaking, but she is described by Lady Canning at this critical time as “gentle and wise and quiet”—“in no bustle or hurry.” Yet within a single week from the date of Mr. Herbert’s letter asking her to go out, all her arrangements were made and her nurses chosen—nay more, the expedition had actually started.

The following passage reminds us that the deepest joys of life are not destinations but invitations.

Whether our hearts are drawn by beauty, truth, love, or God Himself,

we are meant to keep moving beyond every earthly satisfaction toward something greater.

The true pilgrim is not the one who has arrived,

but the one who continues seeking with humility, hope, and reverence for the different paths of others.

FELLOW PILGRIMS

"Everything depends on whether our love—

whether for nature, art, spiritual things, God, humanity, or the fellowship of others—

leads us toward something higher and still unfulfilled, or whether it becomes satisfied.

If our desire is fully satisfied, we fail.

But if it remains forever reaching beyond itself,

we are on the right path, though none can say where it leads—

through wilderness or paradise, across stormy seas or unseen realms of air.

If the artist rests in beauty itself, or the mystic lingers in spiritual ecstasy, they have left the pilgrim's road and must begin the journey again through weariness and tears.

But if they continue earnestly, not knowing the end,

never mistaking the delight of the moment for the greater joy that shines beyond the furthest horizon,

then they belong to that happy company who have embraced the true quest.

Such faith produces patience, gentleness, and deep affection for fellow travelers—

especially for those whose eyes reveal a longing to see beyond the shadows of earthly things.

Above all, we must refrain from judging others,

questioning their motives,

or despising their aims.

Each person has a path prepared for them.

Nor should we force upon others the convictions that seem most beautiful to us.

We should speak our truths faithfully,

for they may help another along the way.

But our chief method must be perfect sincerity,

resisting any attempt to overpower or divert honest souls from the path they have chosen." Arthur C. Benson.

 

Do I need to go to church?

Much of Christian fellowship is built not on dramatic acts of self-denial, but on hundreds of small, almost invisible sacrifices that teach us to love one another.

When we engage with others in church, here are some of the sacrifices we make.

• Listening when we would rather be doing something else. 

• Staying after a service to talk with someone who needs encouragement. 

• Attending meetings, Bible studies, or events that require effort. 

• Helping someone move, visit the sick, or provide a meal. 

• Changing plans to meet another person's needs. 

• Giving rides. 

• Waiting for slower people. 

• Accommodating schedules that differ from our own. 

• Listening to long-winded stories. 

• Enduring repeated complaints. 

 

• Bearing with personalities that irritate us. 

• Introducing ourselves to strangers. 

• Sitting beside someone who makes us uneasy. 

• Entering difficult conversations. 

• Serving in areas where we feel inadequate. 

• Admitting we were wrong. 

• Accepting correction. 

• Letting others receive recognition. 

• Asking forgiveness. 

• Remaining silent when we want to defend ourselves. 

• Singing songs we would not choose. 

• Accepting different styles, traditions, and personalities. 

• Yielding our opinions for the sake of unity. 

• Allowing others to have their way in nonessential matters. 

• Carrying another person's burdens. 

• Rejoicing with those who rejoice when we are struggling. 

• Weeping with those who weep when we feel tired.

 

• Continuing to care when caring is costly. 

• Giving financially. 

• Sharing possessions. 

• Opening our homes. 

• Supporting those in need.

 

• Being accountable to others. 

• Receiving advice. 

• Allowing others to speak into our lives. 

• Working as part of a body instead of acting alone.

 

Perhaps this is one of the greatest hidden sacrifices. 

Love continually interrupts us.

 Nearly every meaningful relationship requires a continual dying to self. Most of these sacrifices are small enough that they scarcely feel heroic, yet they are often the very things through which Christ is formed in us.

As one writer observed, the great test of Christian love is not whether we would die for our brethren, but whether we can patiently live with them. 

The person who talks too long, arrives late, asks for help at an inconvenient moment, or sees things differently from us becomes an opportunity to practice the kind of love that 

"does not seek its own."

These little sacrifices are the hidden currency of every healthy church, family, and friendship. They are often unnoticed by men, but never by God. "Through love serve one another" (Galatians 5:13). The service is usually found in the small things. 

"Eros once lit the stars—

a holy ache in the fabric of things,

pulling cosmos from chaos,

and Adam toward Eve.

She moved through gardens

with oil on her hair

and honey on her lips.

She called in the night,

not with noise,

but with longing.

A whisper,

a calling.

Come.

She was there

when Adam first turned toward Eve—

not to name,

not to tame,

but to behold.

Flesh of my flesh.

Bone of my bone.

The first liturgy of wonder

spoken in the language of touch.

But now—

we live in the age of forgetting.

The world has been mapped,

measured,

monetized.

Desire is tagged and tracked.

Every ache is answered

with an advert.

We no longer seek—we scroll.

We no longer ache—we click.

We no longer rise at midnight

to search the city for the One—

we settle

for mirrors and phantoms.

Even love

has lost its scent.

No longer spiced with mystery,

or slow as song,

but made instant,

hollow,

and safe.

Eros—

once the fire that drew Moses to the bush,

once the cry of the psalmist

panting for streams of living water—

has been reduced to appetite

and buried beneath shame.

But eros is older than shame.

She is the breath of transcendence—

a trembling of the soul

toward beauty,

toward communion,

toward God.

She is the pull

between lovers who have waited,

who have vowed,

who have weathered storms

and still reach for one another

with reverence.

But she is also there—

in the clasped hands of friends

who share soul-deep laughter

and carry one another’s pain.

In the artist’s ache to name the unnameable.

In the silence shared by pilgrims

beneath a darkened sky.

In the fierce joy of solidarity,

and the holy solitude

where longing turns to prayer.

She is tenderness that knows

both wound and healing,

both ache and joy,

both fire and fidelity.

In covenant,

she becomes holy flame—

not transaction,

not performance,

but presence.

Body and soul,

offered and received

in trust,

in truth,

in time.

And beyond the veil of flesh—

she becomes sacrament.

A glimpse of divine desire,

a shadow of the feast to come,

a whisper of the Bridegroom’s voice

in every act of love

that honors the other as mystery.

But the dragon still whispers

from within the pixel and the algorithm.

He sings songs of disembodiment.

He names our ache “weakness”

and sells it back as illusion.

He tells us to grasp,

to gorge,

to objectify.

He disenchants.

He digitizes.

He devours.

And so the chaos deepens.

Bodies become currency.

Desire becomes commerce.

Love becomes contract.

And Eve is left

scrolling through shadows,

longing to be seen again.

But I remember Eden—

not as a myth,

but as memory.

A place of first touch,

first gaze,

first ache—

where eros and agape

walked hand in hand

through a garden not yet guarded

by shame.

And I remember the Song,

hidden deep in the Scriptures,

where God is not only Shepherd

or King

but Lover.

Where the voice of the Beloved

calls not from the temple,

but from the thicket,

where desire meets delight.

Christian faith

was never meant

to be managed.

It was meant to burn.

To ache.

To kiss the feet of the Beloved

with tears and oil.

To say with trembling lips:

I found the one my soul loves.

So let eros wake in me again—

not to consume,

but to commune.

Not to possess,

but to praise.

Not to flatten,

but to follow.

Let her fire lead me

through the silence,

through the wilderness,

through covenantal tenderness

and mystical prayer,

through friendship and faithfulness,

through longing that never needs to be named,

to the place where the veil is torn

and the Lover still speaks

in the language of longing.

Arise,

she says.

Come away.

And I—

soul stirred,

flesh sanctified,

spirit singing—

go.

- Rev’d Jon Swales,  as part of a collection called ‘Desire’

 

Thus far, our complaints about the hardships of life reveal a wrong attitude toward God. The disappointment from which they spring is itself the result of blessings received; for if we had never been blessed, we could never become discontented. Instead of looking back with affection and gratitude, we allow murmuring to intrude; and our quarrel with the present becomes a substitute for thankfulness for the past.

When familiarity with God's mercies tempts us to forget that they are gifts, and leads us to claim them as if they were our right; when we begin to count as blessings only the unusual and unexpected favors of life; when we measure God's goodness only by the overflowings of the cup, and grow angry whenever happiness does not rise to the brim—it is time for our indulged hearts to learn, through sorrow, a gentler spirit. The decay of too much comfort is eating away the very religion of our souls.

We are treating this life as though it were the eternal palace of a god, rather than the brief lodging of a pilgrim. And there would be mercy even in the blow that laid it in ruins and sent us, unsheltered, into the storm, there to seek our rest in a humbler and more dependent spirit.

Martineau

 This quote was hard for me to understand.

But I think it's important to understand, so I read and re-read it, ran it through A.I. and finally understood it.

In short, the passage demands radical authenticity in religion:

total gift of self rather than a calculated bargain.

It's a critique of comfortable, consumerist, or utilitarian spirituality.

"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16)—flips the script: authentic faith begins with God's initiative and our unconditional response, not our shopping for benefits.

Here's the full quote -

“The same insult dealt to religion when it is reduced to a tool of social order is repeated when it is prescribed as the only means of finding any semblance of comfort in circumstances otherwise desperate.

Everyone has heard the advice:

stockpile faith now as a prudent reserve of happiness,

to sustain you through the long, dark winter of suffering.

Nothing is truer to life than the fact that faith can bring solace in hardship. Yet nothing is more false than the counsel built solely upon it.

True victory over evil belongs only to the devout heart that can bleed beneath its thorny fate and still draw it closer in love—

like pressing the piercing crucifix of self-mortification upon the breast.

Only a pure trust, which defies nothing God sends

but bows in self-renunciation before His sweeping whirlwinds, meets terrible necessity with the least inner resistance and deepest peace.

But to seek the comforts of faith out of mere selfish desire is no religion at all—it is its complete absence.

It is the calculated fencing-off of the self against pain,

a hired service that betrays Heaven at its core.

God grants no success to these insurance schemes upon His grace.

Only those who surrender themselves to Him without bargaining or condition ever find their happiness returned.

All attempts to bend the Divine to our personal ends are vain.

They summon only the solemn rebuke:

“You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.”

This quote struck me so because I primarily minister to those in crisis, and in desperate circumstances.

When I read -

"Nothing is truer to life than the fact that faith can bring solace in hardship. Yet nothing is more false than the counsel built solely upon it."

I had to pause because solace in hardship is a big part of my counsel,

and it's a rich vein of Gold all through the scriptures,

but if my counsel is built solely upon that, and not the total gift of self, it's a "calculated bargain" that may be a beginning place, but as the author says

"True victory over evil belongs only to the devout heart that can bleed beneath its thorny fate and still draw it closer in love—"

 "Who would dare reveal the delicate, glowing colors of their soul to a scornful eye that offers no warmth of love—

where nothing beautiful can ever truly shine?

Who would lay their weary head upon a bosom

as cold and hard as marble?

Who would confess their highest, most spiritual dreams to someone who stands forever ready with a cheap, degrading explanation for every noble thing?

To a person who sees the devout as nothing but hypocritical traders,

the patriot as a mere schemer after power,

and the martyr as an ambitious seeker of applause?

All that is beautiful instinctively shrinks from one who delights in instantly soiling everything pure with dust.

How wretched are those who have lost the ability to admire!

They have said farewell to the deep comfort of reverence.

They can pick up the sacred pages left by departed genius without any awe.

They can read of humanity’s struggles for liberty with no spark of enthusiasm,

and watch the good walk their path of mercy

without their hearts swelling in mighty joy.

No sorrow deserves greater pity than the hopeless emptiness of a scornful heart."

This passage uses rhetorical questions and vivid imagery to evoke emotional repulsion toward the cynical personality.

It is a defense of idealism, reverence, and emotional openness against reductive skepticism.

To bring out the deep emotional needs, questions and struggles in others, one cannot be a cynic.

One cannot be emotionally barren and expect others will open up to you, in ministry, with those we love as well as our children.

 

"One such child..."

Every "blood-bought, born-again" child of God desires to bring honor to Christ by serving Him with the gifts and callings they are graced with. Some are graced with many, some with few, but however many or few, those gifts call out from within the spirit to be active, and when quenched it grieves the Holy Spirit.

I'm reminded when the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was the greatest in Mark 9:34. Jesus overheard them and later asked them what they were talking about. They kept silent....

 So Jesus sat down, and called the twelve and said to them, 

“If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”   

And He took a child and placed him among them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, 

“Whoever welcomes 'one such child' like this in My name welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.”

 The Bible repeatedly and emphatically commands care for orphans, the fatherless, and vulnerable children— more than a hundred times! It is presented as a non-negotiable part of justice, pure religion, and reflecting God’s character. Neglecting them is equated with oppression and invites judgment, while caring for them brings blessing. This theme underscores humility and service, aligning with teachings like this one in Mark 9 (welcoming the child as welcoming Christ). 

In no way do I mean to diminish any act of kindness or charitable deed, gift or calling; whether it's sharing the gospel, caring for the widow, the downcast, the poor, educating the ignorant, medical aid to the afflicted, supporting those recovering from substance abuse or adverse childhood circumstances: or any of the acts of love described within the scriptures. But today, this morning, Jesus emphasized "One such child."