To the glorious children of the Most High God,

Stories are written all around us.

Some are written in the stars. Some are handed down to us by our mothers. Some are embedded in the way we work, think, strive, and try to maintain control. And some are the stories we quietly tell ourselves about who we are.

This month’s issue of Elisha’s Riddle explores a few of those stories—and asks what happens when we learn to see them differently.

In The Gospel in the Zodiac, I continue our journey through the signs in the heavens with a provocative question: What if the zodiac was never meant to tell us something about ourselves? What if, instead, it was always telling a story about Christ?

We also continue C. David Baker’s Walking Stick Journal with Shift Work, following the path away from control and an overreliance on the intellect toward trust—moving beyond merely understanding something with the mind and learning to know it in the heart.

Andrea Sinclair’s A Mother’s Imprint turns our attention toward another kind of inheritance: the ways our mothers shape us. It is a tender reflection on love, truth, boundaries, and the sometimes difficult work of allowing God to transform what has been handed down to us.

Finally, Waylon Woody’s Starved Sin-Dog explores one of the stories Christians can carry about themselves: that somewhere inside us is a fundamentally sinful self that just needs to be properly starved to death. Through a very personal story of attention, burnout, loneliness, and grace, the article asks what might happen if God wants to do more than help us manage ourselves—what if He wants to reintroduce us to who we actually are?

With that, I see a beautiful thread running through these pieces. We both inherit and construct stories. Perhaps that is one thread running through this whole issue. We look to the heavens, our families, our experiences, our successes and failures, even our theology, trying to understand where we fit.

But every once in a while, something shifts. We see an old thing from a new angle. Something moves from the head to the heart. A story we have believed about ourselves begins to lose its power.

And perhaps, hidden underneath it all, we discover a better Story that has been there all along.

Welcome to the September issue.

Nick Padovani
Publisher, Elisha’s Riddle

Contents:

The Song of the Universe: The Gospel in the Zodiac

The Walking Stick Journal: Shift Work

The Music of a Faithful Life: A Mother’s Imprint

Between You and Me: Starved Sin-Dog

Latest Podcast:

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Throughout this series, we’ve been exploring the universe as symbolic architecture bearing witness to Christ. Like an enchanted cathedral, creation is filled with signs that point beyond themselves to a greater reality. Thus, we’ve followed the image of the Sower through the Carina Nebula, watched the heavens herald the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, contemplated Jesus as the Bright and Morning Star, and listened for echoes of the Trinity in the ancient idea known as the Music of the Spheres.

There is, however, one part of the stars we cannot avoid…

The zodiac.

For many Christians, that single word immediately raises red flags—and understandably so. Today, the zodiac is most commonly associated with horoscopes, fortune-telling, personality types, and the attempt to interpret human destiny through the movements of the stars. Scripture gives a stark condemnation to astrology and every effort to seek guidance from the heavenly bodies rather than from God.

But astrology may not be the original meaning of the zodiac…

For the constellations were not first arranged to tell us about ourselves, but Christ…

The Witness of the Stars

This was the proposal of nineteenth-century biblical scholar E. W. Bullinger in his remarkable work The Witness of the Stars. Bullinger argued that the familiar twelve signs of the zodiac preserve the remnants of an ancient celestial revelation: a pictorial proclamation of the Gospel written across the heavens long before astrology turned the signs inward toward human fate and personality.

His work remains controversial in certain areas of historical reconstruction. Not every proposed ancient name, meaning, or connection can be established with equal certainty, and some of Bullinger’s conclusions reach beyond what surviving evidence can definitively prove. Nevertheless, the sweeping picture he uncovered is difficult to dismiss as mere coincidence.

Read in their traditional order—not beginning with Aries, as modern astrology commonly does, but with Virgo—the twelve signs form a surprisingly coherent movement. They begin with the promised Seed of the woman, pass through conflict, sacrifice, suffering, resurrection, and the gathering of a redeemed people—concluding with the victorious Lion triumphing over the enemy.

It is the Gospel, written not in sentences but in a way of communication the ancient world would understand: images.

The Beginning: The Promised Seed

Bullinger begins the celestial story with Virgo, the Virgin.

In her ancient representation, the woman holds a branch in one hand and an ear of grain (or seed) in the other. The biblical resonance is immediate. From the opening chapters of Genesis, redemption is attached to the promise of the woman’s Seed:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

The Gospel begins with a woman and a promised Child. Isaiah later speaks of a virgin conceiving and bearing a Son. Jeremiah calls the Messiah the righteous Branch. Jesus identifies Himself as the grain of wheat that falls into the ground, dies, and produces an abundant harvest.

The first image in the ancient sequence is therefore not a warrior or a king, but a woman carrying the promise of life. The story begins with a seed.

The Price of Redemption

From Virgo, the signs move to Libra, the scales.

Modern astrology often interprets Libra in terms of balance, fairness, or personality. Bullinger saw something more ancient and far more significant: the scales represent a price weighed, a debt measured, and the need for redemption.

The message is that humanity has been weighed and found wanting. Things are out of balance and must somehow be restored.

This resonates beautifully with the biblical idea of righteousness. The Hebrew word behind righteousness was connected with ancient scales we see in Libra. Scales were used to weigh money, goods, and precious materials. A “righteous” balance was one that was true, accurate, and just.

Likewise, humanity was created to accurately reflect the image and likeness of God, living in harmony with His life and character. In this sense, “unrighteousness” is not about the breaking of religious rules, but the loss of this divine-human balance. Humanity is no longer reflecting its Creator as we were designed to.

The scales therefore raise a question that echoes throughout the rest of the story: How can what has fallen out of harmony be made whole again? The signs that follow answer this question reveal the sacrifice through which true righteousness would be restored.

The Conflict with the Serpent

The third sign is Scorpio, the scorpion.

Here the celestial story becomes openly violent. In the image, a scorpion reaches toward the heel of a coming conqueror. This immediately recalls the prophecy of Genesis—the serpent will bruise the heel of the woman’s Seed, but the Seed will crush the serpent’s head.

In traditional depictions surrounding Scorpio, a mighty figure struggles against the serpent while another figure presses his foot upon the enemy. The imagery is strikingly close to the Bible’s earliest prophecy of redemption.

The Messiah will be wounded, but the wound will not be the end of the story. The same heel that is struck will ultimately come down upon the enemy’s head.

The Conquering One

Next comes Sagittarius, the archer.

The figure is depicted as moving forward with bow drawn, an image of a conqueror going forth to victory. Bullinger connected this with the conquering Messiah: the One who enters the conflict not merely to survive the serpent’s attack, but to overthrow the powers of darkness.

Scripture repeatedly portrays the Lord as a divine warrior. His arrows strike the enemy. His truth goes forth. The Messiah appears not only as a suffering servant but as a victorious King. In other words, the promised Seed is no passive victim. He has entered the story of the heavens in order to conquer darkness.

Life Through Death

The fifth sign, Capricorn, is one of the strangest creatures in the zodiac: part goat and part fish.

Bullinger understood the goat as a figure of sacrificial death and the fish as a symbol of living multitudes emerging from that death. The image therefore presents a paradox at the very heart of the Gospel:

Life comes through sacrifice.

Jesus described this mystery through the image of a seed. We quoted it before:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)

The Messiah gives His life, and through His death a multitude is born. What appears to be defeat becomes multiplication. The slain One becomes the source of an innumerable people.

The Outpouring of Living Water

Following Capricorn comes Aquarius, the water bearer.

A man pours an unending stream of water from a vessel, and the waters descend toward a waiting fish.

For Bullinger, the image spoke of blessing poured out upon the redeemed. The sacrifice has been made; now life flows from the victorious Redeemer to His people.

The Scriptures repeatedly use water as an image of divine life and the outpouring of the Spirit (Isaiah 44:3). When Jesus stood in the temple, he declared that rivers of living water would flow from those who believe in Him. John later explains that He was speaking of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39).

We see that the Gospel includes a promise not only to bring forgiveness, but to pour out true life upon the soil of humanity.

The Redeemed Multitude

The waters of Aquarius flow toward Pisces, the fishes.

In Bullinger’s reading, the two fish represent the people of God, bound together yet also restrained by a cord. One fish is directed upward while the other moves along the horizon, suggesting a people with both heavenly and earthly dimensions.

Whatever every detail may mean, the central image is clear: a multitude has emerged from the sacrifice and outpouring that preceded it.

Jesus called His disciples to become fishers of men. He compared the Kingdom to a net gathering fish of every kind. The earliest Christians even adopted the fish as a symbol of Christ and of their identity in Him.

The Seed has become a people and the solitary grain has produced a harvest.

The Lamb Who Was Slain

Next comes Aries, the ram.

Here the price suggested by Libra and the sacrifice pictured in Capricorn come into sharper focus. The ram recalls Abraham and Isaac, where a ram was provided in the place of the beloved son. It evokes the Passover lamb whose blood delivered Israel from destruction. Above all, it points toward Jesus Christ:

“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

In Revelation, the Lamb appears as though slain, yet He stands alive in the center of the throne. His apparent weakness is revealed as the power of God and His sacrifice becomes His victory. The Gospel’s conquering King is also its slaughtered Lamb.

And He overcomes not by avoiding death, but by passing through the death and robbing it of its power.

The Returning Judge

The ninth sign is Taurus, the bull.

The bull is a figure of tremendous strength, charging forward with its horns lowered. Bullinger understood it as an image of the Messiah returning in power and judgment.

The One who first appeared as the promised Seed and sacrificial Lamb will not remain hidden forever. The Gospel announces not only what Christ has done, but the ultimate unveiling of what His work has accomplished.

Every opposing power will fall and every crooked thing will be made straight. The King will establish justice throughout His creation. The bull advances because redemption is ultimately about the restoration of all things under their rightful Creator.

The Bridegroom and His People

Gemini, the twins, follows Taurus.

Bullinger interpreted the paired figures not as two competing personalities but as a picture of union: the victorious Messiah joined to His redeemed people—His Bride.

This is one of the great mysteries of the Gospel. Christ does not merely rescue humanity from a distance. He joins us to Himself.

He is the Head, and we are His Body.

He is the Bridegroom, and we are His Bride.

He is the Firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

The two figures belong together, distinct yet united. What is His becomes ours through participation in His life. The Gospel in the heavens is therefore not simply the story of a solitary Hero. It is the story of a Hero who brings a people into His own victory.

The Possession Secured

The next sign, Cancer, presents a more difficult ancient image because its familiar modern form as a crab does not communicate its meaning as clearly as some of the others.

Bullinger believed the familiar crab was not the original image. He based his interpretation instead on older representations such as the Egyptian scarab, the ancient name klaria—“the cattle-folds”—and star names conveying sheltering, gathering, and holding fast.

Bullinger associated it with the gathering and securing of the Redeemer’s possession.

The movement of the whole celestial story supports this theme. The Seed has come. The price has been paid. The enemy has been defeated. The sacrifice has produced a people. The waters have been poured out, and the redeemed have been united to their Lord.

Now the inheritance is held secure.

Jesus speaks of gathering His own. He declares that no one can snatch His sheep from His hand. Paul writes that creation itself waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Revelation portrays the redeemed gathered around the throne from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

The Lion of Victory

The final sign is Leo, the lion.

The celestial story that began with the Virgin ends with the Lion. The promised Seed has become the conquering King.

Leo is depicted springing upon the serpent, bringing the ancient conflict to its conclusion. The enemy introduced near the beginning of the biblical story is finally crushed beneath the authority of the Messiah. The imagery reaches its fulfillment in Revelation:

“Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed.”

This is the culmination of the Gospel. The Lion triumphs and the deceptive serpent falls.

The story ends where all Scripture ends—not with evil endlessly opposing good, but with Christ victorious and creation restored beneath His reign.

A Story Written in Light

Taken together, the twelve signs present an extraordinary sequence:

The Virgin bears the promised Seed.

The scales reveal both the need and price of redemption.

The scorpion wounds the coming Conqueror.

The archer rides forth to victory.

The sacrificial goat gives rise to living multitudes.

The water bearer pours out blessing.

The fishes portray the redeemed people being brought in.

The ram reveals the slain Lamb.

The bull advances in restorative judgment.

The twins picture union with our Redeemer.

The gathered possession is held secure.

And the Lion crushes the serpent and reigns.

Was every element of this sequence perfectly preserved through history? Almost certainly not. Ancient images have shifted, names have changed, cultures have borrowed and corrupted symbols, and centuries of astrology have obscured whatever original testimony may once have been present.

But Bullinger’s central insight remains breathtaking.

The zodiac may once have been something entirely different from the horoscope.

Before it became a way of predicting human personalities and destinies, it may have been a celestial proclamation of the destiny God had prepared for creation in His Son.

So while astrology asks what the stars say about us, the ancient witness of the stars was instead pointing to our Savior and Redeemer.

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Even before I was born, I was learning how to handle disappointment, endure hard times, forgive, and look for the good in people, even when it wasn’t obvious.

She never had to explain it, but through me, she shaped my idea of love.

What She Taught Me about Love

My mother loved with her whole heart. She never held back—she gave everything she had and kept believing in people long after others gave up. She prayed, trusted God, hoped for the best, and forgave even when others couldn’t understand why.

She could do this because she didn’t just believe the Bible—she carried verses like I Corinthians 13 in her heart. Those words guided her every day.

“Love suffers long, and is kind” and “Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” These words mattered deeply to her, and they came to matter to me too.

Still, I think there were times when we both misunderstood what enduring love asked of us. That misunderstanding shaped what came next, and it shaped me too.

My mother showed me, again and again, how to stay. She taught me to give one more chance, to hope tomorrow could be better, and to forgive even before anyone took real responsibility.

Whether I realized it or not, I learned those lessons too. They stayed with me and shaped how I showed up in my own life.

I learned that a good woman stays, helps others, doesn’t give up, and tries to keep the peace.

All of this sounds beautiful until you realize how easy it is to lose yourself while trying to keep the peace for everyone else. That is where the pattern begins to emerge.

Inherited Patterns

I’ve done just that.

I’ve stayed too long in relationships, jobs, and friendships, always trying to keep the peace and wondering if I was the one at fault. I kept asking myself if I should call, explain, apologize, or try to be understood. The biggest question was always: Was I being too sensitive?

Maybe I should just let it go.

Thank God for scriptures like:

“The fear of man brings a snare.”

People-pleasing can look like kindness, and sometimes it really is. But other times it comes from fear of conflict, of being misunderstood, or of saying no and seeming selfish.

My mother knew these fears as well. She learned how to read people, ease tension, and keep things going, even though deep down, she sometimes felt hurt.

I learned that from her too—how to hurt without ever letting anyone know.

Burdens and Boundaries

Galatians says, “Bear one another’s burdens.”

I know how to do that. I know how to show up and help people through tough times. Being a helper comes naturally to me. I believe it’s a gift from God, and I’m grateful for it.

But it also says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.”

I misunderstood that for a very long time, and that misunderstanding changed what I carried. It blurred the line between helping and holding too much.

Certain burdens are meant to be shared, but others aren’t ours to carry.

I can love you without taking on your burdens. I can pray for you without feeling responsible for your choices. I can forgive you without letting you keep hurting me. I can care deeply and still say, “I can’t do this anymore.”

That doesn’t make my love any smaller. In fact, it makes it more truth-centered.

My Mother’s Heart - And Mine

Compassion without boundaries empties you. Loyalty without discernment keeps you stuck. Forgiveness without accountability can become a permission slip. Sometimes what I call faith is really fear of change, even when I want to call it something else.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart…..and he shall direct thy paths”.

These verses were my Mother’s favorites. I can remember her telling me these verses throughout my life.

But I understand them differently now, and that difference has changed how I hear them. It has also changed how I live with them. That shift is why these verses now lead me somewhere new.

Trusting God doesn’t mean staying. Sometimes it means waiting. Sometimes it means rebuilding. And sometimes it means walking away, which takes wisdom.

Relearning Peace

Romans says, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

For most of my life, I missed the first part of that scripture. I heard the command, but not the condition.

“If it be possible”. Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes you do everything right, and peace still doesn’t come. Sometimes it requires distance, a boundary, or speaking a truth someone doesn’t want to hear. That is the part I had to learn slowly.

So much of this came through my mother—not because she taught me directly, but because she lived it. What she lived became part of me. That inheritance was both a blessing and a lesson.

She also carried things she learned to survive.

And I inherited some of them.

Things like the need to fix. The need to be needed. The tendency to stay too long. The habit of excusing what I shouldn’t. The fear of disappointing people. The belief that if I just tried harder, things would finally change.

It took me decades to learn that being needed is not the same as being loved.

Most importantly, she gave me the belief that God can redeem anything.

Love, Self, and Wholeness

Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

For a long time, I only focused on loving my neighbor. But that command has two parts, and I ignored one of them, the one that asked me to love myself.

Neighbor. And self.

God never asked me to disappear to prove my love.

I still carry my mother’s imprint, and I hope I always will. I hear her in my prayers. I see her in my compassion. I feel her in my persistence.

But an imprint is not a sentence, and that is where the change begins. What I inherited does not have to define what I become. From there, I can choose what to keep and what to release.

Romans says we are “transformed by the renewing of your mind”.

This means patterns can change. What has been handed down can be examined, and what we keep is separated from what we release. That is how I begin to live differently.

This I will keep. This I will give back to God. This ends with me.

I don’t think this dishonors my mother in any way. I think it honors her by telling the truth about all of it, including what I had to learn and why.

What I Am Still Learning

Maybe this is what daughters learn over time. We stop focusing just on the choices our mothers made and start trying to understand what led them to those decisions.

Now I see my mother in a new way. I see the young woman she used to be, her hope, her faith, and her fear. I see how much she wanted things to work and how strongly she believed people could change. Most of all, I feel compassion for all of it.

When I notice those same patterns in myself, I realize I have a choice she might not have known was possible.

I get to decide what happens next.

I am still learning as I go.

I am learning when to stay and when to leave, when to speak up and when to listen, when to help and when to step back. I am learning when to carry someone else’s burden and when to let them handle what is theirs.

But here is what I know now:

Love can last through hard times.

Love can endure.

Love can hope.

But love also finds joy in truth.

For a long time, I understood how to endure more than I understood the importance of truth.

Now I see that they go hand in hand.

Sometimes love means saying:

I love you.

I forgive you.

I will pray for you.

But I cannot keep living like this.

There was a time when I thought saying those words meant love had failed.

I do not believe that anymore.

Sometimes leaving is not a lack of love. Sometimes setting a boundary is not being bitter. Sometimes saying ‘no more’ does not mean you have not forgiven.

Sometimes it is just the moment when we finally stop mixing up suffering with being faithful.

My mother left a mark on me that I will carry forever. I carry her faith, her compassion, her perseverance, and her way of seeing something worth loving in people when others could not. I also carry her belief that God can redeem what seems beyond hope.

These are the parts of her influence that I treasure.

And the other parts, like fear, people-pleasing, staying too long, and believing that love means accepting what hurts us, I can give those to God.

This I will keep.

This I will give back to God.

This ends with me.

Maybe that is part of God’s redemption too.

It is not about erasing my mother’s influence, but letting God transform it.

In the end, I am learning that love and truth are not meant to be in conflict.

Real love makes space for both.

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Stepping Stones of Transformation

An Unfolding Manuscript

by

C. D. Baker

Chapter Twenty-Three: Shift Work

Sometimes the way we relate to life shifts in deep places. We experience movements of consciousness stirring within. Our awareness changes. We no longer experience life in exactly the same way.

We awaken to new things. We begin to understand, differently; we start to feel, differently. Our desires change.

This is the mystery of soul-shifting, and soul-shifts signal something. They are alerting us that transformation is underway.

Even if that transformation is one step at a time.

Even if it is experienced in fits and starts.

***

Fall 2023

Notes to self: I stopped for coffee near Bill’s office and sat in my truck for a bit. The Lyme Disease diagnosis was something of a relief; it gave me some reasons for how terrible I’ve been feeling. But I also know that this inner turmoil has contributed somatic stresses. Years of night sweats and chronic fatigue, dizziness and anxiety. Too much for too long.

I closed my eyes and I unexpectedly recalled the mission statement for my writing: ‘To share the mysteries of the Gospel so that the broken are comforted, the curious are piqued, and the strong are challenged.’

It then hit me that this is exactly what the Holy Spirit has been doing with me. Wild. But I had no idea that the process would be so terrible. I’m glad there’s been progress and I need to keep my eyes on that. Time to tell Bill about last week’s helpful shift.

*

“Come in, David.” Bill shakes my hand and we both sit.

I set my coffee to one side, open my notepad and we’re soon deep into it. “Well, a couple of days ago I suddenly shifted away from demanding a centering concept. You know, a key principle to ‘fix’ me.”

Bill crosses his leg. “You’ve been working for that forever.”

“Hard to explain why the sudden change.”

Bill laughs. “Good.”

“It was like I just knew I was off course. It was a huge relief to stop striving to figure everything out and simply accept life as a mysterious process.” I tap my pen. “Honestly, I’m not sure where it came from, but it was a deep shift and felt great.”

“What do you think you gave up when you let go of that demand?”

The answer comes quickly. “Control. I fixate on controlling through understanding.” A startling awareness rises and I blurt, “I’ve been looking for an idea to save me instead of God.” My own words trouble me.

Bill holds that for a moment, then offers some consolation. “Your relentless fear has driven you to control your world…even if that’s with ideas.”

I turn my head.

“We reach for what we are able, and you’ve been able to work effectively in the world of the intellect.”

I stare at my notepad. The word ‘arrogance’ comes to mind.

Bill pauses. “In the end, control strategies may feel safe, but they tend to isolate us and leave us lonely.”

I oblige a nod.

He adjusts his position. “Your trust was broken as a child. Early voices get inside our psyche before they can be contradicted, and that makes them very powerful. You learned to believe that you could only trust yourself. Hence, control.”

Old news.

Bill clears his throat. “Okay, so your shift was away from control. Now tell me what you shifted toward.”

I strain for a moment. “Trust?”

Bill feigns clapping his hands. “Exactly. Trust. And trust moves you beyond yourself; it moves you into a process directed by grace.”

“I’ve found that ‘trust’ works as a concept, but it’s hard to live out.”

“What if you try trusting other voices in this process?”

I breathe slowly for a few beats. That would be a big shift. For some reason I mention a lunch that I had with Will last week. “We talked about his injury. He said it was like he had died even though he had no memory of any of it. I told him that his inner soul had experienced a form of death and he now sees life differently…that he should be patient for all the good that is coming and learn to be available for what the Spirit is going to do.

“But I think he already knew all of that.” I laugh at myself, lightly. “He then told me about his experiences of waiting on God, his asking to see him, and then about how he looks at the stars in a new way.” A lump rises in my throat. “That injury prompted a huge move within him.”

It suddenly occurs to me that Will is a witness to truth—an outside voice that I can trust. I look at Bill. He’s been a voice to trust for years. Have I taken that for granted? Who else have I missed? Names rush forward.

I pause, staring at my notepad. My mind is beginning to run. I look up and change course. “Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to get somewhere that I’m already at. Other times I feel lost.”

Bill offers a settling tone. “These are beautiful, powerful experiences. Can you feel them? We know ourselves—and each other—through our hearts more than our minds. Our hearts are bigger than our minds. This is another shift for you.”

I jot that down.

He smiles. “By the way, what if we can’t actually be lost?”

I look up and stare, blankly.

“That felt true, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“We can feel truth.” Bill stands. “And it’s truth that is moving you.” He smiles. “Things are changing and it’s all going to be okay.”

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In college, I did a lot of ministry that was forward-facing and gave me a lot of attention. I love attention. Or at least, I thought I did, but by the end of college, I didn’t like the attention as much.

Let me tell you of the glory days. My major went from piano performance to communication, because I was alright at piano, but not good enough to make money doing it. Communication, on the other hand, was something I excelled in. In early high school, I had long debates with my friends about the Trump administration whilst keeping my cool; I could think on my feet, I was witty. I always had a good joke the teacher liked.

And doing college ministry, it multiplied tenfold. I was a ministry leader for over 30 incredible guys who led Bible study small groups in the dorms. Still think about them and how amazing it was that even though I was their leader on paper, they taught me far more than I ever taught them. Over the course of three years of doing this ministry, I was connected to pretty much everyone on our enormous campus. Further, I could come up with something that sounded spiritual for any problem, peddling profundities and sophistry like a budget modern-day Aquinas. I guess that nowadays, the part of me that wants to sound smart writes articles.

For lack of a humble term, I was famous. I would walk down the halls of our enormous campus; someone always knew my name, they asked me about the ministry. They were always laughing at my jokes. Toward the end of college, my coursework demanded three speeches a week. I got to a point where I would jot down my outline on a napkin five minutes prior to me going to the front. And I got great grades, because I knew how to capture attention.

Unfortunately, attention captured me. I was addicted. They say with addictions that you chase a dragon. The first time you hit a cigarette, you get that soothing and energizing hit of nicotine that you want again; but that same first hit never returns. I quickly became overly exhausted. There was just too much pressure I wasn’t good at handling. And I needed to do it all in a way that looked good and made everyone like me, which makes everything 10x harder. Plus, I had the aforementioned girlfriend who taught me all the stuff I didn’t want to know about myself.

By my senior year, as much as I loved what I did, I was totally checked out. The attention was never enough, and even if it was enough, it was never delivered right. I resented people who were on the worship team, because they got more attention than me. There was always someone who had a higher priority. (There’s a guy in the Bible who was consumed by his desire for attention and glory, though his name presently escapes me.) I left college unbelievably grateful for my opportunities, and terrified of what would come next.

And frankly, terrified is the correct emotion for what would happen next. The breakup launched me cleanly into a job where I spent a year of my life alone in a room for nine hours a day, taking calls from angry parents, back-to-back, all day, all workweek. I now have more respect for call center agents than I could ever have dreamed of having in my life.

I got into new hobbies, like drinking, staying up too late, and wondering if this is what adult life would be like forever. In the dead of winter, I started to seriously wonder if my life had any real value at all. I went to church during this time, but my time there was a haze of feeling like the promises, character, and goodness talked about in the front was real at all for the guy in the back switching the slides on the projector.

Were it not for that community, I don’t know where I would be now. I learned that sometimes, Christians are just drowning. Sometimes they have weights on their feet they choose not to take off which pull them under. But sometimes, they’re just drowning, and the best anyone can do is to just keep throwing them the life rafts of truth far enough and often enough that they might be able to hold onto one for five minutes. And sometimes, the worst thing you can do is reprimand them for drowning, because they’ll start to wonder if the bottom of the lake is better than the air.

Because God limits Himself to honoring our free will, He takes up the monotonous business of telling us things repeatedly until we believe they are true. How often is it the case that when you question spiritual hardships, you hear the answer (whether you like it or not) everywhere in your life? But those answers can sound so utterly ridiculous.

The process of coming to a heart-level understanding of truth looks less like conquering an enemy, and more like being a complete fool. The more lies you believe, the more foolish you feel when correcting them. Show me a person who hates themselves and wants to change it, and I’ll show you a person who is blasting Michael W. Smith in their car and belting truths to their air conditioner. Show me a person who is changing their view of their body, and I will show you a person who looks at themselves in the mirror, smiles slowly, and mutters “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” every time, even if they don’t believe it at all. I can go on about the crazies who are putting oil in the shape of a cross on their doorposts, reading positive affirmations before bed with their bifocals, and taking communion with a blueberry and milk. Growth looks ridiculous.

The process also invariably takes courage. Your lies protect you, and breaking agreement with them feels like breaking the rules. In fact, it usually feels like breaking God’s rules. Growth usually requires you to wade the temptation of shame for your new beliefs. People who have gone their whole life believing that God thinks they are worms feel like they are rejecting their civic duty of self-loathing and feel as though accepting their true identity — unconditionally loved regardless of performance — is arrogant, prideful, or distasteful in some morally corrupt way.

I mention all of this because it’s becoming clear to me that because of the current state of fear and shame-based Christianity, people who want to discover their true identities in Christ require an increasingly controversial set of beliefs and a spirit of holy rebellion against the more widely held beliefs in modern evangelicalism.

It’s also fair to say that the attacks on your identity as a child of God are more dangerous and troublesome in church than they are out of them. We find people deceived, not because of a widespread liberal political campaign, but because of subtle emphases in our local Bible studies, the counsel of a pastor, and the advice of a friend.

Truth feels like lies when you’re deceived. Our sin nature is not so much the truth of our identity as it is our propensity to believe and inherit lies. The Biblical idea of iniquity being the bending of something out of shape, assumes there is a shape that was correct prior to it.

I have seen many Christians run from the voice of God, many run to church. Some run to work. I have a friend who says he can’t take a day off, because it makes him too anxious. Why would relaxing make you anxious unless there’s something you’re avoiding addressing internally? Even if we work 18 hour days and crash onto our pillows, these specters show up in our dreams. They show up on our lunch break. They show up while we are shoveling the mulch. We are all acknowledging this funny quirk of life, that it never relents on you dealing with the tougher parts of your soul. You take you with you.

It’s a scary state of affairs. Think about it. My Christian college and church, both with concentrated, coordinated effort, could not get me to believe the truths of God. They couldn’t help my attention addiction. They couldn’t stop the drinking or get me to see who God made me to be.

Do we blame churches? Do we blame colleges? Do we blame the institutions? Friends maybe? Family?

I marveled that God would pull me from my fame and down into the pit of my call center job. Put an extraverted 23-year-old guy in a room for nine hours everyday and tell me how that fella comes out. He’ll come out hungover for work. He’ll bring White Claws in a thermos to his youth group.

I realized God was ripping me away from other people. Although it couldn’t have been everything, it felt like everything I had been neglecting from my past had finally passed the baton to my heart, short-winded and exhausted.

If I were a better writer, I would now cleanly tell you exactly why that was all a good thing. I do think it was a good thing, but that year was miserably difficult for me. Fortunately, God is a great writer. I sometimes wonder if I needed a year of being completely alone and miserable to detox me from the year of being surrounded by people, attention, and the need for approval eating away at my soul. I came out of that season of life with unconventional beliefs about God’s grace and perspectives on Christian living, most of which have been largely confirmed in this new season of life. I felt like God had reintroduced me to myself.

“Hey Waylon. Wanted to introduce you to Waylon.”

“Yeah, I already know this guy. He’s uh… me…”

“I know you think you know him, but did you realize that he’s 23 now?”

“Oh yeah, I guess we may have not been caught up to speed on that, huh?”

“No, you really haven’t. He still picks his nose, but honestly, most of him has changed.”

“Really? He just looks a little older.”

“Well, he’s learned a lot. He’s been through a lot more now.”

“Uh. Okay. . . great. . . so . . . why are you reintroducing me to him? I happen to be him so… it’s not all too helpful.”

“Oh. Simple really.”

“. . .”

“He needs your help. Right now, someone is trying to destroy his life. They want him to believe he’s worthless. There’s no easy way to put this but . . .

. . . they want him dead.”

“Oh. . . that sucks.”

“Yeah. You should care more about it. But you don’t . . .

. . . because you hate him.”

“No I don’t! How could I hate myself? Isn’t my desire for things to change evidence that I love myself?”

“. . . Who’s John?”

“Oh, John’s a good friend of mine. Love that guy. He’s always been there for me. He’s like a brother. Just helped him move.”

“Did you want to?”

“What?”

“Did you want to help him move?”

“Not particularly . . . but that’s just how it is . . . I was just glad I got to spend some time with him before he leaves to go overseas.”

“So, was it a sacrifice?”

“I mean, I guess you could put it that way. But I don’t really look at it like that. I just want to spend time with John. He’s a good friend of mine.” “I’m . . . going to miss him.”

“And miss him you will.”

“. . .what’s your point?”

“You spend time with your friend, you sacrifice for him. You do this because you love him. If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t care he was moving at all. You wouldn’t put in any effort.”

“I think I see what you’re doing here. The difference is, John’s a good man! I’m… uh… nothing like John…”

“Who said John was good?”

“Well… he…”

“Who said you were bad?”

“God. God did.”

“Really?”

“Well, I guess not directly. But don’t I have a sin nature? Two dogs to feed?”

“Who said anything about dogs?”

“Well, the preacher man did. You know, the sin dog and the Holy one?”

“There’s Holy dogs now?”

“No, you’re not getting it. I’m saying I’m a sinful person. That’s my nature.”

“That’s a heavy weight to carry, isn’t it? Especially when John’s doing a better job starving his sin-dog. Just called his Holy dog over actually. We are concerned for his health.”

“What? Are you messing with me? I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

“Yeah, John’s Holy Dog is obese.”

“. . . Hey God, I’m sort of going through a crisis here, can you . . . be serious?”

“I can try. Here’s a question for you…”

“. . .”

“Are you wearing clothes right now?”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be naked.”

“Who told you that you were naked?”

Welcome to Between You and Me. It’s called that because I ask that we keep this between us two. A lot of these things are quite personal, y’know? Wouldn’t want these things floating around on the internet where Christians can whip my words with the Bible, would we?

But it’s also called Between You and Me because there is a lot between me and God. There’s a lot between God and me and all of us, isn’t there? This book is an attempt to name those things so they can be healed. One chapter at a time.

Waylon Woody is a writer and minister living in West Milford, NJ.

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Dear Readers,

In this August issue of Elisha’s Riddle, our cover article, “Music of the Spheres,” invites us to consider the harmonies that connect the seen and unseen—the patterns, rhythms, and mysteries that have stirred human imagination for centuries.

We are also delighted to welcome a new writer to our pages. Andrea Sinclair begins an original serialized work chronicling the extraordinary story of her mother. It will be called The Music of a Faithful Life: Lessons of Love, Faith, and Courage from My Mother. Its opening chapter, “The Weight She Carried,” introduces a deeply personal journey that will continue to unfold in future issues. We are honored that Andrea has chosen to share this story with the readers of Elisha’s Riddle, and we look forward to experiencing it alongside you.

Also featured is “The Promise of the Father,” the newest contribution to our Seven Spirits of God series. Personally, I believe this is one of the more important things I’ve written, and am praying about it turning into a book in and of itself. Woven with personal testimony and revelation, this piece speaks from lived experience while inviting us into a deeper understanding of the Spirit of God.

This issue also brings the next entry in Walking Stick Journal, titled “Spirals,” as well as Waylon’s latest installment of Between You and Me: “The Cerulean Palace.” Both familiar series continue in their own distinctive voices, adding new turns to the paths they have already begun.

Together, these pieces remind us that every life moves within larger patterns: through music and memory, burdens and discoveries, circles and conversations. We hope you find something in these pages that resonates long after you have finished reading.

Welcome to the August issue.

Warmly,

Nick Padovani
Publisher, Elisha’s Riddle

Contents:

The Song of the Universe: The Music of the Spheres

The Music of a Faithful Life: The Weight She Carried

The Seven Spirits of God: The Promise of the Father

The Walking Stick Journal: Spirals

Between You and Me: The Cerulean Palace

Latest Podcast:

Make sure to check out the latest episodes here

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We have been exploring the universe as a kind of symbolic architecture bearing witness to the beauty of its Creator. It is an enchanted cathedral of light whose stained glass is made of living, pulsing, orbiting images, each telling parables at multiple vantage points. Each parable pointing to the eternal mystery—the Great Riddle—of its Maker.

We began this series with the Carina Nebula, where a vast stellar nursery told of a sower scattering stars like seed. We then followed the “signs” of the heavens (Gen. 1:14) to their literal fulfillment in the light that pointed to Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Messiah. From there, we considered Jesus’ own declaration that He is the “Bright and Morning Star,” the herald of a new creation whose light is now rising within us.

But the heavens do more than shine.

According to an ancient idea that has fascinated philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, and theologians for more than two thousand years, they also sing.

The Music of the Spheres

This idea is usually associated with the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers in the sixth century before Christ. The Pythagoreans discovered that musical harmony has a mathematical structure. When the length of a vibrating string is divided according to simple numerical ratios, recognizable musical intervals emerge. A string half the length of another, for example, produces the same note an octave higher. Other simple ratios produce other harmonious intervals.

This was an astonishing discovery. Something as mysterious and beautiful as music was not arbitrary. Hidden beneath what the ear experienced as harmony was an invisible mathematical order.

The Pythagoreans began to wonder whether this relationship between number and harmony extended beyond the strings of a musical instrument. Perhaps the cosmos itself was ordered according to similar proportions. The movements of the heavenly bodies, they imagined, participated in a vast harmony—a musica universalis . . . universal music.

The “music of the spheres” was not necessarily music in the ordinary sense of sound waves traveling through the air. It was the idea that the cosmos itself possessed an underlying harmony, that the movements of the heavens expressed an order analogous to music.

The Greek philosopher Plato developed the idea further, weaving music, mathematics, and the structure of the cosmos together in his vision of reality. Centuries later, the Roman philosopher Boethius distinguished between musica instrumentalis, the audible music produced by instruments; musica humana, the harmony of the human person; and musica mundana, the greater harmony of the cosmos itself.

The idea survived well into the Christian era and eventually captured the imagination of Johannes Kepler, one of the great architects of modern astronomy. Kepler was convinced that the mathematical relationships governing planetary motion reflected a deeper harmony established by the Creator. In 1619, he published Harmonices Mundi—The Harmony of the World—in which he attempted to describe the movements of the planets in musical terms.

Some of the ancient cosmology behind these ideas has, of course, been replaced. The planets are not attached to transparent crystalline spheres, and outer space does not carry ordinary sound in the way the atmosphere does.

Yet the deeper intuition has proven surprisingly difficult to kill.

The more deeply we investigate the universe, the more we discover a reality filled with oscillation, waves, frequencies, rhythms, and mathematical relationships.

A Universe of Waves

Music begins with vibration. A guitar string moves back and forth, disturbing the air around it. Those disturbances travel as waves until they reach the ear, where they are translated into the experience we call sound.

But vibration and wave behavior extend beyond music.

Light itself is electromagnetic radiation described in terms of waves. Radio waves, microwaves, visible light, UV light and X-rays all belong to the same electromagnetic spectrum, distinguished by their wavelengths and frequencies. What our eyes perceive as color is our experience of a narrow portion of that vast spectrum.

Matter itself becomes stranger the more deeply we look. At the quantum level, the simple picture of reality as tiny solid objects bouncing around like microscopic billiard balls gives way to something far more mysterious. Quantum entities exhibit wave-like behavior, and modern quantum field theory describes what we call particles as “excitations” of underlying fields.

This does not mean that atoms are literally playing songs, or that physics has somehow proven Pythagoras correct. Poetic analogy should not be mistaken for scientific claim. But the analogy is nevertheless difficult to ignore. (For a further dive into this, check out this capturing of “sound” emerging from the earliest light of the universe: NASA: Sounds of the Ancient Universe.)

At increasingly fundamental levels, we have found that the universe is far less static than it appears. Reality is dynamic. Fields are excited. Waves propagate. Frequencies interact. What appears solid to our senses emerges from an underlying world that is astonishingly rhythmic and energetic.

But it is difficult to contemplate such a wondrous universe without eventually asking the question Scripture has been answering all along:

What is holding all of this together?

The Word Behind Creation

The opening of Hebrews contains one of the most staggering descriptions of Christ in the New Testament:

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

We often imagine creation as something God did a very long time ago. The idea is that God made the universe, set it in motion, and now observes it from somewhere outside. Yet Hebrews gives us a very different vision.

Christ is not merely the One who began creation—He is the One who presently upholds it.

Every star burning in a distant galaxy, every atom composing your body, every field, force, wave, and particle exists within a reality continually sustained by the “Word of God.” According to Scripture, creation does not exist independently. Rather, it is being upheld by a flow of energy that moves like breath continually filling an immeasurable flute whose countless openings become stars, planets, and people.

This vision brings us back to the astonishing opening of John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

John deliberately begins by going back to the words of Genesis: “In the beginning…” He takes us behind the scenes of this great beginning. Much like the ever-deepening discoveries of science, there have also been deeper discoveries throughout Scripture. Just as Kepler took us further than Pythagoras, John takes us further than Moses. He shows us that before there was light, there was something else.

Before matter, energy, space, time, frequency, vibration, or wave, there was the Word.

And this Word was not alone. The Word was with God.

Christian theology has spent centuries contemplating the depth of that little term “with.” It is a key part of Scripture’s tapestry that showcases the mystery of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What this shows us is that before anything existed, there was communion. The Father loved the Son. The Son delighted in the Father. The Spirit was not an afterthought arriving later in the story, but eternally the Spirit of this divine dance.

A relationship was already at work before the universe had its song. And this is where the ancient dream of the “music of the spheres” finds its origin and fulfillment.

Before the First Note

Indeed, music itself requires relationship.

A note acquires much of its meaning in relation to another note. Rhythm requires relationship between moments. Harmony emerges when distinct tones exist together without losing their distinction.

Perhaps this is one reason music has always possessed such a mysterious ability to move us. Music is unity without sameness. Many notes become one song. And at the foundation of Christian revelation is a God who is One, yet not solitary. Father, Son, Spirit . . . Distinct without division. One without sameness. They are an eternal communion of love.

This is the deeper music all creation echoes.

The Pythagoreans heard mathematics in musical harmony and suspected that the same order extended into the heavens. Plato imagined a cosmos ordered according to harmony. Kepler studied the planets and searched for the music of their motions. Modern physics has revealed a universe permeated by waves, frequencies, fields, and oscillations. Each generation has listened differently.

Yet the deepest mystery is not that the universe contains harmony. It is that harmony itself has its origin in relationship. Before there was vibration, there was Voice. Before rhythm, there was delight. Before the universe possessed its structure, the Father loved the Son in the fellowship of the Spirit. Everything around us was born from a Song radiating from this already active movement—a force—of love.

Yes, the foundational reality of existence is not a lonely deity sitting in eternal isolation, ordering some complex science project called the universe and leaving it to tick away like a big clock (with an apocalyptic end-date for the ticking where he will unleash divine vengeance—though that’s for a different article).

At the heart of all things is the Divine Family: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally giving and receiving love. It was a dance and a celebration of untold joyful light, and creation emerged from this abundance. And it is now sustained by it.

Or perhaps a better word would be enchanted…

Divine Enchantment

We used this word in the beginning, but as we wrap up these thoughts, it deserves a closer look.

Though this term has been associated with spells and magic (or captivating someone with beauty), its original meaning is something much different. The word is composed of two parts: In (“into” or “upon”) and Cantare (“to sing”). It means to sing over something, though some have translated as “to sing something into being.”

This captures what the eternal Trinity did in the work of creation. With a blast of breath, the Triune Creator “enchanted” the cosmos, setting waves of light into motion that were full of order and harmony.

Galaxies formed. Stars burned. Planets turned. Life awakened. And the great cathedral was built, the glorious and living flute sparkling with music.

The Composer

So we return to where we began.

Creation truly is symbolic architecture. Every galaxy, wave, rhythm, and harmony becomes another stained-glass window in this vast cathedral of light. It appears that the ancient philosophers heard more than they knew. They perceived echoes as they peered beyond mathematics into harmony. But deeper still was relationship. And deep within this relationship was Joy. Though the Greeks called it the music of the spheres, John revealed that it was the Word.

And one day, that Word stepped onto the stage of His own symphony. The Composer entered His own composition, and the Song became flesh.

From that moment on, the universe was no longer hinting at its Maker. The One to whom every star and every wave had always pointed was now walking among us.

And now He invites us into that same Song.

The Christian life is not merely learning about the Composer, nor simply admiring the beauty of His work from a distance. It is participation. It is your own “flesh” getting caught up in the Music.

For it is through Christ, we are welcomed into the eternal communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the very life from which every galaxy was born and by which every atom is still sustained.

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My mother did not become strong all at once. She became strong the way stone is shaped—under pressure, over time, with forces that would have broken something less determined.

“I wanted to be the best mother,” she once told me. Not casually, not as a passing thought, but as something rooted deep inside her—like a vow she made long before she understood the cost. “The best mother. The best wife.”

Those words had been poured into her early, taught as truth, as duty, as identity. To be a good woman meant staying. It meant enduring. It meant honoring biblical vows no matter what those vows demanded in return.

So she stayed.

She stayed in a marriage that was unraveling from the inside out. She stayed when things didn’t make sense, when love didn’t look like love, when truth was something hidden behind closed doors. She stayed because she believed that’s what good women did. Good God fearing women didn’t leave - no matter the cost.

Until the day everything collided.

Her father—my grandfather—saw what she could not yet allow herself to see. He had lived enough life to recognize the quiet kind of suffering that becomes permanent if you let it. And he told her plainly: You have to leave. The same man who had instilled the law behind “til death do us part”, was demanding she leave her marriage.

But leaving wasn’t simple. Leaving meant betraying everything she had been taught to believe about loyalty, about God, about marriage.

She resisted.

And in that resistance came one of the most defining moments of her life—violent, chaotic, unforgettable. A line was crossed in that room by her Father that could never be uncrossed. His temper unleashed on her the same way it had since she was a child.

Something in her shifted.

“I’ve been here before,” she said. “I’m not doing this again. I have a baby to take care of.”

That baby was me.

And just like that, survival became louder than obedience.

What followed was not a clean escape. It was messy, uncertain, and stripped down to the bare essentials of existence.

She left with almost nothing—just clothes, a car, and a child in her arms.

Everything else had to go.

Furniture sold. Stability gone. A life dismantled piece by piece. She has said before she doesn’t even remember how we got from one place to another. Trauma has a way of blurring the logistics while sharpening the feeling.

But she remembers the kindness.

“The people from the church,” she said, “they were like angels.”

In the middle of collapse, there were still hands reaching out. Still moments of grace.

My father was unraveling in his own way.

This was the first of many hospital stays. The first of many suicide attempts. The first occurrence of what would become routine financial collapse. The first secrets coming to the surface—truths that had been buried under expectation and fear.

When the doctors finally spoke plainly, it was both devastating and clarifying.

“He’s a broken human being,” one of them told her.

And then, quietly but firmly: “You need to take your baby and leave.”

This time, the message landed.

Not because it was easier to hear—but because something inside her had already begun to change.

Still, leaving didn’t mean the pain ended.

There were confrontations that shattered whatever illusion remained. One moment in particular stayed with her forever—sitting at a table, looking directly at the man she had built her life around, and asking a question that would change everything.

“Are you gay?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Truth, finally. But truth doesn’t come without consequence.

She reacted the only way her overwhelmed, shattered heart knew how—she struck him. Not out of cruelty, but out of the collision between betrayal, confusion, and a life that suddenly made no sense.

In that moment, everything she thought she understood about her marriage, her role, her future—it all fell apart.

What makes her story remarkable is not that these things happened.

It’s that she did not break under them.

She could have.

By every reasonable expectation, she should have.

She was young, alone, financially unstable, emotionally overwhelmed, and carrying the responsibility of a child while navigating circumstances most people never face all at once.

But she held it together.

Not perfectly. Not without scars. But she held it together.

“I don’t know how I didn’t break,” she once said.

But I do.

Because somewhere along the way, her definition of being “the best mother” changed.

It stopped being about being the perfect wife.
It stopped being about meeting expectations placed on her by others.

It became about survival.
About protection.
About choosing her child—even when it meant losing everything else.

Years later, when we sat together reflecting on all of it, I told her something she had never fully allowed herself to believe:

“You have been an incredible mother.”

Not because everything was easy.
Not because everything was ideal.

But because in the face of chaos, she chose to stay present. She chose to keep going. She chose to love.

And that kind of motherhood—the kind forged in fire, in uncertainty, in sacrifice—is not something you learn from a book or inherit from tradition.

It’s something you fight for.

My mother spent much of her life wondering if she had done enough, if she had done it right.

But what she didn’t always see—what she couldn’t always feel—was this:

She didn’t just survive her story.

She changed mine.

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We have been exploring and enjoying the reality of the Sevenfold Spirit of God: the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Might, and the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear—or worship—of the Lord.

These seven dimensions of who God is in the Holy Spirit reveal the essence of what life is about. God’s Spirit is life itself, and each aspect of the Spirit carries us through a kind of progression—a spiraling stairway of life. We begin in the wisdom of God’s love, grow in understanding, learn to walk in his counsel and power, and are ultimately brought into intimate knowledge, awe, and worship.

For this seventh and final chapter, I want to share a very personal revelation the Lord gave me before I began this series. He led me to a story in the Old Testament, and it blew my mind when I began to see how deeply it connected with the Seven Spirits of God.

You may not immediately see the connection, but I believe it will become clear as we move through the story . . .

The Son Who Was Sent Away

The story begins in Genesis 21:

“Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. Therefore she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.’

“The matter distressed Abraham greatly because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the lad and your maid; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named. And of the son of the maid I will make a nation also, because he is your descendant.’

“So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.

“When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, ‘Do not let me see the boy die.’ And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept.

“God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’

“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. God was with the lad, and he grew; and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer.”

—Genesis 21:9–20

Abraham and Sarah had been promised a son by God. But as the years passed and the promise did not seem to be coming, Sarah suggested that Abraham have a child through her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. In the ancient world, securing an heir was extraordinarily important. A child would carry on the family name, property, and inheritance. Without one, everything Abraham possessed could eventually pass into the hands of someone outside his family.

So Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands.

Hagar became pregnant and gave birth to Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Then, about thirteen years later, the promise finally came. Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac.

Conflict developed between the two households. Ishmael was found mocking his younger brother, and Sarah demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her son away. She did not want Ishmael sharing in Isaac’s inheritance.

This deeply distressed Abraham. Ishmael was not merely the consequence of a bad decision. He was Abraham’s son—his firstborn son—and Abraham loved him. He did not want to cast him out. Yet Sarah, the matriarch of the household, was insistent. God reassured Abraham that although Isaac was the child through whom the covenant promise would continue, he had not forgotten Ishmael. He would be with him and would also make a nation from him.

So Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away with bread and a skin of water.

At this point in their lives, Abraham had been their protector and provider. Yet the provision he sent with them did not last. The bread was consumed. The water skin ran dry. What Abraham gave them was not enough to sustain them through the wilderness.

And here the story begins to touch something deep within all of us.

When the Water Skin Runs Dry

How many of us have had people in our lives who were supposed to provide something necessary and life-giving, but what they gave us was not enough? The well ran dry. The water in the skin was used up.

Human beings need certain provisions in order to survive and thrive, and we do not live by physical bread alone. We need love. We need affection. We need honor, attention, affirmation, direction, protection, and guidance. Yet all of us, in one way or another, were not given enough. Some were barely given any of these things at all.

Abraham was supposed to be a father to Ishmael and, in some sense, a husband and protector to Hagar. But in this moment he abdicated that place. He attempted to provide something for their journey, but it ran out quickly. Their literal hunger and thirst led them into despair and brought them to the edge of death.

We live in a world filled with people whose protectors and providers have, for one reason or another, abdicated their roles. The result is another kind of thirst—a thirst for love, acceptance, affirmation, and guidance. When these needs go unmet, people often seek to satisfy them in unhealthy and destructive ways.

I know something about that thirst personally.

In 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic, I got on a plane and traveled to Texas to see my mother. The Lord had been doing a deeper work in my heart, and I felt it was important to have a very honest conversation with her.

During the period from 2019 into 2020, my marriage was struggling. In a supernatural way, God revealed to my wife, Kelly, a struggle that had been growing in my heart and had developed into an emotional affair. Nothing physical had taken place, but it was still unhealthy, inappropriate, and wrong. The discovery caused tremendous pain for Kelly.

During that season, the Lord began exposing deeper struggles within me connected to rejection and abandonment. There were lies buried within my heart that had created a kind of thirst, causing me to seek certain things in the wrong places.

Some of this connected with my relationship with my mother and the rejection I had felt from a very young age. Kelly and I both believed I needed to speak openly with her about it. Because of the pandemic, a round-trip ticket to Austin cost about fifty dollars, so I got on the plane.

I love my mother, and we have a good relationship today. I am deeply grateful for that. But there were wounds connected to my parents’ divorce when I was two years old, particularly because I did not get to live with her. Even though I saw her every other weekend, a part of me felt as though I had been “sent away.”

The water skin of a mother’s affection, connection, and affirmation seemed to run dry. A thirst developed within me for female attention, connection, and beauty. That thirst consumed parts of my life as I was growing up. God delivered me powerfully from an addiction to pornography when I was eighteen, but some of the deeper lies remained hidden and eventually began creeping into my marriage.

One of the most powerful things about my conversation with my mother was that I began to understand her more. Among other things, the Lord showed me how much poverty and financial hardship had affected the choices surrounding custody. There were serious financial reasons she was unable to take on more responsibility for raising me.

As we talked, the Lord allowed me to see her heart. I began to understand that there had been circumstances beyond her control that affected her ability to mother me. God used that conversation to establish truth within me: I had not truly been rejected or abandoned in the way the enemy had suggested.

I know this is heavy, but there is a reason I am sharing it. Something powerful happened on the plane ride home, and it connects directly with Hagar, Ishmael, and the Sevenfold Spirit of God. I’ll come back to that shortly . . .

The Bread of Hope

Hagar ran out of the provision that had been given by the person who should have supplied more. She reached the point of giving up.

She placed her son under a bush and walked a distance away because she could not bear to watch him die. There was no store down the road. No QuickChek or gas station. In the desert, without food and water, death was truly inevitable. It was a hopeless situation through and through.

So Hagar broke down—and so did her son. Their physical thirst and hunger were mixed with the deeper pain of rejection. They had been cast out by Abraham, the man who should have protected them.

This is the heart of so much human struggle. Beneath many of our desires and destructive behaviors is a thirst for love and acceptance. When that love appears absent—or is perceived to be absent—the resulting pain can pollute our thinking and drive us toward despair.

But it was in that very moment that God appeared.

And the first thing God did was release a promise.

Before he showed Hagar the provision, he ministered to her hopelessness. Before her eyes could be opened to what was around her, she had to rise from the place of despair in which she had collapsed.

God said, “Arise.”

He told her that there was hope for her future. He would make a great nation from her son. In other words: You have no idea what lies ahead of you. Everything feels wrong right now, but I am with you. This is not the end of your story.

That is the true bread every human being needs to hear and receive (“eat”).

Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. There is bread that our fathers, mothers, teachers, pastors, spouses, and influencers cannot provide. It is the bread of promise. The bread of identity. The bread of hope spoken directly from the heart of God.

God first gave Hagar the bread of hope so she could begin to rise out of her hopelessness.

Then he opened her eyes.

The Well of the Sevenfold Promise

The wilderness in which Hagar wandered has a significant name. It is called the wilderness of Beersheba.

Beersheba is formed from two Hebrew words: be’er, meaning a well, and sheva, meaning seven. The word connected with seven also carries the idea of an oath or promise. In the ancient world, covenants and solemn guarantees were sometimes confirmed through groups of seven. People might repeat a declaration seven times or offer seven animals as witnesses to an oath.

Beersheba can therefore be understood as the well of seven, the well of the oath, or the well of the sevenfold promise.

Interestingly, the place did not yet bear that name when Hagar first arrived. The name was given later in the same chapter, after Abraham entered into an agreement with a Philistine king.

Water was more valuable than gold in that desert region. Abraham’s servants had dug wells and discovered a source of water, but conflict developed over who owned them. Abraham agreed to make peace with the Philistine king, but he required the king to acknowledge that the well belonged to him.

As part of the covenant, Abraham set aside seven lambs. These lambs served as a witness that he had dug the well and that the water belonged to him.

Genesis tells us:

“Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because there the two of them took an oath.”

—Genesis 21:31

The well was confirmed by a sevenfold witness and a covenant promise.

And this was the very land where Hagar was wandering around, dying of thirst.

The answer to her problem was already in front of her! The provision was present, but she could not perceive it.

Her problem was not simply provision. It was perception.

She was unable to see the goodness that was already there.

This is something the Lord showed me in my own marriage, but it applies to many areas of life. We can become convinced that something essential is missing. We begin lusting, craving, and reaching for things that can never satisfy us. Meanwhile, pain and disappointment blind us to the blessings that are already present.

We should also acknowledge that Hagar was probably not merely sad. She was likely angry.

Sarah had been the one who suggested that Abraham have a child with her. Now that Sarah finally had her own son, she was driving Hagar and Ishmael away. From Hagar’s perspective, this was a profound injustice.

Her tears were probably desperate tears, but they may have been bitter and angry tears as well. Those tears filled her eyes and clouded her vision. She could no longer see what was directly in front of her.

Then we read these beautiful words:

“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”

—Genesis 21:19

God wants to perform that same healing work in our vision. He wants to deal with the pain, disappointment, anger, and bitterness that cloud our eyes and drive us into despair.

But we cannot miss the deeper message of the well of the sevenfold promise. This well points toward the ultimate provision that has been given to all of us.

It points toward the finished work of Jesus Christ . . .

It Is Finished

Seven is the number of completion. On the seventh day, God finished his work of creation. He looked at everything he had made and declared that it was very good.

When Jesus hung upon the cross and took the sin of humanity into himself, he eventually cried out, “It is finished.”

The work was complete.

And because that work was finished, God now looks upon those who are in Christ and declares, “Very good.”

You are very good.

That declaration speaks to needs and longings deeper than physical hunger. When Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, he was responding to the devil’s attempt to make him doubt his identity.

Jesus had entered the wilderness (just like Hagar) and the tempter came and challenged him: “If you are the Son of God…”

But immediately before Jesus entered that wilderness, the Father had spoken:

“You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”

The Father gave Jesus a water skin that could never run dry. He gave him the bread that truly satisfies the human heart: the word of beloved identity.

The deepest issue beneath rejection and abandonment is often the lie that something is fundamentally wrong with us.

I am not good. I am broken. I am not wanted. I am not needed. Something about me makes me unworthy of love.

That is the lie.

It is the lie that drives so much pain and so many false attempts to satisfy our thirst, whether through substances, affairs, compulsive behaviors, or the mild but constant distractions that keep us from our destiny in God.

The finished work of the cross declares that you are not a rejected fragment of creation.

You were worth dying for.

Remember the seven lambs Abraham gave as a witness that the water belonged to him. In a much greater way, Jesus is the Lamb whose blood serves as the witness, oath, promise, and guarantee that you may come and drink freely from the Father’s love and presence!

The well belongs to you.

The Spirit of Promise

This brings us directly back to the Sevenfold Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of the Father, and Scripture uses the title “the Spirit of Promise.” The Spirit brings everything we truly need for life: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, intimacy, worship, awe, and wonder.

Jesus said that whoever believes in him—whoever comes and drinks—will have rivers of living water rise from within. John tells us that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit.

The Father does not merely hand us another temporary water skin. He places the well within us.

The promise of the Father is the Holy Spirit.

This is the Spirit who reveals that we are the beloved. This is the Spirit who heals our vision. The Spirit who causes us to see that what we have been desperately seeking has already been given in Christ.

The Sons of Ishmael

After my time with my mother in Texas, I boarded a plane to return home. As I took my seat, I realized that I was surrounded by men who appeared to be Muslim.

Traditionally, Ishmael is regarded as a father of much of the Arab world, while the Jewish people trace their covenant lineage through Isaac, Sarah’s son. This ancient family conflict has therefore continued to echo through history.

The tension is about more than land, although land certainly matters. There are deeper wounds in the human heart beneath all the conflict.

Hagar and Ishmael experienced rejection, and for understandable reasons. Yet this story also reveals something I had been learning about my own parents. Abraham did not truly want to send Ishmael away. Life had become horribly messy through human fear, unbelief, barrenness, conflicting inheritance claims, and the tension between two sons.

A terrible situation developed through the brokenness of many people.

Hagar and Ishmael were rejected by human beings, but they were not rejected by God.

God was with them.

And he remains concerned with their descendants today.

As I sat on that plane, the Lord was dealing with perceived abandonment and rejection in my own life. Suddenly I felt a profound connection, deeper than ethnicity or culture, with people from a completely different part of the world. We shared the same human heart, thirsting for the same love, belonging, and acceptance.

Compassion began rising within me.

I saw more clearly how an orphan spirit has affected the entire world, leaving a particular mark upon the sons of Ishmael and upon many nations in Africa. There are other historical and biblical connections that could be explored, including the story of Noah and his sons, but in that moment I simply felt the Father’s heart for these peoples in a way I had never experienced before.

It was as though the Lord was telling me, “Your healing is bigger than you.”

Wake up, Nick. Be healed and move forward, because I am sending you to nations. I am sending you to those who feel abandoned, even though they are not abandoned. I am the true Father, and I am with them even now.

And God wants to bring healing truth into your own heart because you have a calling.

He desires to heal you simply because he loves you. That is true whether you ever travel to another nation or not. Healing is not something you have to earn through ministry.

But there is also a calling upon the church to bring lost sons and daughters home. There is a calling to participate in reconciliation between entire people groups. This is much larger than our individual lives.

We are talking about the healing of the nations.

The Spirit of Adoption

The Sevenfold Spirit is more than wise counsel and miraculous power. He certainly brings those things, but the Sevenfold Spirit is also the Spirit of Adoption—the Spirit of Sonship.

The Holy Spirit confirms that you are a beloved child of the King.

You are not abandoned.

You are not alone.

In fact, you were never alone, even when it felt as though you were. You may still feel alone now, but the feeling is not the deepest truth.

This is central to what the Holy Spirit reveals. Like a true mother, the Spirit brings comfort to the deepest places of the human heart—the places of need that, when left unhealed, can drive people toward addiction because their water skins ran dry so early in life.

The book of Ephesians begins by describing the spiritual blessings already surrounding us in Christ. Paul later speaks of the walls of division being broken down between peoples—Jew and Gentile, and ultimately every tribe, language, and nation.

But in the first chapter, Paul prays for something very similar to what Hagar experienced. He prays that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened.

He prays for our vision to be opened.

The tears of loneliness, bitterness, rejection, and disappointment can cloud our eyes. Yet when we release those things to God, he begins clearing our vision. We begin to see how blessed we are, how deeply we are loved, and how much hope remains for our future.

Forgiveness and Open Eyes

Part of opening our eyes involves forgiveness.

We begin coming out of blindness as we release the people who caused our pain—or who seemed to drive us into the wilderness in the first place.

Most people did not deliberately set out to destroy us. Even when their actions felt intentional, many were being driven by wounds, fears, lies, and their own unhealed places.

I traveled more than a thousand miles to have a conversation with my mother. Not everyone can or should do that. Some may be able to have a courageous conversation with the person who hurt them. Others must forgive someone who is no longer alive. In some circumstances, direct contact would be unwise or unsafe.

But whether or not a conversation can take place, the pain can always be brought to the Lord.

We can allow him to touch our hearts and help us release those who wounded us.

And as our vision clears, we can rise as true messengers of the gospel.

You may never travel to Africa or the Middle East, but people carrying an orphan spirit are all around you. They live in your neighborhood, work beside you, sit near you in church, and may even live within your own home.

And regarding the nations of Africa and the Middle East, I believe the church is called to remain engaged, even when our participation is expressed through prayer, generosity, and support for missions of reconciliation and healing.

There are sons and daughters in the wilderness who believe they have been abandoned.

There are wells they cannot yet see.

And the Spirit of the Father is still speaking:

“Do not fear. I have heard you. Arise. Lift up the child. There is a promise over your future!”

This is the promise of the Father.

The water skin may have run dry, but the well has not.

The people who were supposed to provide for you may have failed. Their love may have seemed insufficient. Their absence may have created a thirst that shaped much of your life.

But the Sevenfold Well of Promise is already near.

The blood of the Lamb is the witness that the water belongs to you.

The work is finished.

You are beloved.

You are not abandoned.

And the Spirit of Adoption has come to open your eyes, fill your heart, and cause rivers of living water to rise from within you—not only for your own healing, but for the healing of the nations.

Amen.

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Stepping Stones of Transformation

An Unfolding Manuscript

by

C. D. Baker

Chapter Twenty-Two: Spirals

Our Spirit-journeys are expanding spirals

That circle us

Over and under

The place where we began.

That’s because we can’t be changed

On the same plane where we started.

And straight lines are just too much to bear.

So the Spirit wants to dance with us,

To gently wind us

In wonder-wheels

Until we emerge within the beauty

That’s been holding us

All along.

***

Spring-Summer 2023

May 17.

“Yeah, well I can feel low-level anxiety.”

Bill listens quietly.

“After all that I’ve learned and experienced, I still fear getting out of bed in the morning. This journey is all over the place; years of rinse and repeat.”

Bill seems sympathetic. “The process is not easy, or smooth. It’s part of being human. But it’s not ‘rinse and repeat.’”

No? I look away. “How many times must God show up before any of this sticks?”

§

May 31.

“So, good news and bad news.” I try laughing at myself but this constant push-and-pull is exhausting me.

Bill smiles. “What’s up?”

“The bad news: my ear trouble is causing a new surge of anxiety. I can’t stop the ringing and the vertigo leaves me helpless.” I can feel my jaw clenching. “I’m losing all interest in life. I have no purpose. I’m tempted to abandon my writing and back out of the doctorate. I’m feeling lost.”

Crossing his ankles, Bill says, “And the good news?”

“I was in the waiting room of my eye doctor and my mind returned to last year’s trauma with Will. I closed my eyes and then remembered the joy I felt realizing how much God loved him.”

I swallow hard against the lump now rising in my throat. “Then something hit me.” I pause. “God loves me the same way.”

§

July 12.

I got to Bill’s office a little early today so I went over my notes. As per usual, good stuff; bad stuff. Back and forth, up and downs. Too much, way too much.

Time to go in.

Bill and I do our usual handshake and then get to it.

“I had a really good feeling of centering last week. It was like everything found its place. Then a day later I screwed it up with some made-up medical fears.”

“Your shadow-self hates a rival, so it tries to take back control by setting up fear.”

Nothing new there. “And?”

Bill pauses. “You’re dealing with echoes of old patterns.” He taps his fingers together. “Relapses like this always happen. It’s normal. Keep your eyes on the whole picture…and the whole picture reveals amazing things.”

To me, the whole picture seems like a swirl of competing feelings that are emerging from unknown places and fighting for my soul.

Bill leans forward. “You have a constellation of trauma that is slowly releasing. Learn to hold the feelings just as they are. Witness them as they continue to present themselves and just be curious.” He thinks for moment. “Trust is at the center of all of this.”

§

September 26.

I look at my summer notes and shake my head. I continue circling around the evasive center of trust. At church I heard someone casually comment that ‘we trust God because we believe he is good.’ Is it possible that somewhere inside I don’t? After all that I’ve experienced, how could that be?

“You look troubled.”

Bill’s voice startles me. “Yes, I am. I return again and again to the same stuff. I can’t find the key to solve this riddle.”

He leans forward. “Each time you circle back you’re actually in a new place.”

I let that settle for a moment. “Well, it feels the same.”

“It’s not.”

We look at each other until I say, “Two weeks ago I had a near panic attack. I was so worn out that I gave up my striving…until I picked it back up a few days later.”

“How did it feel to give it up, even briefly.”

“Good.”

Sitting back, Bill remains quiet.

“I found myself wanting to focus on God’s goodness…and I began praying for joy.”

“And?”

“I was in Virginia and I scanned the mountains one evening. I realized that if I were buried under one of those trees I’d be resorbed into the creation. That really bothered me for a moment.”

Bill listens, still as stone.

“Then I thought of Jesus Christ remembering me.” I sit back and exhale. “I felt good about that. It was like a beautiful cosmic joy that came over me.”

Bill says nothing.

“Two days later I was home, depressed and anxious.” I click my pen. “See what I mean?”

Bill closes his eyes, then says, “We are spirits having a human experience. And every alternating feeling is part of this. We don’t have to understand why.”

“Maybe. But I hate that I can’t find the key to fix it all.”

Bill looks at me, carefully. “You strive really hard to fix yourself, to accomplish your own rescue, don’t you?”

I don’t want that to be true.

“There is no such thing as a magic ‘key.’ There is no ‘right’ formula to follow. There is only engagement with a good God who loves you.”

That gets my attention.

“Whatever the detours or reminders or repetitions, just remember that the only way of transformation is the swirling, ascending, descending process that leads you closer to him.”

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Aquamarine has always been my favorite color. It’s got all of the purity of one of those tourist waterfronts and all of the vitality of nature. There’s a place in a video game I really like to go, because it’s covered in this color, and it’s got this beautiful song going on in the background at night. In fact, I’d encourage you to listen to this as you read. It’ll make it easier for both of us to understand where I’m coming from:

I’ve asked God several times that my house in heaven would look like this, or something like it, without the pagan looking statues. Shimmering glass, warm shallow water, and blue-green lights, with reflections only night can illuminate, like suburban streetlights off the rain-pooled pavement. And although I don’t think we’re exactly getting mansions out there, I’m pretty sure Jesus says we get some sort of place that He has prepared for us . . . and I don’t think it will be underwhelming, so I will go on . . .

If you came to visit, you’d be graced by a gentle mist that felt as refreshing as it felt personal, like the spirit of someone who loved you commanded it to cool your forehead, as quickly as the heat of the day had caused a drop of sweat to form.

Sophistry? Maybe. But this is me reaching for something beyond my perceptions of reality, and into something that is deeply within my subconscious desires—so cut me some slack. If my abode, my resting place, becomes something close to this, I don’t know if I would ever want for anything again; that I would ever dream again, for I would be living my dreams. Heaven knows I wouldn’t ever want a place like that on this side of eternity; the water bill would be through the roof. But when rivers of living water flow freely there, this becomes a possibility.

But should I be this excited about real estate in heaven? As much as I’m sure I’ll love it, I have a certain fondness for the earth. I mean, I’ve lived my whole life here. People have visited the moon but then they get all these rocks in their shoes and they’re always saying they liked the adventure, but they’re very happy to be back.

At the same time, I’m listening to a lot of Christians who long for heaven, who want to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. And frankly, if we were able to see what it’s really like, I think we’d have some sort of mass exodus one way or another.

But do you see the incompleteness of heaven? As broken as the earth is, we still long to stay here, we still yearn to discover its beauty. There are whole organizations around making sure mother nature doesn’t get pissed off at us for throwing garbage in the ocean or using axe body spray. And in heaven, there are people crying. They’re still asking God when He will vindicate the martyrs. He will wipe every tear from our eyes, but there are still tears to wipe!

I can only conclude that we yearn both for earth and for heaven. We are like birds who want to fly away, but we love our nests and children we have made on the ground. We want to stay with them. Though God Himself is in heaven, humans are still unsatisfied.

Well, we were made for earth and to earth we will return. Actually, this is Jesus’ whole plan. You probably know about the New Earth, and the giant gold cube coming down from the sky. That is the actual plan. If you’re in Christ, you will inhabit the glorious renewal of the earth itself – the Venn Diagram of Heaven and earth will finally connect completely together, and that is where you will be. This is less complex and mysterious than it sounds. Your feet will actually be on the renewed-earth floor. Your renewed, unwrinkled hands will actually feel your coffee cup sleeve.

In a spiritual and real sense, you are there right now. The Bible says we are presently seated in heavenly places with Christ, but also mentions that Christ, in a future event, who is our life, will be fully revealed. And that is what I’m talking about here, the future event of the New Earth. Randy Alcorn starts his famous book on Heaven basically saying that Heaven is just a town you visit as a layover. Nice town for sure, but it’s not the destination, the New Earth is!

Okay, nice. But what about my cool waterpark-house? Did Jesus say He was preparing a place for me like a generous builder who makes a house for His friend, or did He say it more generally, like God creating earth to be inhabitable for humans? To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t think God is preparing an apartment in section 8 housing for me, but I also don’t know if I’ll even really want a house at all by the time I get there. I can probably just sleep in the cushiony grass without getting any ticks and cuddle up with some tigers or something.

I know this is silly, and the point I’m making isn’t all too Christ-centered, but hear me out here: let’s say God gives me a crappy apartment in heaven’s bad part of Chicago. Well no worries, I think I’ll be busy beholding the Creator of the Universe. But what about the New Earth? On the New Earth, I am 99.99% sure that not only will I have my dream home, but that I will make it. I’ll pay my insane water bill to God Himself.

How can I be so sure? Because I have 10 billion years to do it. The New Earth gives me what everybody on earth right now is clamoring for but slips through their fingers – time. Elon Musk wants to inhabit Mars (I think he still wants to do that, he might be a little distracted with politics right now), and he’s really getting there. If we keep throwing money at that, somebody will probably go there in my lifetime or my kid’s lifetime. A conservative (young earth creationist) view of humanity says that we’ve been around for 6,000 years, and on the other side of the pendulum, evolutionists say we’ve been around for over 300,000 years. Imagine 2 million years. I think we will have figured out how to travel between planets and probably be on our 4^th trial run of hopping between our galaxy and the next one over. But 2 million years is less than a fraction of a percent of infinity. Actually, it is nothing at all.

Under our new immortal state and under the direct, clear communication of the Holy Spirit, we as humans can now do anything.

Think about this practically for a moment. Because this has huge implications for you. Although the specifics are theoretical, you will actually experience an infinite amount of time on God’s handcrafted super-earth, without an ounce of corruption. This will be your future. And not only is this your future, but this is what you will be doing for the vast majority of your lifetime. Remember, you got like 80 or 90 years here out of infinity.

For me, maybe I spend my first 70,000 years just practicing piano, learning heaven’s new notes, playing the new chords God gave us in the most recent update, and then for another 170,000 years I get bored of piano and get into painting with the new colors God has given us. And then, 450,000 years later, I’ll get into building. I’ll scout out a planet with a lot of water, close enough to a sun that it always feels like summer, and lay my first piece of handmade stained glass on the floor. It’s a very large project, but it doesn’t matter. Every moment is a blissful joy. The Father Himself sings love over me all day in refreshing mists and splashes of clear waters.

Oh, and my friends from college said they’re all going to help me build this cerulean palace too. They said they looked it over, and even with a 250,000-year time commitment, they were able to carve out some time in their schedules.

Welcome to Between You and Me. It’s called that because I ask that we keep this between us two. A lot of these things are quite personal, y’know? Wouldn’t want these things floating around on the internet where Christians can whip my words with the Bible, would we?

But it’s also called Between You and Me because there is a lot between me and God. There’s a lot between God and me and all of us, isn’t there? This book is an attempt to name those things so they can be healed. One chapter at a time.

Waylon Woody is a writer and minister living in West Milford, NJ.

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Some truths are so vast that they must be approached from many angles. A story, a symbol, a memory, a theological reflection—each becomes another facet of the same diamond. This month’s issue continues that journey of discovery.

In The Song of the Universe, we turn our attention to the “Bright Morning Star,” exploring one of Scripture’s most beautiful and hope-filled images of Christ. From the first light before dawn to the fulfillment of God’s purposes in creation, The Dawn Has Begun invites us to consider the One who both announces and embodies a new day.

C. David Baker’s Walking Stick Journal continues with Integrating Reception, which among other things asks a poignant question: What if you’re not falling apart, but becoming whole?

Waylon Woody returns with the next chapter of Between You and Me, titled Long Day Factory. With a beautiful blend of humor, honesty, and spiritual insight, Waylon will give you the opportunity to break through any agreements with darkness.

We also continue our exploration of The Seven Spirits of God with a look at Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord. Far from a topic of dread, this biblical vision reveals a profound intimacy with God—a knowing that leads not to distance, but to wonder, reverence, and delight.

As always, our hope is that these pages do more than inform. May they awaken curiosity, deepen faith, and help you hear the voice of Christ echoing through creation, Scripture, and the stories of everyday life.

Grace and peace,

Nick Padovani
Founder & Publisher, Elisha’s Riddle

Contents:

The Song of the Universe: The Dawn Has Begun

The Walking Stick Journal: Integrating Reception

Between You and Me: The Long Day Factory

The Seven Spirits of God (Part 6: Knowledge & the Fear of the Lord)

Latest Podcast:

Make sure to check out the latest Elisha’s Riddle Podcast episodes here

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A prophetic conversation to awaken joy, identity, and perspective.

This podcast is birthed out of encounter and friendship. Nick Padovani and Dylan DeMarsico, along with other friends, join together to create a space for scripture, revelation, and cultural insight. All of this geared toward opening eyes and hearts toward this great truth:

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

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The Heart Behind Elisha’s Riddle

This podcast is part of a larger vision: to awaken people to the reality that God’s Kingdom is not merely a future hope, but a present reality. Christ has brought His Kingdom near, and we are invited to live fully in tune with it today.

The name Elisha’s Riddle reflects that vision.

The prophet Elisha received the mantle from Elijah and carried forward the promises of the previous generation into his own. In the same way, we believe there are treasures God has entrusted to his people throughout history that are meant to become living realities in our generation. We are not called simply to admire the past, but to inherit it.

But God’s Kingdom has always come with an element of mystery. Jesus spoke in parables—not to hide truth from hungry hearts, but to awaken them. A riddle is not meant to conceal the answer forever; it invites us to seek, ponder, and discover. The mysteries of God’s Kingdom unfold to those who draw near.

Our hope is that each conversation awakens fresh vision, deepens your understanding of Christ, and equips you to walk more fully in the hidden Kingdom of grace, joy, and victory that is already among us.

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The Star Beyond Bethlehem

In the previous article, we explored the Star of Bethlehem and how this celestial event served as a literal sign announcing the birth of Christ. Whatever form this sign took, whether a comet recorded by ancient Chinese astronomers or a rare planetary conjunction, its significance was found not in the heavens themselves but in the One to whom it pointed.

This is the pattern we’ve found in Scripture. The created order is depicted as a witness of something greater than itself. Stars, planets, seasons, mountains, rivers, and living creatures all possess a sacramental quality. They are signs, not in the sense of secret codes to be deciphered, but in the sense that they reveal something of the wisdom and purposes of their Creator. (And how beautiful that God infuses each work of art with divine messaging.)

The Star of Bethlehem may be the clearest example of this principle. For a brief moment, the heavens fulfilled their purpose in an unusually direct way. The lights that had been appointed “for signs” in Genesis 1 announced the arrival of the One through whom all things were made.

Yet the New Testament eventually takes us beyond the sign itself and directs our attention to something even more remarkable.

The star that appeared over Bethlehem was pointing to an even greater “Star.” This we learn at the very end of Scripture, when Jesus declares:

“I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” —Revelation 22:16

The Message Behind Venus

This title Jesus speaks over Himself is striking for several reasons, not least because it draws our attention back to the heavens. Of all the images Jesus could have chosen to describe Himself, He identifies with the celestial body that announces the dawn.

The morning star is an ancient reference to the planet Venus. Though not a star in the modern astronomical sense, it’s been known throughout history as one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Just before sunrise, when darkness still covers the landscape and the world waits for the first light of day, Venus appears often in the eastern sky with remarkable brilliance.

For countless generations, travelers, shepherds, sailors, and farmers understood the significance of this “star.” The Morning Star was an announcement of the dawn. Even though the sun remained below the horizon, and night had not yet dissipated, the bright appearance of Venus was evidence that a new day was already on its way. The sun was about to break through the horizon line and wash away the darkness.

As you can see, the connection to Jesus and his mission is astounding.

The Dawn Has Begun

Jesus entered the world in the middle of history . . . not the end of it. The old creation was still groaning beneath the weight of sin, violence, and death. Rome still ruled. Slavery, murder, and war still scourged the planet. Yet through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, something entirely new entered the story.

The age to come appeared within this current dark age and the future broke into the present.

Because of this, our faith is not some wishful thinking about what may happen someday. Faith is learning to live in the light of what has already begun. The bright Morning Star announces a glorious certainty that does not depend upon present appearances. The dawn is coming because the dawn has already begun—period.

Like Venus in the night sky, Jesus is the stark pinprick of light that signals the end of humanity’s long battle with darkness. As we’ve been explaining, this is bigger than just a message of forgiveness or some allusive hope of life after death (as incredible as those things are).

The Child born in Bethlehem, who grew up to overcome death itself, was the first light of humanity’s true destiny: to be eternal temples of the living God, participants in divine life of the Father.

The Star of Bethlehem first announced this Mystery, but the Morning Star now helps to unveil its full meaning . . .

The Morning Star Within

In his final communication to the young and growing church, the apostle Peter told believers that we are partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Amazingly, his goes on to reference the “morning star” in this same chapter. And this reference is not about a Star far out in the heavens, but something much closer.

Let’s peer into this wondrous gem of Scripture:

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. —2 Peter 1:19

Right before he says this, Peter reminds his readers of another pivotal moment in the life of Christ, a moment that he himself was an “eyewitness” of—the transfiguration. This is where Jesus’s true identity was unveiled with dazzling light as God the Father declared the following:

“This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased!”

What’s incredible here is that Peter just got done saying that we are partakers of Christ. In other words, what belongs to Him, we receive for ourselves. God’s declaration of Christ as a Beloved Son is also a declaration over us!

Are you catching this? This is what we are to “pay attention” to—as to a lamp shining in a dark place. Though darkness still appears to linger all around us, this word is true today. Peter then assures us that this truth will be fully visible one day—because the morning star will arise in our hearts.

These are unfathomable words. If Jesus is the Morning Star, then this is a direct proclamation of his glory rising within us. We are beloved sons and daughters right now—Christ being the first-fruit—and one day our true identity will be fully unveiled before the entire universe!

Awakened Humanity as a Starry Host

A divine side-note: When I flipped my Bible open to look for a Morning Star reference, I opened right away Philippians 2 where I came upon a wildly relevant passage. Before I show it to you, I want you to see the verses right before it. These include the famous phrase “work out your salvation with fear and trembling…”

Check it out:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Without going into a deep teaching on this, I believe the “fear and trembling” part has to do with refusing to place our confidence in our own efforts. Our salvation is already within us. “Working it out” is about letting it flow through faith. How can I say this? Because Paul affirms it when he says right in the same sentence: “for it is God who works in you…”

Our “work” is to let Him work through us—which has to do with trusting in our union with Christ.

But here’s the kicker. Paul goes on to describe what happens when we let the life of God flow from within us:

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life… —Philippians 2:12-16 NIV

We shine like stars!

This brings us full circle. The Star of Bethlehem was announcing something greater than a singular Star, and it was about something more than a singular Person. Yes, Jesus is “the Light of the World,” but he told his disciples the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount—you are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14).

So, as we wrap up this reflection, let’s pause at the last line in this passage. Paul tells us to “hold firmly to the word of life…”

What is the word of life? It’s the word of Christ in you. It’s the same thing Peter tells his readers to “pay attention” to.

Jesus is the first and guaranteed fruit (morning star) of our identity. Holding firmly to this promise is like clinging to a lamp shining in the lingering darkness.

One day, the light will fully dawn . . . but for now we get to glow in the dark!

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Stepping Stones of Transformation

An Unfolding Manuscript

by

C. D. Baker

Chapter Twenty-One: Integrated Reception

The sometimes-agonizing process of spiritual-psychological transformation necessarily involves a long season of deconstruction. It can be an oscillating descent toward the space where we will eventually begin to integrate the emerging truth of whom we have always been.

The process is challenging. We necessarily discard fragments of our false selves even though we are barely ready to integrate fresh truths. We follow an unfamiliar road. Each inch can be disorienting, every step anxious-making.

Yet every movement matters along whatever winding way we are taken, even when we feel as though we are blindly tiptoeing. The beauty is that every step is pure grace and each stride is a divine gift.

If only we can learn to receive.

***

Winter 2023

I pulled into Bill’s parking lot mumbling to myself that I can’t possibly handle all of this. I feel like I’m coming apart, unravelling; that my center has disintegrated. Life feels too threatening and I’m grasping at survival. But who is it that’s in there striving to survive?

I’m completely exhausted again. That Christmas night thing along with [cousin] Elizabeth’s terrible death and the memory-trauma of Will’s experience has piled on to my entangled demons.

*

Bill welcomes me to my usual seat and we both get situated. “So how are you today?”

I hardly know where to begin but I tell him that I sense some kind of fragmentation. It’s like I’ve come apart and can’t find my way back. I add that this is all the more frustrating since the powerful experience of God’s presence in the ICU last April.

“So you feel guilty, too.”

“Of course.” I sip my coffee but my hand is shaking. “I had another one of those dreams about struggling but I can’t remember the details. I woke up and just told God I don’t know who I am anymore. Along with that came the very depressing idea that I have no meaning.”

“You’re discouraged, anxious, and worn out. You’ve lost your sense of self.”

“Yeah. And disinterested in anything that I’m doing. Even my new studies.”

“What are you afraid of right now?”

That’s easy. “I’m afraid of what’s being taken away. What am I losing in all of this...and what happens if I mess this whole process up?”

Bill interlocks his fingers and closes his eyes. “What do you fear losing.”

The answer leaps out. “My illusion of security and the ability to manage my fears.”

“So losing two illusions.” Bill watches me, carefully.

“Two. Right. Why am I afraid to give up illusions?”

Bill nods, sympathetically. “Because you don’t yet trust reality.”

He nailed it.

“Why don’t you ask God about your fear of letting go.”

“I do and he’s not delivering.”

“Are you sure.”

I shift in my seat. “I still resist something about him.”

Nodding again, Bill says, “God has already given you something very valuable. He has shown you his love.”

A lump forms in my throat. That and a sting of guilt.

Bill must see it in my eyes. He waits and then says, “And you’re afraid you’ll mess that up.”

Right again.

Bill stretches his legs forward and crosses his ankles. “You’re still hearing old voices from both your father and your childhood church. It’s not a matter of handling all of this perfectly. It’s a matter of experiencing the security of love... no matter what.”

I look past Bill through the window behind him. Cascades of memories fill me, memories of God’s blessings. An inner voice whispers, “All I want for you is to see my goodness.” A warmth rises.

Bill interrupts. “The truth is that you are not experiencing fragmentation. It may feel like it, but you are not coming apart. What’s falling away are your old thought patterns.” He smiles. “You are actually in a process of integration. You are being delivered into wholeness.”

I sit with that.

“The false-you… that shadow self we’ve discussed... has been slowly dissolving and that’s discomforting. What’s beginning to happen now is the integration of your true identity. That’s an identity that’s unfamiliar...and unfamiliarity makes any of us anxious.”

Lots to process. “I make this harder than it has to be, don’t I?”

We both laugh.

“It wasn’t long ago that Jeff [my medical doctor] reminded me to stay available to grace.” A snow plow splashes slush below. “Despite all my resistance, God has remained gentle and patient. His humility blows my mind. He has not judged me or made demands...”

I tap my coffee cup. “He’s been gracious and this whole process belongs to him, doesn’t it? Not to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve been striving to put the pieces back myself...and my way.”

“Yes, you have.” Bill sits upright. “Some of your depletion is your own fault. You come here but your history isn’t one of asking for help.” He leans in. “You may be ashamed to need it, or you fear it.”

Bill’s tone is firm. “Don’t let your father’s voice interfere with your receiving. It not only cuts you off from healing but it also deprives others the joy of giving. Others, like me.”

He sits back. “Receiving is part of becoming whole; it’s part of who and how you are meant to be as an image bearer of God. The Trinity models giving and receiving.”

‘And receiving.’ I jot that down, and as I do a question creeps in: Have I really received God’s goodness? I stare, blankly. I’m pretty sure I’ve resisted it...even rejected it.

Bill is saying something but my eyes are now fixed on my note pad. I’m guessing that receiving—really receiving—God’s goodness is critical. I’ve not let myself experience it fully. Why? What about that scares me?

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There was a time in my life where I thought that women only brought pain into my life. It’s very embarrassing to say, it really is, but just hear me out. Sometimes logical conclusions we make from our experiences are surprisingly illogical. Sometimes the narratives we make about our lives are powerfully convincing and yet are so very false.

When I was a kid, I didn’t dream about becoming a movie star or playing professional football — I dreamt and prayed to God that I would be a godly husband. I spent nights of my childhood fantasizing about coming home from the Long Day Factory, hanging my top hat on the coat rack and kissing my wife who was waiting for me at the door.

And then I entered the public school system. I realized quickly that I wasn’t a dashing savant who would marry his high school sweetheart. I was more like a dork who wore giant glasses, a brown polo, and had long greasy hair. So my identity — the things I built my measure of success on — was in shambles. It’s looking like at the ripe age of 13 I have not only forfeited my dream of becoming a godly husband, but it was something that was beyond my control.

I became vain. Not a vanity that drives people to dress better, but the kind of vanity that drives people to dress worse, to take less care of themselves, to show up with your head and shoulders down.

And all at once I drew a thick line between the unjust black and white of the world: “There are people who are attractive, and people who are not. The attractive people get what they want from the world. They achieve success, they get married. People who aren’t attractive, don’t.”

Don’t so many of us find ourselves in this way of thinking?

Yet despite this, I fought against all odds. I thought to myself that even if I didn’t find myself attractive or desirable, I can trick women into finding me attractive.

A cursory glance of the world and a precise assessment of your average couples yields compelling results: if you aren’t attractive physically, you can win them over if you’re funny.

What a relief! At least I can be funny.

But then look, here’s my best friend from high school. Unfortunately, he’s tall, he’s good looking, and worst of all — he’s funny.

Oh, he’s dating the girl I liked.

Oh, he’s dating the other girl I liked.

Oh, wow, uh… he did it a third time.

At this point I’m a sophomore in high school. I had a journal where I wrote in all caps how much I hated myself.

It’s so clear — my dreams are never going to happen because I’m short, I’m not good looking, and I’m not really that funny.

I’m fighting an uphill battle I can’t win.

There’s a kid somewhere inside me in all of this who is gently saying something like:

“Hey God, why did you make me look like this? I’ve tried so hard to work within the limitations you’ve given me! I tried being funny! In fact, I think girls do think I’m funny now, but they are still rejecting me. Why do you make some people defective? Why did you make me one of them? In this world of winners and losers, you chose to make me like this.”

In college, I had fully determined that no matter what my perception of myself was, I was going to live by a very simple rule: “no outstanding crushes.”

I would ask out every girl I was interested in. I’m more mature now, I know that it has to be impossible that all the girls think I’m ugly!

Oh how the rejection flowed! Liberally! I found myself absorbing rejections every two to three weeks. I would walk into college dorms every day, rip my shirt off, flex in the mirror, and say with consistent confident certainty, “Guys, I found my wife today!”

I wish that was how bad it got. I really do. Somebody stop this train.

But then she graced me with her terrifying awe. To my surprise, she accepted the date (I basically cornered her into going). She waltzed through the world, effortlessly gliding in circles with her roller skates.

I asked her on a second date, she said no.

Ouch. But you know me, I’m the suffering artist here. I’m the melancholy lover of this grand narrative of life. I rise above the odds. I love when there’s no love coming back.

I asked her out again, she politely declined.

My thoughts were flooded again with her floral visage. Does the romantic back down? Does the man whose convictions so blanket his heart let the mild perturbance of life’s foxes kill the vineyard of our love?

No! Certainly not.

I courageously asked her out again—over text.

“No. Certainly not.”

I had an inkling at this point that something in me was terribly broken. Like something stretching back through my soul, through my greasy hair in 7^th grade, through my pacifier as an infant, through my mother, through my father, through my grandfather, through my ancestors, through Jesus, through King David, through Adam and Eve was twitching and straining against me at that very moment and cosmically calling my utmost attention…

But then…

Oh, but then…

She arrived! The chosen one! … The promised wife! Not only the fulfillment of my childhood dreams, but my present and future ones.

Needless to say, I spent my whole life waiting for someone like her to show up. And she came to know quickly the full force of that sentiment. In my mind, she was more of a drug than a person. In a mysterious collage of events, she became a proof to me.

She proved to me that I really wasn’t ugly, that all of those pages of notebooks that I wrote about myself were all just a deception.

She proved to me that God cares, that He sees those who are suffering and provides them with good things. Maybe I wasn’t accursed after all to be a loser!

And most importantly, and through all of it, she proved to me finally that I was lovable. The weight of that being proven was worth the weight of all of life itself.

I figured out how to rig the system so I could spend the whole summer between junior and senior year of college living in her parents’ backyard in a camper, working for her brother and father’s oil rig business. It was hard work fracking in the 12 hour days of Pennsylvania summer, but the smallest of prices to pay for her. I never complained once about anything. My dreams were unraveling right before my eyes. As I drove around the property, cutting around the grass-shrouded oil pumps and wiping grease onto my blackened jeans, my mind became utterly consumed with our wedding, with our eventual union. I became lovesick. For the first time in my life, my heart felt a deep physical pain when I thought of someone. I remember thinking that it was impossible to love someone any more than I did then.

Words cannot describe the ecstasy of this situation. I felt as though I fell through the world into a completely different dimension, like my entire worldview of being unlovable was merely a nightmare, and she was my great awakening.

So what happens when she leaves?

Heartbreak did not happen. It was more like hatred. It was contempt. It really wasn’t even her I was mad at, it was me.

No, it wasn’t me, it was God.

If God chooses to give children dreams without guaranteeing their fulfillment, what perversion of a reality do we then find ourselves in?

Anger happened. A bitter disdain for life and beauty and meaning happened.

And now we arrive at the conclusion that women only bring pain into my life.

Eventually, through the help of wiser old guys, I figured out that there were two versions of reality I had to choose between.

1) I am correct. Women hate me, and my dreams will never become a reality. There is sufficient cause and a sound, logical argument to be made for becoming increasingly pessimistic and depressed about my lot in life and the nature of reality.

2) I am wrong.

And I decided that I would rather be wrong than for number 1 to be true. It took the humbling of that breakup to get to a point where I would even consider I was wrong, but here I am.

I found myself sitting across from two counselors, a grandmother and a grandfather. She kept pulling up pictures of her 3-year-old grandson eating watermelon. I have to admit, it really helped grease the wheels and it helped me view them both with enough goodwill to tell them that… well… I hated women.

They had me go through agreements I made with myself; things that I had told myself about myself and about the nature of reality. It was surprisingly clinical. I thought our 3-day session was going to be super emotional and like all the anger and bitterness of my childhood would come flooding out through healing tears, but it wasn’t that way. It looked like me coming into agreement with a Father, like signing a paper that allows the surgeon to perform surgery whilst acknowledging the risks. It looked like shredding old legal documents and signing new ones.

For example,

— “I break agreement with the lie that I am ugly and will never find a wife — she will not be there for me, and God will not help me find her.”

— I replace this agreement, based on the Finished Work of Christ on the cross, that “I trust God to bring loving, life-giving people into my life. My wife is one of these people. I trust in His timing.”

See? It’s not that complicated. I just had to agree with grandma that I’m not going to believe that lie anymore and we made sure there was something robust from God to replace it. And here’s the other crazy thing. It worked. I just don’t really think that women are out to get me anymore. I view myself as reasonably handsome. I don’t really think about the insecurities I had in my childhood. And her? The chosen one? Well, it just didn’t work out! No worries! Aren’t breakups and love lost the most normal things in the world? Don’t these songs about last Christmas have billions of streams? Feel the levity of that?

And you can do it too. I didn’t get that new belief about myself from a textbook. Hell, I didn’t even get it from the Bible. I gave the lie to God and asked Him for a new belief. See how simply relational that is? It’s a conversation from a father to his daughter where he lifts her whole tiny face up with his two gentle hands, presses his forehead up against her and says sternly, “You are beautiful!”

He will answer you too. Give it a shot. Get a couple people together who want to sign some new legal documents and just take it seriously. The lies are more powerful and deceptive than you’d think, and so is the incredible conquering of them through the Truth, Christ crucified. We’ll be waiting for you on the other side, when you get tired of the worldview you have, when the pain of carrying your deception hurts more than the identity you get from it.

So, in an attempt to put my happily-ever-after on this chapter, I’ll say this:

She was the kind of girl that was amazingly talented, relationally genius, and angelic in her innocence. Even now, I have no use or even the remotest desire to cut her down in any way. She is honestly just a great person, and an awesome member of society. She’s going to be a teacher, God bless her. World knows America needs some more good teachers!

But we have only scratched the surface. God is still hiding, waiting to be found in the heavenly game of hide-and-seek. And as much as I’d like to pretend I’m writing this from a distanced, grey-beard stroking voice, that counseling session was last week.

I have so much I am learning, so rapidly. So many agreements were broken in those holy moments — so much forgiveness. A dam is bursting in my heart as you read these words on the holy ground of my life. Again, this whole thing is not about sharing the right answers; it’s about sharing what God is showing me in narrative form, so thank you for your patience.

Tune in next time where I write about something a little more ethereal, more heavenly. Literally. I told God how I want my mansion to look in heaven, and I kind of want to tell somebody about it, so I’ll see you next month!

Welcome to Between You and Me. It’s called that because I ask that we keep this between us two. A lot of these things are quite personal, y’know? Wouldn’t want these things floating around on the internet where Christians can whip my words with the Bible, would we?

But it’s also called Between You and Me because there is a lot between me and God. There’s a lot between God and me and all of us, isn’t there? This book is an attempt to name those things so they can be healed. One chapter at a time.

Waylon Woody is a writer and minister living in West Milford, NJ.

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A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;

from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of might,

the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:1–2 (NIV)

The Fruit of the Spirit’s Life

The Seven Spirits of God describe more than attributes of the Holy Spirit. They reveal a way of life. The Spirit is life itself, and true life is found in the flow of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and ultimately the fear of the Lord. Isaiah tells us that the Messiah would delight in the fear of the Lord. That word delight could also be understood as pleasure. There is a pleasure found in God unlike any pleasure this world can offer.

Throughout this journey we have seen that the Spirits come in pairs. Wisdom and understanding belong together. Counsel and might belong together. Now we arrive at the final pair: knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Knowledge, in the biblical sense, is not information stored in your head. It is intimate knowing. It is experiential. A mechanic knows cars because he has spent countless hours under the hood, behind the wheel, and immersed in the world of engines. His knowledge comes from experience, not merely information. In the same way, biblical knowledge is relational. It involves mind, body, and spirit. It is knowing through encounter.

As we’ve seen throughout this study, wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might ultimately revolve around love. Christ crucified is both the wisdom of God and the power of God. Understanding explains why we love—because we see the value of the one being loved. Counsel shows us how to love. Might empowers us to actually do it.

But the journey does not stop there. As love becomes more than a concept and begins to shape your life, you come into the knowledge of it. Yet ultimately this is not knowledge about love. It is knowledge of God himself, because God is love.

The biblical word for knowledge is even used to describe a husband knowing his wife. It is the language of intimacy. We have arrived at the crescendo of the Seven Spirits. The fruit of everything that has come before is knowing God.

And from that knowledge flows the fear of the Lord.

A Tree Bearing Fruit

One way to understand the Seven Spirits is through the image of a tree. Wisdom and understanding are the roots. Counsel and might form the trunk and branches. But knowledge and the fear of the Lord are the fruit.

Fruit is the visible outcome of a healthy tree. In the same way, intimacy with God and worship of God are the mature fruit of a life rooted in divine wisdom.

Knowledge is also closely related to revelation. Revelation is seeing something that was previously hidden. It is not merely learning information but receiving sight. I’ve heard intimacy described as “in-to-me-see.” While not a literal definition, it captures something important. Intimacy is the unveiling of the heart. Revelation is seeing into the heart of God.

This is why there is such a difference between someone who can argue theological facts and someone who actually knows God. One may possess information. The other carries revelation.

When I speak about the kindness of God, I am not simply quoting verses. Scripture is certainly my foundation, but those truths have become united with experience. I know something of his kindness because I have encountered it.

Knowing His Kindness

I remember one particularly tender moment.

There was a season in my life when I became deeply frustrated with God. I was facing a situation that I desperately wanted changed. It seemed as though it could change easily, and yet nothing was happening. I felt stuck. I felt like I was failing. The frustration eventually erupted into anger.

I can count on one hand the number of times I have genuinely yelled at God, but this was one of them.

I remember crying out, “What the hell do you want me to do?” The words came from a place of exhaustion and disappointment. Tears flowed. Emotions I normally kept hidden came rushing to the surface.

A few hours later, I was sitting at home feeling numb and somewhat guilty about my outburst. A movie happened to be playing. In the story, a young boy became angry with his father, yelled at him over the phone, and hung up. Later, the boy was consumed with guilt, convinced his father must be angry with him.

At the end of the film, the father unexpectedly appears and says to his son, “Even if you yell at me, I could never be mad at you. I love you so much.”

The moment those words were spoken, the presence of God flooded the room.

I knew he was speaking directly to me.

Peace washed over me. I felt his embrace. I melted.

It was the same love I encountered years earlier in a college dorm room when I was eighteen years old and far from God. In that moment his mercy met me, and it was as though he whispered, “I miss you, son. Come home.”

Those moments are not merely memories. They are revelation. They are knowledge. They are encounters with the living God.

And God desires to bring all of us into that kind of knowing.

The Knowledge That Leads to Worship

Part of walking in counsel and might is learning to receive how deeply God loves you. If wisdom is Christ crucified and power is Christ crucified, then much of the Christian life is simply learning to receive the love being poured out from the cross.

And that knowledge leads directly into the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is one of the most misunderstood phrases in Scripture. In our modern ears, fear sounds like terror. We imagine being frightened of someone who wants to hurt us or punish us. But that is not the heart of this biblical concept.

When Jesus quoted the Hebrew Scriptures, he often used language that connected fear with worship. The fear of the Lord is not about being afraid. It is about awe. Wonder. Reverence. Honor. Adoration.

Every time I have encountered the kindness of God, my reverence for him has increased. The first time I truly experienced his love, it did not make me want to sin more. It made me want to honor him.

The more you know God, the more you stand in awe of him.

Knowledge produces worship.

This is why these final two branches belong together. The deeper your intimacy becomes, the deeper your worship becomes. The more clearly you see his beauty, the more naturally your heart bows before him.

Worship is the fruit hanging from the tree.

The Circle of Light and Sound

Yet even here the journey does not end.

Throughout this series we have compared the Seven Spirits to the spectrum of light. Red represents the lower wavelengths and purple the highest visible wavelengths. We connected the fear of the Lord with that purple end of the spectrum—the place of majesty, mystery, royalty, and awe.

Yet the fascinating thing about worship is that it always leads us back to wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs tells us.

So the highest point becomes the starting point again.

The same pattern exists in music. Western music is built around seven primary notes. When you reach the final note of the scale—“ti”—it does not feel finished. Instead, it creates a longing for resolution. It draws you back to “do,” but now at a higher octave.

The journey circles back while simultaneously ascending.

The same thing happens spiritually.

As you grow in love and intimacy with God, worship becomes more intense. His beauty becomes more overwhelming. His glory becomes more magnificent. Yet just when you think you cannot possibly go any deeper, he brings you back to the simple kindness revealed in Christ.

He brings you back to the red note of the cross.

The tree tells the same story. If knowledge and the fear of the Lord are the fruit, what is found inside fruit?

Seeds.

And those seeds begin the entire process again.

The Glory and Gentleness of God

The fear of the Lord is ultimately an awareness of God’s glory.

When Isaiah encountered that glory in Isaiah 6, he was undone. Standing before the throne, he cried out, “Woe is me! For I am ruined.” He suddenly became aware of every impurity within himself and within the world around him.

That is part of the fear of the Lord. God’s beauty reveals everything that is out of alignment.

But notice what happens next.

A burning coal is brought from the altar and touches Isaiah’s lips. His sin is removed. His guilt is taken away.

Just when Isaiah can no longer bear the weight of holiness, mercy appears.

Once again, the purple majesty of God leads back to the crimson grace of God.

This reveals one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith. God is infinitely powerful, unimaginably holy, and terrifyingly beautiful. Yet at the same time, he is the safest being in the universe.

Creation itself teaches this paradox. God created babies, puppies, and newborn chicks. Why? Because he wanted to reveal something of his tenderness. These tiny creatures radiate innocence, vulnerability, and sweetness.

But God also created oceans, hurricanes, jaguars, black holes, and galaxies. These reveal something else about him. They remind us that he is wild, majestic, powerful, and utterly beyond our control.

Both revelations are true.

The Lamb and the Lion are one.

The purple majesty of God is forever joined to the crimson blood of Christ.

Beholding His Beauty

If there is one passage that beautifully captures the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord, it is Psalm 27.

David writes:

“One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD…” (Psalm 27:4)

David’s greatest desire was not success, victory, wealth, or influence. He wanted to behold beauty.

He wanted to know God.

This is the Spirit of Knowledge.

The Hebrew word translated beauty is no’am. It can refer to beauty, but it also carries the ideas of sweetness, pleasantness, delight, and kindness. It was even used to describe honey. David longed to gaze upon the sweetness of God.

And when we behold that sweetness, honor naturally follows. Reverence naturally follows. Worship naturally follows.

This is why the fear of the Lord cannot be separated from the knowledge of God. The more clearly we see his kindness, the more deeply we trust him. And perhaps that is one of the greatest truths about the fear of the Lord:

You honor God by trusting him.

The Israelites saw the mighty deliverance of God at the Red Sea, and Scripture says they feared the Lord and put their trust in him. Their fear expressed itself as confidence.

They saw his goodness, and they trusted his heart.

That is worship.

That is the fruit of intimacy.

And that is the destination of the Seven Spirits: a life rooted in love, growing in love, overflowing in love, and ultimately beholding the beauty of God with awe, delight, and wonder forever.

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There’s a particular kind of moment that happens when different streams begin to converge—when poetry, scripture, testimony, and wonder all seem to be circling the same fire from different directions. This month’s issue feels like one of those times.

In Elisha’s Riddle, we continue our journey through The Song of the Universe with “The Real Meaning of Bethlehem’s Star.” What begins as astronomical beauty quickly becomes something more intimate—a sign not only in the heavens, but in the human heart.

We’re also introducing the first chapter of a new serialized work, Between You and Me, from Waylon Woody!! It is memoir, but not confined to chronology. It moves with a poetic honesty that resists polishing away the tension of lived experience. There is something refreshingly unguarded here and I’m looking forward to how this journey unfolds.

From C. David Baker, The Walking Stick Journal returns with a striking new installment: “A Paradox of God, a Cow, and an Elf.” This wild intersection of a title spills onto a highway of deep reflection on suffering and hope.

We also continue the unfolding of The Seven Spirits of God series where “Counsel and Might” are brought together in a way that reshapes how we think about divine wisdom and strength.

And finally, Dylan offers a pastoral and grounding word in “The Goal of the Father.” It is simple in tone, but weighty in its invitation, calling us again to re-center on what God is ultimately after in His work with humanity.

Taken together, this issue feels less like a collection of separate pieces and more like a conversation—one that keeps circling back to the same invitation: to see more clearly, to listen more deeply, and to recognize the presence of God in places both expected and surprising.

Enjoy...

Contents:

The Song of the Universe: The Real Meaning of Bethlehem’s Star

Between You and Me: The First Chapter

The Walking Stick Journal: A Paradox of God, a Cow, and an Elf

From Dylan DeMarsico: The Goal of the Father

The Seven Spirits of God (Part 5: Counsel & Might)

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In the last entry, we found ourselves staring into a cosmic parable. We beheld a stellar nursery, the Carina Nebula, which held the image of a Sower scattering seed into the universe. There, among pillars of gas and light, creation appeared to be singing the Gospel.

But as breathtaking as this was, we found that it is only a signpost. A starry shadow cast backward from a greater reality.

If the stars were created to be “for signs” (Genesis 1:14), then there had to come a moment when their symbolic purpose would erupt into literal fulfillment; a moment when the heavens would no longer merely echo the Gospel but would directly herald its arrival.

And of course, they did, in the birth of Jesus Christ.

The famous “Star of Bethlehem” is perhaps the most extraordinary celestial sign in all of history because it appears to be the moment when the parabolic language of the heavens broke into a direct historical proclamation…

The Hyper-Fulfillment of Genesis 1

A sign does not exist for itself. It exists to direct attention elsewhere. This is the great mistake of both ancient astrology and modern obsession with celestial mystery. We become fascinated with the signs themselves and forget to ask what they are pointing toward.

Scripture will always help to keep us centered. The inspired book of creation is best united with the great book of Messianic prophecy and fulfillment—i.e. the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

The stars were never the message, but rather the announcement of something cosmically important: that God himself had entered his creation.

The One who hung the galaxies stepped into flesh. The Architect entered the house. The Author wrote himself into the story. However you want to put it, the Child born in Bethlehem was not merely another human life entering history. He was the center point of history itself.

But there was even more happening here—before we go there, let’s explore the famous Christmas star.

What Was the Star?

For centuries, scholars and astronomers have debated what the Star of Bethlehem may have been. Was it miraculous in a wholly supernatural sense or was it an astronomical event providentially timed by God?

Or was it both—creation obeying its Maker in a way that exceeded our categories?

We do not know with certainty. And perhaps, that is quite fitting. Because again, the sign matters less than what it revealed.

Nonetheless, two possibilities stand out as particularly compelling:

The Comet in the Chinese Records

Ancient Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a bright celestial object in 5 B.C., visible for more than seventy days. Some modern researchers have suggested this may have been a comet whose movement could account for Matthew’s unusual description of the star appearing to “go before” the Magi and later seeming to “stand over” Bethlehem. The details we have of the comet’s location seem to fit this possibility.

This is especially interesting when ancient Chinese cosmology connected such an event with the rise of a new kingdom.

The Royal Conjunction

Another widely considered possibility is a rare conjunction involving Jupiter—the ancient “king planet”—appearing in extraordinary alignment with the constellation Leo, often associated with kingship, and in patterns that ancient eastern astronomers may have interpreted as heralding the birth of a royal ruler in Judea.

This possibility is equally beautiful. Jupiter, Leo, and other celestial bodies were regal “signs” of something happening among the Jewish people. This would have occurred between 2 and 3 B.C.

It is possible then that the comet first heralded the Messiah’s birth, while this conjunction of royal celestial bodies sealed the deal. The true King had arrived. This was the Lion—i.e. Leo—from the tribe of Judah. The heavens, unable to remain silent, declared his appearing in fullness.

Daniel and the Magi

What amazes me is not just the fact that these celestial events surrounded the literal birth of Christ 2000 years ago. Even more beautiful were the hearts that were awake enough to notice.

I’m talking specifically about those astrologers from Persia—ancient “Iranians” who saw these events because of a strong possibility that the prophet Daniel had taught their ancestors something about this coming event during his time in Persia.

Yes, there is a very real possibility that Daniel taught the Persian Magi to listen to the song that creation is singing!

Matthew tells us the Magi “rejoiced exceedingly” when they saw the star. But their joy overflowed when they moved beyond the star to what it actually heralded. They found the Child. God in flesh.

The sign had given way to substance, the shadow to reality. The music was reaching its glorious chorus.

The Destiny Hidden in Bethlehem

And so here is the great Mystery that still undoes me: The birth of Christ was not only a revelation of God, but a revelation of us. Humans, tiny brilliant specks floating through a celestial sea of signposts, were entrusted with a message of truly cosmic importance—for we alone can see and interpret the signs.

In the incarnation of God in the Child of Bethlehem, we see God’s true intent for humanity. The incarnation was not God temporarily putting on human skin like a costume. No, this was the unveiling of humanity’s own destiny. This was why the universe was fine-tuned to play such cosmic music in the first place.

God was unveiling humanity as the tabernacle, temple, and house of his Being within the created realm. And the lights all around us are guiding us toward the revelation of this union between God and flesh. (Not the bad “flesh” Paul brings up in regard to the law and self-effort, but our earthly dust that is uniquely fashioned to hold an infinitely valuable treasure.)

The forerunner of this great truth and destiny was born into a manger. He was both the Herald and the Source of this identity. And this is why the heavens rejoiced; why stars, comets, and planets pointed the way—and continue to do so.

And so the universe keeps singing. Not about itself, but of the One who birthed his Life within its luminescent canopy. He is the true Bright and Morning Star. And we have only scratched the surface of what his Coming means.

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I used to run alone in the dark, red florescence beaming above my head, crackles of gravel crunching under my feet – straight uphill, careening down. And I found I liked these moments, away from the more blinding glow of faces, away from the repetitions of pain I called life. I would listen to jazz ballads in my earbuds and imagined I was in another kinder world. There would be glimpses of it.

We roller-skated around a circle - an angel of light gracing me with terrifying awe. Her laugh was more like a force than an expression, her eyes were portals. She shifted the time signature of life into a waltz. She told me how fast she could run a 5k. I felt as though I was at the precipice of a new and kinder world. There would be glimpses of it.

We sat under a grey gazebo after a weeklong silence. My tears smashed into the cold metal table. Her hands in mine felt more honest than they were before. She told me I wasn’t going to be the godly husband she wanted. It was true.

Dark tendrils ambushed a throbbing soul, binding my stomach and squeezing upward into what should have been liquid heartbreak, but anger lay waste to sadness.

I had been in the kinder world and now I know it doesn’t exist.

And then I got into biking. But as it turns out after a few months of trying, biking doesn’t make me feel like I’m in utopia either really. And neither does poker or video games, or even serving in church. I was told that obsession with a hobby would at least numb the pain enough to make it manageable, but it actually doesn’t.

So I had this large problem – I thought my ideal world was on the other side of effort, and it just isn’t there. It just doesn’t exist. At least if it was there then I could reverse engineer it. I could figure out a 6-month plan to find utopia in my everyday life, which I would assume includes calorie counting and sitting folded on a towel with my eyes closed. But here’s the thing – it just isn’t there.

A cosmic horror the size of a leviathan emerges from the pacific. If you were to draw it on a globe, you’d see that it would touch each of the coasts. It’s our old friend reality who is always demanding our attention.

You are probably so used to him that you don’t notice him anymore. He’s the guy who tells you to put on deodorant. He’s the guy who makes your hiking trip impossible without an inhaler. He’s the guy who says it really would be better if you clocked out at 5 at this point.

He interrupts your dreams with nightmares.

And he interrupts your nightmares with dreams.

All he asks is you stay awake.

I have asked God where He is a lot. As it turns out, He’s kind of hard to find. He seems to like talking to the Pope I guess, and He definitely likes my pastor, but He doesn’t really talk to me all that much. And He talks to the people who wave flags around in my more charismatic church (otherwise, why would they be doing that?). So those people have obviously found God.

But when it comes to my prayers, it’s a buzzing red fluorescent glow of scorn. It’s almost more exhausting to pray now than it is to handle things myself. At least I don’t have to sustain the offense of no answer, the utter belligerence and neglect of a God – a father even - who I know reportedly cares but actually doesn’t.

And yet we know better, don’t we.

If we’re honest, we know God is -

CS Lewis wrote somewhere that heaven opens up in glimpses and vanishes just as quickly. For me, heaven shows up when I’m washing dishes. It shows up when a summer breeze cools my forehead. It shows up when I’m typing and the song I’ve been listening to for the 12^th time changes to a chord that opens into another realm. Yes, I can see the power and majesty of God by looking down from a mountain, but more often, the stuff that I resonate with, the things I think about in the car on my way home are whispers that I hear on ordinary days doing ordinary things.

I’m sure it’s God because the only thing going through my mind while washing dishes is what I will be doing next, or the food I’m going to eat on the plate I’m washing because I ran out of plates and I only have one plate.

The more I think about it, the more clear it is to me that God shows up in my reality more than my dreams. He appears in the girl I matched with on some app that loves Jesus, but unfortunately also loves country music. He appears during the conversation that is clearly awkward but somehow goes on for another 10 minutes. He appears in my real pains, and not my fake ones. I think He’s smart enough to do heart surgery despite my complaints that I want to eat more sugar.

It’s looking like God and reality are good friends.

He’s really there this God, and the reality is that He is inside of my soul. He is a divine mystery this Christ, the Hope of Glory. It would be quite astonishing if, at the moment of salvation, the cosmic reality of conversion became suddenly visible. What would we see? The light and glory of God Himself entering a human? Tendrils of light suffocating our sin nature to death? The author entering the novel?

And yet we find such disconnect, such mundanity, such feelings. Why is this? Why don’t we see such a dramatic experience? Wouldn’t that help the cause of Christ? Wouldn’t the stark reality of a soul being quickened to life be a sight for a sore-eyed world?

The obfuscation makes very little sense the more you think about it. If the reality of our spiritual conversion was made visible as CS Lewis said, we would be tempted to worship each other. We would be led to worship Christ all the more. And imagine the wiping away of tears! The aversion of breakups and death and the obliteration of sadness.

The only reason I can conclude that the God of the universe would hide something so powerful and so utterly transformational is if He intended it to be hidden. I am led to believe that Christ prefers to remain a mystery.

Why would Christ prefer this? Is not Christ’s very intent to have the gospel preached across the entire created order? Why not cause such miracles at such a rate that the evidence would be undeniable. Why not turn every believer into an angel with extraordinary power upon conversion? And cannot God make this so clear while maintaining our free will?

I think He likes this because it makes Himself searchable. He wants His people to find Him, not just yield to His power.

Is this worth it? The pain included in making Himself searchable? God seems to think so. The pain included in making Himself hidden is the cost of love.

Anyone I’ve truly loved – that agape love Jesus lived out – required a search in the hidden places of what is really going on in their heart. An understanding of the true reality of their situation in life. A sort of spiritual humbling that requires going into the trenches and pains of one’s life and hunkering down with them, under the barrage of mortars crashing down around them.

What is the appeal of marriage except that someone not only knows you but loves you too. They know you the most and love you the best. We are all hiding ourselves so we can be found. We are all keeping our secrets close and hoping that someone pulls us offstage and comes home with us, where the bed isn’t made and the garbage still needs to be taken out.

Am I saying that God is hiding secrets? Yes! God is hiding so we can enjoy the search of loving Him, the ongoing discovery of His Life; the hide and seek and find of Life Abundant.

Imagine the alternative. God decides to make Himself immediately visible in front of you. That’s not going to work out very well. You’d probably die immediately, which wouldn’t be good. And also, you’d be utterly terrified. If you loved Him at that point, it really wouldn’t be love, would it? It would be fear masquerading as love, which is no real love after all.

I think I’m starting to get it. All of that searching for that kinder world and all of those empty prayers and all of that hiding that God does is intentional. It’s an intended feature God developed into life, not a bug. Maybe all that resistance and negativity I feel around God is a call to something deeper, not a “do not trespass” sign. Those little phrases, those little encouragements, those small glimpses of it are reality. They are the language of God, His preferred, organic manner of speaking. We know God is talking to us, don’t we? Those supernatural moments happen in the most natural moments, when I’m washing my one plate.

It wasn’t always one plate, but that’s a story for the next chapter. Her chapter. She taught me a whole book, but we’ll see if we can condense it into a chapter.

Yeah… We’ll see if we can do that…

Welcome to Between You and Me. It’s called that because I ask that we keep this between us two. A lot of these things are quite personal, y’know? Wouldn’t want these things floating around on the internet where Christians can whip my words with the Bible, would we?

But it’s also called Between You and Me because there is a lot between me and God. There’s a lot between God and me and all of us, isn’t there? This book is an attempt to name those things so they can be healed. One chapter at a time.

Waylon Woody is a writer and minister living in West Milford, NJ.

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