The Antioch Invitation
The air in the Antioch synagogue was thick, not just with the heat of many bodies pressed into the dim space, but with a peculiar tension. It was the Sabbath, and after the readings from the Law and the Prophets,…
Water to Wine, Temple Cleansed
The third day found them in Cana, a clutter of sun-bleached stone houses clinging to a Galilean hillside. The air itself was thick with the scent of baking bread and crushed thyme, and from a particular courtyard echoed the laughter…
The Road to Jerusalem
The dust of the road, fine as ground meal, rose in little puffs around their sandals. It was a road worn smooth by countless feet, a road that led, as all roads in Judea seemed to, toward Jerusalem. Jesus walked…
The Secret Audience
The dust of the road was a fine, persistent powder that coated everything—the leaves of the olive trees, the wool of the stray goats, even the taste of the bread Ezra bought at the market. It was the kind of…
Nahum’s Vision of Nineveh’s Fall
The air in my small room was still, thick with the smell of dried ink and papyrus, but in my mind, I heard the distant crash of waves. The sea was far from here, a memory from boyhood, yet the…
Harvest of Hollow Feasts
The memory of that last autumn in the hill country of Ephraim is a bitter root in my mouth, even now. The heat had broken, but not the drought. A brittle, copper light lay over the land, and the air…
The Balm and the Blade
The ink was thick, almost gritty, between his fingers. Jeremiah wiped them on the coarse weave of his robe, leaving greyish smudges on the brown wool. The afternoon light in his chamber at Anathoth was the colour of weak broth,…
Exile’s Echo, Potter’s Clay
The damp of this Babylonian earth seeps into my bones in a way the dust of Jerusalem never did. It’s a cold that has little to do with the weather. We light our fires, but they seem to give more…
From Dust to Dwelling Rain
The heat in Judah that year was a physical presence. It lay upon the land like a heavy wool blanket, pressing the scent of parched thyme and cracked earth into every crevice. In the hill country, the terraces that usually…
Vineyard Longing for Solomon
The heat lay heavy over the vineyard, a thick, golden blanket that made the very air seem to drink the light. Shulamith wiped her forearm across her brow, leaving a faint smudge of dust. The grapes hung in dense clusters,…