Table Turned in Antioch
The dust of Antioch hung thick in the air, a fine golden haze that settled on cloaks and in the creases of a man’s hands. It was the dust of a thousand comings and goings, a city where worlds collided….
The Bread of Division
The air in Prisca’s house was thick with the smell of baking bread and old stone. It was a familiar scent to Marcus, one that usually brought him comfort. But today, it felt heavy, oppressive. He sat in the corner…
A New Covenant
The dust of Joppa still clung to Peter’s sandals as he climbed the steep, narrow street toward the house by the sea. It had been a strange season. The memory of Tabitha, cold and still on her bed, then warm…
The Bread of Life
The sea had a particular smell when the wind shifted. It was a damp, briny scent that clung to the back of the throat, mingling with the dust kicked up by thousands of feet. They had been with him for…
The Temptation of Christ
The air in the wilderness was a dry, gritty thing. It tasted of dust and the faint, metallic hint of distant rain that never fell. For forty days and nights, the man from Nazareth had known nothing but this vast,…
The Burden of Nineveh
The heat in Nineveh was a physical weight, a thick, woolen blanket soaked in the sweat of the Euphrates and laid heavy over the city. It was the kind of heat that made the stone walls of the houses shimmer…
The Baker’s Lament
The fire had been banked, but the embers still glowed. In the pre-dawn chill of Samaria, a baker named Jared knelt before his oven, the heat warming his face as he prepared the day’s bread. He thought of the king’s…
The Judgment of Mount Seir
The high places of Seir were old before our grandfathers’ grandfathers drew breath. Wind-scoured stone, the color of dried blood, rose in jagged ridges against a sky bleached pale with endless sun. It was a land that hoarded silence, a…
Ezekiel’s Sweet Burden
The air in my house was still and heavy, the way it gets before a summer storm. I was sitting by the river Chebar, the water a sluggish, muddy brown, and the voices of my exiled people were a low…
The Broken Yoke
The air in the temple court was thick and still, heavy with the scent of old stone and the faint, greasy smell of recent sacrifices. It was a weight that pressed not just on the skin, but on the spirit….