The Scribe’s Sharp Rest
The lamplight was the worst part. It pooled in uncertain yellow circles on the parchment, making the black ink swim before his eyes. Justus shifted on the hard stool, his back a single knot of pain. Around him, the scriptorium…
The Mind of Christ in Philippi
The oil lamp guttered, casting long, nervous shadows across the low ceiling of Syntyche’s house. A chill, damp from the Macedonian evening, seeped through the stone walls. Around a rough-hewn table, a handful of faces were illuminated in the flickering…
The Scarf and the Supper
The air in Corinth always carried a scent of salt and commerce, a thick blanket that settled over the city even before the sun grew hot. In the house of Gaius, where the church gathered, the scent mingled with the…
The Temptation and the Rejection
The air in the wilderness was a coarse thing, dry and thin, carrying the scent of dust and heated stone. It had been forty days since the voice at the Jordan River, since the affirmation that had shaken the heavens….
The Rock and the Road
The road north had been long, and the dust of it clung to everything—to their sandals, to the hems of their cloaks, to the back of the throat. It wasn’t the dust of Judea, dry and golden, but a grey,…
The Unmeasured City
The air in the courtyard was still thick with the dust of returning exiles. Zechariah felt it grit between his teeth, a constant reminder of the long road from Babylon and the longer road still ahead. The walls of Jerusalem…
The Temple River
The hand was on my shoulder again, this time not to lift me, but to turn me. I felt the solid warmth of it through the worn linen of my robe. The man—the one whose appearance was like bronze, who…
The Worthless Vine
The air in the small chamber was still and close, thick with the smell of old parchment and dry clay. Ezekiel sat by the open window, but no breeze came from the east, only the unrelenting afternoon heat that made…
The Governor’s Guest
The air in Ramah still carried the faint, metallic scent of smoke, a ghost of Jerusalem’s funeral pyre that had stained the southern horizon for weeks. The dust of the road clung to Ishmael’s sandals, a fine, pale powder that…
Jeremiah’s Unheeded Warning
The heat rose from the stones of Anathoth in visible shimmers, a stifling blanket that did nothing to muffle the noise drifting from Jerusalem, a few miles distant. Baruch found the prophet where he often did these days, not in…