Today isn’t just like any other day. Today is my birthday. Today is also my first, and hopefully only, birthday during a widespread pandemic. As I sit here this morning, I have been reflecting on a lot of things. This is set to be the most understated birthday I’ve ever had, and I am surprisingly fine with that. There will be no parties, no visitors, and no decorated cake, despite it being a tradition in our home. There will just be one gift, instead of many, because both of my parents and I can’t work right now during the pandemic. I assured them that it is fine, and it is.

I might have been a great physicist, had I been given a brain that didn’t commence automatic emergency shutdown procedures at the first sign of anything more complex than simple multiplication.
As it is, my fate has limited me to having an enormous respect for the work that physicists do, and a passionate fascination with their field of study. Hence, I do have a rudimentary understanding of physics in a rather instinctual way, even though I couldn’t explain the mathematical technicalities if my life depended on it.

Neither am I worthy
To go as He didst go
For I in faith to lose myself
Would be not such a woe
And so now I am waking up
As I am put to sleep
Mine eyes are op'ed and lifted up
As physic'lly are my feet
So mercy rains upon my head
And Love looks down on me
While hands are pierced as His once were
And peace makes fear to flee

For me to die is such a gain
I dared not hope to have
While death's sharp sting is cancelled out
In light of His pure blood

I know you likely read that title and thought that it could be read multiple ways. That, my friends, is a deliberate choice in ambiguity. Many would read that title and think I am going to talk about how it is so difficult to be a Christian. I am instead going to pose the question the other way: Why does everyone else think it is so hard to be a Christian? This is part 1. I am going to focus on the topic of sacrifice.

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We see them in many different places. Some stand proudly on top of a church. Others hang around a friend’s neck as jewelry. While some mark the burial plots of loved ones who are no longer with us.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m referring to crosses. The ordinary cross we often times see is simply designed and not much to look at. It seems insignificant, but it’s far from.

Important Note: Before I begin this essay, I would like to take notice on the absence of activity on this website. Since for the past month, nothing really has been getting published, I think that we Monthly Writers should publish our own work because we can. And because a writer MUST write. We can only get better in writing by practicing - so practice we must! The only difference between a writer and a non-writer is that the writer writes NO MATTER WHAT. If you don't know what to write about, write about what is on your mind. You have something on your mind. You do. So WRITE!

I apoligize for not posting more of this sooner. It's been done almost a month now, though I just finished editing it today. It's been a bit of a crazy month. There's one more section after this, and then hopefully a summary poem... which I've yet to write any of yet, so we'll see if it ever shows up.

 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } 4. Holiness Leviticus 18-22. “Grandfather,” I said. He turned to see me. “Why does God care about even the little things in life?”

            “What do you mean, Josiah?” I asked.

Part 1: Diagnosis

            Amid the sunshine, breezy air, and chirping birds, I sat glumly. Normally a winter day like this would have brought joy to my heart. But today I wondered if I could ever be joyful again. I drove another nail into the cart. My papa had been to the priest today, to be examined. He had found a sore on his arm that morning, of the kind that could make him unclean. The priest had declared him ceremonially unclean. Papa was sent outside the camp. I did not know if I would ever see him again.

{post-sermon musings on a Friday evening. The sermon was on Leviticus chapters 1-7 and 17.}

Part 1: The Wilderness, Moses’ time.

            Small fingers wrapped around my hand, and I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve.       “Papa,” my six-year-old son said. His big brown eyes looked up at me, filled with love and curiosity as they always were. Dark curls tumbled around his forehead. I smiled. My son looked so much like his beautiful mother.

            “Papa,” he said again.

            “Yes, my son?”

{written after studying Psalm 81}

We shall all fall.

We are all to die, because of our treason.
I look about me. They are all placid; they do not understand.
I shake one, then another.

“Do you not understand?” I cry. “I am doomed! You are doomed! We shall all die! We must get out, get free, get forgiveness!”