https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html Short, personal reflections as this work — and this moment — unfolds. Written from the heart, not the headlines. en Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#if-we-turn https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#if-we-turn Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMT “At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.” (Jeremiah 18:7–8, NRSV) In my Sabbath reading this week, in the Torah portion Chayei Sarah, I sat with a First Fruits of Zion commentary called A Change in Plan . It reminded me of something I needed: God is not locked into a threat once He has spoken it. When Nineveh turned, He changed His mind about the calamity He had said He would bring. FFOZ puts it plainly: “Repentance can avert a harsh punishment, but persistence in sin can forfeit redemption.” That lands differently after an election. I am not writing about winners or parties. I am writing about where I put my trust. Scripture says God truly can declare disaster over a people, and He truly can relent—if there is repentance. That condition matters. It is not a slogan for the other side. It starts with me. With us. With the Church turning back toward Him, not pointing at someone else and waiting for them to go first. That gives me hope. Not hope that depends on an election result. Hope in the mercy of God. We can vote, serve, and care for our neighbors in public life. We cannot ask a government to do what only God can do. So if the results unsettled you, or if what keeps you up is work that might not last, bills that still come due, or the question of what God is calling you toward next—we still have hope. Repentance is not a bargain that guarantees the outcome I want. It is turning toward the One I can trust when I cannot see the outcome. This is what I want Revival Disruption to help grow in us. As AI changes work, I want us to know that losing a role does not mean losing our purpose. Extra time, if it comes, can be a gift for God and neighbor. But I will not pretend a lost paycheck is easy. The bills are real. We need practical help and people willing to carry those burdens with us. We also need to remember that our belonging and calling are in Christ, not in the system that employs us or the government that governs us. Paul prayed that “the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13, NRSV). This is the fruit I long to see from this work: hope growing by His Spirit, changing how we live and love while we wait. Jesus is coming. Our future is not finally in the hands of whoever won this week. Lord, start the turning with me. Teach us to repent. Hold our hope in You alone. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#not-worthy-and-still-healed https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#not-worthy-and-still-healed Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT “I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant.” (Genesis 32:10, NRSV) This morning my doctor called. All twenty-eight samples were clean. No cancer. I’ve been trying to take that in all morning. I prayed boldly for healing these past weeks, and I meant it. I also tried to hold my hope in God Himself and not in the answer. I told Him I would trust Him either way. Now the answer has come, and what I feel most is not triumph. It’s that I’m not worthy of this. Jacob prayed those words on his way home to face the brother he had wronged. He wasn’t claiming he’d earned anything. He was looking back over his life and seeing that God’s kindness had been there all along, and that it had never been payment for good behavior. That’s where I am today. I didn’t earn this by praying the right way or believing hard enough. Plenty of faithful people pray just as hard and hear a different answer, and God has not loved them any less. Healing is a gift. Gifts aren’t wages. That matters well beyond a doctor’s call. So many of us are wired to believe that what we receive has to be earned, whether it’s a paycheck, a title, or a place at the table. As AI reshapes the work we do, many of us will lose the things we thought proved our worth. When that happens, the gospel says the same thing it says to me this morning. Your worth was never your wage. God’s steadfast love comes first, and it comes to people who don’t deserve it. The psalmist says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” (Psalm 103:2–3, NRSV) I don’t want to forget this. I don’t want to move on to the next worry as though today never happened. My days are still numbered, and only He knows the count. But today He has given me more of them, and I want to spend them gratefully. If you’re waiting on your own call, about your health, your job, or your future, I can’t promise you the answer I got. I can promise you the One who gives it. He is faithful, and His love is not something you have to earn. Thank You, Lord. I’m not worthy, and I’m grateful. — Jay Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#jacob-s-prayer https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#jacob-s-prayer Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Andrew Wommack’s God Wants You Well was recommended to me, so I’ve been working through it. The concepts in it are new to me, and hard. I haven’t come to a full conclusion yet, but they raise a question worth wrestling with. Chapter 1 is where I’ve gotten stuck, and the rest of the book stands on it. Jesus healed to confirm His authority and His message. So, the argument goes, why wouldn’t we expect the same? Jesus said it Himself: “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12, NRSV). From there the book builds: healing is in the atonement, it is always God’s will, and faith is how we receive it. I take John 14:12 seriously. But I also hear what Jesus said before He ascended: “you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8, NRSV). We are witnesses to Christ, not equals of Christ. His miracles pointed to who He is. Ours, when God grants them, point back to Him. They don’t prove anything about us. Then, in my Sabbath study, I came across a passage in the Talmud that has stayed with me: “Until Jacob, there was no illness leading up to death; rather, one would die suddenly. Jacob came and prayed for mercy, and illness was brought to the world, allowing one to prepare for his death” (b. Bava Metzia 87a). The rabbis weren’t saying sickness is good. They were saying that even in illness there can be mercy: time to bless your children, make things right, and get ready to meet God. Jacob did exactly that from his sickbed in Genesis 48. That fits Moses’ prayer: “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Psalm 90:12, NRSV). I’ve watched God use illness and limitation in people I love. He uses it to slow them down, to make them think, and to teach them to count their days. I’ve seen faithful people pray hard and stay sick, and I’ve seen them grow wiser and kinder. I can’t believe their remaining illness was a failure of faith. Paul asked three times and heard, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NRSV). Paul wasn’t short on faith. So, at least for now, I can’t land where the book lands, that sickness is never from God’s hand, healing is always fully available now, and whatever remains is our shortcoming. That’s too tidy for Scripture and too heavy for the sick. I still believe God heals. I’ve seen it, and it’s true in my own life. I pleaded with God that this was too much, and He heard my plea and healed my foot. But my cancer is still there. So I see both, right now, in my own life. I pray for it, and I’ll keep asking boldly. But my hope isn’t conditioned on the answer. This is where it meets the disruption we’re all facing. A lost job and a failing body can feel like the same verdict: you’re not productive anymore. Both can strip away the story that our worth is what we produce. And both can become the place where God teaches us to count our days, and where we find out what our days were for all along. If you’re sick, or waiting, or out of work this season, you haven’t failed. You may be sitting where Jacob sat, with time to bless, to make peace, and to gain a wise heart. That’s not the absence of God’s mercy. It may be the shape of it. — Jay Mentioning Wommack’s book here is not a recommendation. The Talmud passage is b. Bava Metzia 87a (William Davidson translation, Sefaria: https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.87a ). https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#the-lord-gave https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#the-lord-gave Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT This morning’s Wild at Heart reading from John Eldredge named my exact question. When life hammers us, he writes, most of us land in one of two places: “Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us.” Or some mix of both. That’s my struggle this fall. My faith isn’t at a loss. I trust God. I’ve yielded the cancer to Him, and the tendon, and whatever comes next. But the question still finds me in the recliner. Did I miss something? Is there a lesson I’m too slow to learn? Or has He simply chosen not to come through the way I’ve asked? Then I turn to Job, on the worst day of his life. The messengers come one after another, and the last one tells him all his children are dead. Here is what Job does: “Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Job 1:20–21, NRSV). He doesn’t pretend. He tears his robe. The grief is real, and he lets it show. But he doesn’t land on (a) or (b). His friends will spend thirty chapters insisting it must be (a), that Job is blowing it somewhere. His wife tells him to curse God, which is (b) said out loud. Job refuses both. He doesn’t accuse himself of a sin he can’t find, and he doesn’t accuse God of holding out. He falls down and worships a God he can’t explain. That gives me a third place to stand. Not “I’m blowing it.” Not “God is holding out.” But “the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away,” and He is still worthy. Everything I had was a gift to begin with: the health, the strength in my legs, the work, the years. It was never mine to keep. And the One who gave it hasn’t stopped being good just because some of it has been taken. Eldredge ends with a prayer I’m making mine: “Jesus, take away the fog and the clouds and the veil, and help me to see.” Job didn’t get his answers that day, and I may not get mine. But I can worship in the fog. If you’re stuck between those two answers this week, over a lost job, a diagnosis, or a prayer that hasn’t been answered yet, there’s another place to land. It’s on the ground with Job, robe torn, still saying: blessed be the name of the LORD. — Jay This morning’s reading was John Eldredge’s “What Is Really Going on Here?” ( https://wildatheart.org/daily-readings ) from Wild at Heart , adapted from his book Waking the Dead . https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#life-to-the-full-even-here https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#life-to-the-full-even-here Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT This morning’s verse of the day was John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, NRSV). I’ll be honest. The first half reads like my week. A cancer diagnosis last month. A ruptured tendon on Thursday. Boot, crutches, and the strange humility of being waited on. Some days it feels like the enemy has been given his way in my life, and I’m left holding the second half of the verse and asking what “abundantly” means from this chair. I don’t think Jesus meant the two halves as a trade, as if the thief stops so the abundance can start. He said both in the same breath, to sheep who live in a world with thieves in it. Abundant life isn’t the absence of the thief. It’s the presence of the Shepherd. One verse later He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11, NRSV). The hired hand runs when the wolf comes. The Shepherd doesn’t. He stays, and He pays for it. Job helps me here too. The accuser was allowed to touch Job’s life, but not without limit. “Only do not stretch out your hand against him” (Job 1:12, NRSV). The enemy is real, but he isn’t sovereign. He works on a leash he didn’t make. Whatever he’s been allowed in my life right now, he hasn’t been given me. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. “No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28, NRSV). So I’m learning to measure abundance differently. Not by what’s still standing in my calendar or my body, but by whose hand I’m in. Life to the full is knowing the Shepherd’s voice when every other voice says I’ve been stopped. It’s peace that doesn’t make sense on paper. It’s my family caring for me and finding they’re loved too. It’s a Kingdom within reach of the recliner. I won’t pretend I’ve worked this all out. Some mornings the first half of the verse is louder. But I notice Jesus put “I came” right after “the thief comes.” He didn’t wait for the thief to leave. He came into it. If the thief has been busy in your life too, through a lost job, a diagnosis, or a season that won’t let up, you aren’t outside John 10:10. You’re right where Jesus spoke it. Listen for the Shepherd’s voice. He hasn’t run. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#yielded-and-still https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#yielded-and-still Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT On Thursday a tendon tore in my right heel. Now I’m on crutches, in a boot, hobbling from chair to chair. That’s on top of the cancer and everything else this season already holds. Here’s where I am. God keeps filling me with peace, even though. It’s the even though that I wrestle with. I settled the big question already: whatever comes of the cancer or any of my health, I’ve yielded to His will, and I trust Him. What I keep asking is what it’s for. I’ve been seeking His purpose, ready to do anything He asks, and here I am, stopped. I can’t do much at all, and other people have to wait on me. How is God using me in this? This week Renovaré sent a letter by Brian Morykon, At Hand , on Jesus’ first message: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15, NRSV). He points out that “near” doesn’t mean “coming soon.” It means within reach, the way the pen on your desk is within reach. The Kingdom doesn’t wait for me to be useful again. It’s at hand in the recliner and on the crutches, the same as it was at the head of the conference table. Then I think of the night Jesus knelt with a basin and a towel. Peter wanted no part of it: “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8, NRSV). Peter wanted to serve. He didn’t want to be served. Neither do I. Yet Jesus told him that being served was part of belonging to Him. So maybe part of the answer, for now, is this. When I let my family care for me, I give them a way to love their neighbor, and that neighbor is me. I get to practice receiving grace I can’t earn, which was always the only kind there was. And I learn, slowly, what I keep telling the Church to be ready for. Our worth before God was never in what we produce. If that’s true for the worker whose job disappears, it’s true for the man in the boot. The letter closed with an old hymn, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” that I can’t shake: “Mold me and make me after Thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.” Waiting. Yielded. Still. I didn’t choose stillness, but I can choose to be yielded in it. I don’t know yet what He’s doing with this season. I do know the Kingdom is within reach right here, and that the One who knelt with the towel has not set me aside. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, in this chair, today. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-10.html#mercy-for-the-wavering https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#mercy-for-the-wavering Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Jude is one of the fiercest little letters in the Bible. He writes to “contend for the faith.” He warns about false teachers, grumblers, people who flatter for advantage. And then, near the end, almost in the same breath, he turns gentle: “keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are wavering” (Jude 21–22, NRSV). Wavering. Not walking away. Not mocking. Just unsteady — the way you feel when the floor moves under you and you are not sure yet what is still holding. I have been one of the wavering more than once. This fall included. Not about whether God is real. About whether He is near on an ordinary weekday when the news is hard and the decisions do not wait. I have sat in church with a steady face and an unsteady heart, and I suspect I was not the only one in the row. A lot of people are going to waver in the years ahead. Not loudly. Quietly. The engineer whose role gets rewritten. The graduate who sends the two-hundredth application. The father who stops tithing after the layoff and cannot quite say why. Most of them will not announce a crisis of faith. They will just start sitting a little farther back. Our instinct, when someone wavers, is to fix them fast. Jude does not start there. He says mercy. And he puts it right after telling us to keep ourselves in the love of God and to look forward to mercy ourselves. That order matters to me. The people who show mercy to the wavering are people who know they are still waiting on mercy too. Nobody gets to hand it out from above. So this is the invitation, both directions. If you are wavering this week, you are not disqualified. Jude wrote a sentence with you in it. You do not have to tidy your doubts before you walk back in. If you are steady this week, look down the row. Find the one sitting a little farther back. Do not lead with an argument. Lead with a meal, a phone call, a question you actually wait to hear answered. Mercy first. There is time for the rest. The Church does not need to be a room for the unshaken. It needs to be the place where the shaken are held — kept in the love of God, together, until the mercy we are all looking forward to arrives. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-09.html#more-than-his-beginning https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#more-than-his-beginning Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT On Sunday, Wade preached Job 42:12 at Freedom Church. “The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12, NRSV). He said most of us stop at chapter 1 and live there. There are forty-two chapters. He also said the season of Job’s affliction — from the blow to the start of restoration — was, by most theologians’ reckoning, one to nine months, short against a life that ran past 140 years. God restored him. Greater than before. I have been turning that over all week. Not as a slogan. As a man who just heard a trial coming. You know that moment. Someone says the thing out loud and the room changes. A job that will not hold. A company that might not. A marriage on the edge. A child who isn’t okay. A parent fading. A doctor who uses the word cancer. You have not lived the whole of it yet. You have only heard it. Job’s story starts with news like that. Loss named before the ash heap is even warm. Last week it was me. A cancer diagnosis. I am still in the hearing of it. I run a company. People wait on decisions. Provision still rides on ordinary Tuesdays. And now this sits in the chair with me. I do not know the length of this season. I will not pretend I do. I needed Sunday anyway. Wade said Job’s pain was real and also not the whole of his life. Relatively short. The book spends a long time in the middle chapters, so it does not feel short when you are in them. A week can feel like a year. I know that already. He said God restored Job — latter days more than the beginning, twice as much as before. He said God can restore you. I want to be careful. I am not Job. I will not tell a man who just lost his work, or a woman who just heard cancer, that their trial will be brief, or that twice as much is coming if they pray right. Restoration is not a receipt. Job’s children who died were not replaced like livestock. The preacher did not answer Job’s “why,” and God didn’t either. He showed up. Job said he had heard of Him, and now he had seen Him. That is how I am trying to trust. Not by clocking this. Not by forcing the latter days before they come. By staying with the God who was still in the room when the news was bad. If He restored Job, He is not done. If the season feels like chapter 1, I am asking for grace to believe there is a 42. If you have just heard a trial coming — a job, a diagnosis, a phone call you did not want — I will not hurry you. I will only say what the text says, and what I am holding this week. He blessed the latter days more than the beginning. That is not a date I can put on my calendar. It is a God I can trust. — Jay Sunday’s message was Wade Haskins at Freedom Church, ‘Run It Back | Part 1.’ https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-09.html#rest-for-your-souls https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#rest-for-your-souls Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT I keep hearing Jesus’ invitation in a season when almost everything else sounds like a demand. “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30, NRSV). Come. Not impress. Not produce one more proof that you still matter. Come. I know a particular kind of weariness — the kind that isn’t only hours, but weight. Carrying responsibility for other people. Decisions folks depend on. Provision riding on outcomes I can’t fully control. The quiet fear that if the work shifts, the worth might shift with it. That’s a heavy burden even when things are steady. I can only imagine how it lands when a paycheck disappears, or when a young worker can’t find the first job at all. Jesus does not offer a productivity system. He offers Himself. Rest for your souls — not rest as vacation from responsibility, but rest as a different center of gravity. His yoke, not the market’s. Learning from Him, not from the algorithm that never sleeps. I’ll be honest: I’m still learning this. Some days I come to Him with the burden still clenched in my fists, asking Him to bless my grip. He is gentle enough to keep inviting. Humble enough not to shame the tired. The Church’s work in this disruption is not to yell “adapt faster.” It is to become a people who know how to come — and how to welcome the weary without making them earn a seat. If AI strips away the illusion that our value is our output, maybe this is part of the gift buried in the hard news: we get to practice coming again. Not as winners. As people who need rest only He can give. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. I’m trying to believe that with my hands open. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-08.html#let-it-land https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#let-it-land Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT This morning a Wild at Heart reading landed in my inbox. John Eldredge was talking about beauty the way you talk about air and water: not as decoration, as daily food for the soul. God filled the world with it the way He filled it with oxygen. We swim in it. Most of us, he said, rush past it. We don’t take it in long enough for His goodness to actually land. The reading didn’t point to a verse. I went looking for one anyway, because I needed a name for what I was feeling. “O taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8, NRSV). Taste. See. Not glance. Not agree that goodness exists somewhere. Take it in. I know this in myself. When the work is frantic, I treat the morning like a hallway. Coffee, screen, the next task. Light on the trees and I don’t stop. A kindness from my wife and I’m already halfway to the next problem. Then, on the days the work goes quiet, or threatens to, I do the opposite and still miss it. I stare at what’s missing and call that realism. Either way, I rush past the very thing that could feed me. I can talk about God’s goodness and not let it land. I can believe it the way I believe a weather report. True, and unused. Beauty is not a luxury for people whose jobs are safe. It is one of the ways He keeps saying, I am still here, and I am still good , when the title is loud and when it is gone. A walk. A meal that isn’t eaten over a laptop. The face of someone who is not a task. The ordinary saturation of a world He did not have to make this lovely. I want to be careful not to make this into a self-care tip. This isn’t “think positive.” Taste and see is an invitation to receive. Refuge, the psalm says: happy are those who take refuge in him. Not in the inbox. Not in the next hire. In Him. I keep failing this in small ways. Today I am asking whether I will stop long enough for one good thing to actually reach me. When work is frantic, goodness is still there. When work is gone, goodness is still there. The question is whether I will take it in, or keep walking past the table He already set. Taste. See. Let it land. — Jay The morning reading was from John Eldredge, whose book Experience Jesus. Really. is about this very thing — breaking free of the noise and digital distraction to actually encounter God. https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-08.html#the-people-down-the-road https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#the-people-down-the-road Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT We have Amish families not far from us. I’ve driven past the farms, watched the buggies on the shoulder, seen a dozen people raising a barn wall together on a Saturday. It’s easy to romanticize them, and just as easy to wave them off as a museum piece. But lately I keep thinking they may already understand something the rest of us are about to need badly. Here’s what struck me. They’ve built a life that doesn’t run on the things AI is about to shake. There’s no 401(k) riding the market. No single employer to be laid off from. No sense that a person is worth what they produce. When a barn burns, the neighbors rebuild it. When a farmer breaks his leg, his harvest still comes in — brought in by other hands. The medical bills are carried by the church, not an insurance company. The old aren’t shipped off somewhere; they’re kept close and cared for at home. Needs — food, shelter, care — are met by people , not products. I want to be careful not to make them into something they’re not. Most aren’t even farmers anymore; plenty run small businesses, and they’ve felt hard times too. This isn’t a call to sell the car and dress in black. And it isn’t that technology is evil. What they’ve held onto is a posture: they decide, together, what to let in — asking of each new thing, does this draw us closer, or pull us apart? And they never let go of the one thing a machine can’t replace: each other. Honestly, it convicts me. My security is spread across accounts and a job and a system I don’t control. Theirs is spread across a community that will actually show up. When the ground shifts — and it’s shifting — which of those is really the more solid ground? The first church looked a little like this. “All who believed were together and had all things in common… and they distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44–45, NRSV). Not a commune, not a rule — just people who genuinely carried one another. I don’t think we’re called to flee the modern world. But I think we’re being invited to recover something the Amish never set down: to be a people who look after each other so completely that when work grows scarce, no one quietly falls through. That kind of community can’t be automated. And it may be exactly what this disruption leaves people starving for. — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-08.html#the-unknown-god https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#the-unknown-god Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT I watched a talk by Mo Gawdat this week. He used to run the moonshot lab at Google, and now he spends his days warning us about where AI is headed. He’s brilliant, and he’s not wrong about the disruption coming. But what stayed with me wasn’t his fear. It was his faith. Because he has one. He speaks of a higher intelligence behind everything. He says that if there is a God, that God is still God, above anything we build. He believes we are more than our bodies — that something in us doesn’t end when the body does. He treasures love. Sitting there, I kept nodding. He sees so much. And then came the ache. Because he has gathered all of it — the design, the soul, the love, the life beyond death — and set the one Person at the center off to the side. He’ll keep the fruit. He leaves the root. I don’t say that to look down on him. If anything, he’s paying attention to things most of us rush past. It reminded me of Paul in Athens, walking through a city full of altars, until he found one marked to an unknown god . He didn’t mock it. He said: the One you already worship without knowing — let me tell you his name. God did this, Paul said, “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27, NRSV). Not far. That’s the phrase I can’t shake. Here’s what struck me most. We keep saying that AI can’t be trusted to invent its own morality — that a great intelligence has to be raised on values that come from outside itself, or it will only amplify us. I think that’s true of us, too. We can’t manufacture our own goodness and have it hold any weight. It has to come from outside. And Christians believe it already has — not as a principle, but as a Person who lived, and died, and rose. So when someone reaches for the transcendent and stops just short, I don’t want to argue him into a corner. I want to be clear, and kind, and say: you’re not far. The God you sense is real. He has a name. And he came close enough to touch. The disruption ahead will push a lot of people toward these questions. May we be ready — with reason, and love, and the name. If it helps, I put together a short, gentle guide for having these conversations — without pretending we have all the answers: Faith Conversations in the AI Age . — Jay https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections-2026-08.html#consider-the-birds https://revivaldisruption.org/reflections.html#consider-the-birds Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Something has been sitting on my heart, and I think it’s the deepest part of all this. We’ve been saying that our worth was never in our work — that when AI takes our output, it can’t take our value, because we were made to love God and neighbor. That’s true. But there’s a harder question underneath it, and I don’t want to skip past it: what happens to our trust when the paycheck shrinks? Jesus saw this in us. “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26, NRSV). In Luke he says it even more plainly: “do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink” (Luke 12:29, NRSV). Striving. That’s the word. So much of our fear about AI is really striving — the dread that if we can’t produce, we won’t be provided for. And Jesus doesn’t answer that fear with a better financial plan. He points at a sparrow and asks us to believe that the God who feeds it has not forgotten us. I’ll be honest: that’s easy to say and hard to live. It’s one thing to trust God when the accounts are full, another when the work dries up. But maybe that’s the gift hidden in this disruption — that it will press us into the kind of dependence we were always meant to have. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33, NRSV). I don’t write this from a mountaintop. I’m asking myself the same question: when my output is cut back — some, or all — do I have that kind of faith? I want to. I think the days ahead may teach us all what it really means. He feeds the birds. He knows what we need. Let’s prepare our hands — and our hearts to trust him. — Jay