Welcome to the club. I do it, too. So does everyone else.

We work hard at keeping up appearances. We carefully curate our public narrative. A lot of human energy is spent in defense against shame.

We’ve made bad decisions. We’ve to We’ve given power to our cravings. We’ve let our emotions explode. We’ve been unfaithful to ourselves and to others. We’ve broken promises. We’ve hurt others, and we’ve been hurt by others. We’ve used others, and we’ve been used by others. We’ve withheld love, and we’ve had love withheld from us.

A woman comes to a well to draw water. Just as she has for her whole life. To the same well that her family line has come to for generations. The kind of monotonous, rote, day-in, day-out task that must be done if one wants to go on living.

But then, one day, she encounters a man (a prophet, she guesses), who says he has water that quenches thirst once and for all. Her response is good fodder for learning how to pray: “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Is your soul thirsty? More than that, are you growing weary of constantly pulling from the same temporarily satisfying well day-in, day-out?

While chaperoning a high school mission trip. We were all working outside in the blazing sun, mixing concrete on the ground with shovels for the new wall we were building at a school. Noble work. Hot as hell, but noble.

I was drinking plenty of water, taking adequate breaks, and keeping my electrolytes up with snacks, but it apparently wasn’t enough. By that evening I thought I had a migraine coming on, which was not unusual for me. But the next morning when I had to keep getting up to leave the church sanctuary for the bathroom to get rid of the few sips of Gatorade I was trying to keep down, I knew there was something else really wrong.

Dehydration is one thing. Humiliation is something else.

Is crucial to getting whatever it is we really need. But knowing is trickier than it looks. We’re not always clear about our actual needs. It’s a common human characteristic to confuse needs with wants. Essentials with desires. Fundamentals with extras.

The first move of grace is to open our eyes to help us see ourselves more clearly.

Grace helps me to spend time with good questions: What is it that I’m really lacking? Where is it that I’m truly empty? What is it that my soul deeply longs for? How am I trying to satisfy myself with things that don’t last? What will more fully satisfy my thirst?

Whom “your people” aren’t supposed to be friendly with. You know who they are. How you identify “those people” depends on who “your people” are. It’s also wise to realize that “your people” are quite likely someone else’s “those people,” whether you realize it or not.

Avoid “those people.”

Go around the area of town where “those people” live.

Don’t talk to “those people.”

Don’t listen to “those people.”

Don’t trust “those people.”

That you miss the place you are passing through.

You’re always on the way to somewhere. It might be a literal place; it could be a metaphorical place. It might be a new physical location; it could be a goal. It might be a tangible change; it could be a renewed internal state of being.

Whatever that might be for you today, in this very moment or in this season of life, don’t be in such a hurry. The destination isn’t everything. It’s what happens in the meantime that counts. All the little moments, all the unexpected and potentially insignificant opportunities to simply be alive and be present to the world around us.

Right when your success is just starting to gain momentum is a ridiculous strategy. But it often seems to be a preferred strategy of the Kingdom of God.

Right when Jesus’ ministry started to outshine John’s, as his baptism numbers started to eclipse “the Baptist” himself, what did Jesus do? He left Judea—with Jerusalem, the big city as its center point—to head back to Galilee—a mostly rural, small town province. As even some of Jesus’ own disciples would later tell him, if you really want to be successful, you leave Galilee and go show off in Judea.

Not the other way around, Jesus. Come on! Moving to a smaller market is counterintuitive and counterproductive to success.

God is not wrath. God is love. But if we refuse his love insistently enough, it can feel as if he is angry.

A few years ago I was in Rome. One of the most amazing things I saw in that ancient city was a widely dispersed but interconnected network of water fountains. There are over 2,500 of these fountains that flow non-stop with fresh spring water from the surrounding mountains. Unlimited, refreshing water. Available to anyone.

If you die of thirst in Rome it is, to put it bluntly, your own dumb fault.

And speak as if you are from there.

Jesus, having come from heaven, spoke with the accent of heaven.

Many of us Christians try to speak as if we’ve come from heaven—like an American trying to speak with a British accent because it supposedly makes them sound more sophisticated. We try to speak with divine confidence, authority, and assuredness. We try to come across as if we’ve got the truth locked down. As if we have seen all things and know all things and understand all things.

So that someone else can take a step forward?

Can you take a back seat so that someone else can drive?

Can you move to a lower position so that someone else can take the higher position?

Can you step out of the limelight so that someone else can have a moment to shine?

Can you risk a decline in apparent success so that someone else can succeed?

Can you risk losing so that someone else can win?

Can you be quiet long enough for someone else’s voice to be heard?

Can you follow so that someone else has a chance to lead?

Can you do the grunt work so that someone else can fill the more glorious role?