The Plunge (An Invitation)

A Mission Statement

Hey friends,

No official meditation today, hopefully tomorrow, but I wanted to show you a brief video I put together on the ‘About’ section of Substack, as well as the overall mission statement I’ve added there in case you haven’t read it. I’d love to get your thoughts, especially if anything below doesn’t make sense. If you know people who might be interested in following along with these weekly meditations, I appreciate you sharing this with them. Here’s the mission statement in full:

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To meditate on the incarnational work of Almighty God, a work that continues in our lives of faith from moment to moment, is like plunging into the depths of an infinite River, knowing that we'll never uncover all the mysteries, and knowing that even over a lifetime of immersion we'll only be swimming around in the shallows. Yet, daily we dive deeper. Daily, we yearn for more. Daily, we pray with Moses, “LORD, show me Your glory!”, and trust that after each plunge, once we’ve risen again to the surface, our hearts will be full to overflowing.

In terms of my hermeneutical approach, I’m more impressionistic than academic, and you’ll find that the footnotes to these meditations are often waterfalls and forests rather than manuscripts. But I do hold a B.S. in Biblical Studies, an M.A. in Ancient History, an unfinished M.A. in English, and another unfinished M.A. in Philosophy. Sometimes I plunge alongside scholarship, sometimes above it, sometimes beneath it, but my ultimate desire is for Christ to be the current that moves these streams-of-contemplations and the River at the end of them.

C.S. Lewis often eulogized Scottish writer George Macdonald for 'baptizing' his imagination, and I pray that my simple music and meditations have a similar immersive effect on yours. Once you've read the meditations, head over to Spotify or Apple Music or your favorite streaming service to listen to my recent songs, including a 12-song concept album called “Kingdom Rising” that explores the paradox of divine Incarnation through the Parable of The Mustard Seed.

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*The above video contains scenes from a trip my buddy and I took a few years back to Looking Glass Falls in North Carolina. We’d camped out for two nights in Gorges State Park, specifically because of the three massive waterfalls that offered jumps and slides, but, unfortunately, heavy rains made those falls inaccessible, so I left Gorges a bit despondent. Before heading home though, we decided to check out a few nearby falls and eventually stumbled upon this stunning, almost tropical-looking environment not far from the main road. By the time we reached it, the temperature outside had fallen to 54 degrees, with a light cold rain, and the water was absolutely frigid. No doubt, it was a terrible day for swimming, but it was a perfect day for adventuring, and, anyway, the moment beckoned! A lot of cold can stop a heart. But a little cold can get the heart going strong again.

By the way, in the future, I’m hoping to get a camera and add more video work to supplement these devotionals. Photographs are great, but when there’s so much movement in a scene, especially one with rushing water, a still shot just doesn’t do it justice.