A Short Defense of Slow Reading

The McKenzie River is loudest in the early morning, when the world has not yet found its excuses. I walked her banks today before the sun was fully up, and I thought about Zechariah's song in the first chapter of Luke. He had been silent for nine months. The first words out of his mouth were not complaints but prophecy: a tender mercy, a rising sun, a way of peace.

Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.

Light through the pines. That is what grace looks like to me lately. Not a floodlight. Not an answer to every question. A slow and faithful brightness that reaches in through the gaps, finds the floor, and stays.

If your morning was hard, if your week is harder, if your year has felt like the long shadow of something you did not choose, may the rising sun find you anyway. He is patient. He is persistent. He is already on his way.