November Downloads
On panning for gold in a fire, burning bushes in the sky, and holy ground. (Also: two prints & lock screens for you)
The first print of 2023 was designed in a hospital room, somewhere in the hazy weirdness of that last week of the year, the stretch between Christmas and New Years when we graze on snacks all day, stay in pajamas, tinker with puzzles and watch movies late into the night.
We did all of that. We also sat in uncomfortable chairs, walked hospital hallways, held our breath when the phone rang early—too early.
I wrote it down the day after surgery didn’t go as hoped or planned:
However 2023 goes, Hope will hold. Even the most overwhelming and seemingly impossible of circumstances is no match for the One who holds it all and says “this isn’t too much for me.” Goodness is coming after us (Psalm 23:6), sitting with us in every waiting room. He really is going to carry us through.
I read it now, eleven months in, and I want to go back and hold my own hand, tuck a blanket around and say “It’s true. Those words, they’re true. And when your grip loosens? When the tsunami takes your feet out from under you and the current sweeps you in and out to sea? You’ll still be held. Rest in that. It’s going to be way, way too much for you . . . but it’s never too much for the One holding you secure.”
Little did I know, you know?
I don’t know just how your year went, the ins and outs, twists and turns, delights and disappointments and devastations.
It’s November 21st, Thanksgiving week, and the nicest way I can say it is—it’s not exactly, uh, easy to find things to be thankful for from this year. There were (are) good things, I know that. I can name them, I can. It just takes a whole lot more effort than in previous years, like I’m searching for that proverbial needle in a haystack, like I’m panning for gold in a wasteland.
The first print of 2023, the one designed in a hospital room:
Steams in the wasteland.
Little did I know, you know?
A few days after those day-after-surgery words, I wrote these. It’s not the first time they’ve landed in your inbox—they arrived alongside another All The Things print—but I read it differently now, here in November.
From that January email:
The print and lock screen for this month? Well, you already know from what I shared in our private Instagram Stories late last year . . . I knew exactly what words to sit with and focus on this January, what the design needed to look like, but I didn’t know why. All I could come up with: They weren’t random or “out of no where.” They were given in advance so that they would be right on time.
It’s pretty rare that I feel so deeply in my spirit that a Specific Thing (a caption, story, verse, etc) is for a very Specific Time. And it rarely makes sense from my point of view. Why this? Why now? But every time I’ve chosen to follow that prompting, I’ve received a message saying “I really, really needed this today.”
It’s almost uncanny. It’s certainly mysterious. And it’s absolutely beautiful.
Because while I’m over here shaking my head and second guessing, going back and forth on if I’ve heard something correctly or losing it just a little bit, God is outside of time, setting things in motion, meeting us in the Right Now while preparing what we’ll need in the There and Then.
My prayer is that the words in January’s print do exactly what I wrote in Stories from the hospital room. I hope they meet you in your disappointments and frustrations as well as your grateful moments of thanking God for what is. I hope the simplicity of the design allows the truth to stand out and the handwritten look feels like a personal declaration. I hope the promise of nearness and newness, of goodness finding us in every season, is a comfort in these gray January days.
I pray it meets you right where you are. It met me in a hospital room. God knew.
It did. From your responses, it met you right where you were in those early 2023 days. Somehow it’s meeting me now, as the year comes to a close and I look back, straining my eyes, determined to see the good and give thanks.
God is outside of time, setting things in motion, meeting us in the Right Now while preparing what we’ll need in the There and Then.
He did. The promise of nearness was kept. Goodness has not failed in its continual pursuit. Even when the current swirls and the waves pound and the waters rise, even when the seasons shift and the ground shakes and you watch the world blaze, the leaves igniting and then dying, falling, cracking into fragments.
Even when. Even then.
And that, that right there, is the gold. The branches are aflame, burning bushes all around, and the invitation sings in the autumn breeze this is holy ground.
God is here, right here.
In the fire and in the flood and beside you on the floor. In the hospital hallways and the waiting rooms that all look the same. In your what-in-the-world-just-happened? wonderings and in your anger. In the burning, the betrayal, and the beauty of hope flickering like an ember, a glimpse of gold in the pan. In your eggshell walks and in your relentless pounding on the door. In the running tears and the rising fears and the shifting seasons that remind you time is passing, still.
Still, God.
Emmanuel, here with us, making every inch of it all holy ground.
On every page of the story, there He is.
Faithful. And so, yes.
. . .
Yes, there’s that needle weaving a thread of goodness through it all.
Thankful, in the fire and the flame.
Because God is here even in the blaze.
Refining, redeeming, restoring, holding true and keeping His Word to make a way, to water the wasteland, to walk with until we’re all the way home.
If you’re subscribed to All The Things—the monthly paid subscription that makes this space possible and supports my writing (thank you more than I can possibly say) + includes a whole bunch of monthly extras (because hashtag all the things)—you’ll see two prints and lock screens below. The November ATT design hints of light in the dark, beauty even in the blurry haze, and the grace that remains in every season. But there’s a bonus print and lock screen this November — available to everyone.
Everyone discovering they’re, miraculously, already standing on holy ground.
Everyone looking back and searching for gold. Everyone echoing those words in Daniel 3, declaring “even if not” as the burning fiery furnace (3:19) is ordered seven times hotter than usual, seven—that number in Scripture that often signals ‘full or complete.’ (The way this book continues to come back and preach a sermon to me all these years later is astounding. Like, yes, hi God. I see you.) (Seven years, btw.) (I did the math just now, this very second, and could absolutely sob.)
Everyone who would say this year was costly but God was faithful and so we are thankful, rejoicing here in the furnace, aware that there is another with us in the flames and He will see us through.
Maybe it’s just a Thanksgiving-themed print. It can be that, too.
But if you’re looking for a needle in a haystack? A bit of gold in the pan or water in the wasteland? May this be that for you, in some small way.
Print:
The PDF file linked below includes an 8x10 and a 5x7 print, each with lines for easy trimming.
Lock screen:
To download the lock screen:
Hold down on an image above until there's an option to “save photo." If you have an iPhone, go to Settings –> Wallpaper –> Choose a New Wallpaper –> All Photos. Select the image and then shrink it (think: the opposite of zooming in). This will allow the full image to show.