Douglas Vandergraph

 Mark 14 is the chapter where everything slows down and becomes unbearably personal. It is the night where love is tested, loyalty is weighed, courage is searched for, and fear finally finds a voice. Until now, the story of Jesus has moved forward with teaching, healing, and confrontation. But here, the narrative folds inward. This chapter does not feel like a public ministry moment. It feels like a private reckoning. It is the chapter of tables and tears, perfume and plotting, bread and betrayal, prayer and panic. It is the chapter where devotion is measured not by words but by what someone is willing to lose. What makes Mark 14 so powerful is not only what happens to Jesus, but what happens inside the people who are closest to Him. This is not a story about strangers or enemies alone. This is about friends who falter, disciples who flee, and a Savior who stays. The danger in reading this chapter is thinking it belongs only to history. The truth is that Mark 14 repeats itself ev...

 See a video of the full story here:  https://youtu.be/tBnoFZapbKk In a town so small it still smelled like rain on dust instead of rain on pavement, there lived a man most people thought they understood. His name was Eli Turner, and if you had asked anyone in town who he was, they would have said something ordinary. He worked at the hardware store. He walked home the same way every afternoon. He sat on the same bench every morning before sunrise. They would not have told you he was remarkable. They would not have told you he was brave. They would not have told you he was wise. They would have said he was consistent. And in a town like that, consistency passed for invisibility. Maple Ridge had one main road and three churches. It had a diner where the coffee tasted burned and the waitresses remembered your order. It had a post office that closed early and a school that smelled like pencil shavings and old books. If something happened there, it happened quietly. If someone stru...

 Mark 13 has always been read like a warning siren. Wars. Rumors of wars. Earthquakes. Famines. Betrayals. The sun darkened. The moon refusing to shine. It sounds like the script of a disaster movie written in the language of prophecy. But when Jesus spoke these words, He was not standing on a mountaintop with thunder cracking behind Him like a Hollywood scene. He was sitting with His disciples, looking at the stones of the Temple, and talking about what would happen when everything they trusted visually, culturally, and spiritually would be shaken. Mark 13 is not primarily a chapter about the end of the world. It is a chapter about what happens when the world you thought was permanent begins to fall apart. It is a chapter about how faith behaves when certainty collapses. The disciples began the conversation with admiration. They pointed out the Temple stones as if they were pointing to God’s résumé. Look how big it is. Look how strong it is. Look how permanent it feels. And Jesu...

 See a video of the full poem here:   https://youtu.be/8VP7bp8l0ps There is something about small towns that feels like a confession. Nothing hides very well in a place where the same street sees you leave in the morning and return at night. The buildings remember you. The windows recognize your posture. The sidewalks learn the sound of your shoes. In cities, people pass each other like clouds. In towns, they pass each other like chapters in the same book. And in one such town, tucked between a river that forgot how to hurry and a highway that never learned how to stop, four men sat every morning at the same diner booth and did not know they were preaching a sermon. The diner had a bell on the door that rang like a small metal prayer every time someone entered. The kind of place where the floor creaked with honesty and the coffee tasted like it had been waiting all night for someone to care about it. There was one window that caught the sunrise just right. And beneath tha...