“So, what was your point again?”
By the time Fr. Roger asked me for the third time about my message after the service, my patience was running really thin. My thought shifted from, “Did I stutter?” to, “Was he even paying attention?” I broke it down one last time—slowly—what I gathered from the scripture, things I could relate to my life, and ultimately how I thought the people in the pew should hear it.
After explaining all of that, he looked at me and said,
“Then why didn’t you just say that?”
At that point, I lost it.
I told him how insensitive he was. I threw at him all kinds of reasons why “you, the people in the pew” could not handle my message. For those of you who have ever seen the movie A Few Good Men, I had my own Jack Nicholson moment going on internally:
“You can’t handle the truth!”
Looking back now, maybe Fr. Roger saw something before I did.
Sometimes we hide behind complexity because simplicity makes us vulnerable. It is easier to sound profound than to speak plainly about truth, love, fear, grief, or hope. It is easier to protect ourselves behind layers of explanation than to say clearly what lives in our hearts.
Lately, I have been feeling a shift in my own spirit. The shift is gently pulling me to be more direct—not to assert my stubborn, selfish, misguided righteousness, but to speak more honestly about the love of God that dwells within the truth I carry and the hope I have received.
Because if I am being honest, there is another voice that also speaks within us. A darker one. The inner demon that quietly justifies our bitterness, disguises our pride as suffering, and hides our resentment behind victimhood. It convinces us that defensiveness is courage and that anger is truth-telling.
But the Gospel points us somewhere else.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul stands in Athens surrounded by people searching for meaning, worshiping what they called an “unknown god.” Paul does not shame them for searching. He does not begin with condemnation. Instead, he tells them:
“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”
Then he says something remarkable:
“In him we live and move and have our being.”
The problem is not that God is absent. …
The problem is that we often fail to recognize how near God already is.
Peter says something similar in today’s epistle:
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”
Notice what Peter does not say.
He does not say:
“Win every argument.”
“Defeat your enemies.”
“Prove your righteousness.”
“Play the martyr.”
He says:
Speak about your hope—with gentleness and reverence.
And then Jesus says to his disciples:
“I will not leave you orphaned.”
That may be one of the most important truths we can hear today.
When truth is grounded in the love of God, it does not abandon people. It does not isolate people. It does not orphan people. Truth spoken in love draws people closer to God and closer to one another.
It’s Mother’s Day, and mothers often understand this tension better than anybody else.
I cannot tell you how many times my mother said to me,
“I am only telling you this because I am your mother, and I love you.”
Now, I did not always appreciate what she had to say at the time. Some of those truths irritated me deeply. But today, I miss her voice more than I can express.
Love tells the truth—not to wound, not to control, not to win—but because love refuses to abandon us.
And perhaps that is part of our calling as followers of Christ:
not to weaponize truth,
not to hide behind suffering,
not to perform righteousness,
but to speak honestly, humbly, and lovingly about the hope that lives within us.
Be bold.
Trust God.
Be fearless.For we are not orphaned.
God is nearer than we think.
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