A preview of a section from The Walking Paths – 4 May 2025

I started reading the Bible with Proverbs. Then Psalms. Then Job.

It felt like a natural progression. Proverbs gave me something solid to hold on to—short truths, sharp edges, clear distinctions between wisdom and foolishness. It was one of the first places I landed nearly twenty-seven years ago, back in 1998, when I began reading the Bible with any real intention. I think it made sense to me because it read like code: punchy, poetic, dense with meaning. Digestible. Quotable.

Psalms cracked the door open to emotion. Grief. Worship. Rage. Longing. That human cry toward the heavens.

Then someone told me to read Job.

Maybe because they could see I was struggling—furious at God or just silently gutted, like the lights had gone out and nobody was home. Job made me feel seen. Not fixed. But seen.

But I was still asleep.

I could quote scripture like I was building armor out of words, but I wouldn’t surrender. Not really. Not for another twenty-two years. I was spiritually unconscious until I was forty-seven. Walking, breathing, talking—but dead in my sins, trying to wage a war inside my own mind and soul without a Commander, without a Redeemer.

You can’t win that way.

Every one of us has a road to walk—crooked or straight, steep or flat, flooded or burning. And we walk it in the time and way that God allows. Some of us sprint. Some of us crawl. Some of us get dragged for miles by our own stubbornness.

But there are no coincidences.

That’s just a word we use when we’re not ready to admit that God’s fingerprints are everywhere. Sometimes He hides them on purpose—not to confuse us, but to see if we’ll trust Him even when the ink hasn’t dried yet.