Josh Bishop writes

Download a full setting of What Joy Will Greet Us In That Place

What Joy Will Greet Us In That Place

What joy will greet us in that place
When we with unveiled stare
See in our savior’s ageless face
Our glory mirrored there.

What joy! when we, no longer slaves
To flesh and sin and death,
Exchange this Egypt’s burning rays
For Canaan’s endless rest.

What joy! when sorrows sting no more;
What joy! when death has died;
What joy! in every loss restored,
In tears no longer cried.

What joy! when we, the Bride of Christ,
Made splendid by his love,
Are clothed in festal, spotless white
And seated high above.

What joy! to join with saints around
A sea of glass aflame;
What joy! when praises loud resound
To glorify his name.

What joy! to drink the waters deep
That from God’s temple flow;
What joy! to eat from Eden’s tree,
What joy! to fully know.

We’ve pallid joy while yet we grieve
And toil and long on earth,
Impatient waiting to receive
True joy from death — then birth.

Lord, bring us safe to Zion’s shore
And grant to us at last
That joy that lives forevermore,
That joy that will not pass.

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POEM: American Logres

Josh Bishop — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:15:52 GMT

After William Blake and for F. Scott Hoffman (requiescat in pace)

Christ preached New England’s Pilgrim fields
from pulpit and with musket ball;
the light of Christ from Old North Church
shined clear to Independence Hall.

Christ westward crossed the fruited plain;
Christ bled to free the Southern slaves;
Christ led the million marching men
who dreamed Christ’s dream with MLK.

What now is this Christ-haunted land?
How long will we deny our Lord?
Where are the men who build and fight?
Where is my shovel? Where my sword?

By grace, we’ll build New Christendom:
from sea to shining sea he reigns!
His kingdom come, his will be done
in these United States again.

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Epilepsy Sucks, and God is Good

Josh Bishop — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:15:43 GMT

I don’t post about our family journey with epilepsy very much, but today, March 26, is Purple Day — an international day for epilepsy awareness — so here’s a snapshot of our story.

Becca’s Epilepsy

My wife, Becca, was diagnosed with epilepsy almost nine years ago, when she was 35 years old. Turns out she had been having v. small, misdiagnosed seizures since she was in college, but we didn’t learn that until her seizures got much worse in 2017; she had her first GTC/grand mal that November. She was sitting sideways in a kitchen chair, and I was giving her a back rub. She fell backwards, and I caught her and held her and panicked and prayed and called 911 after she stopped convulsing.

Since then, she’s had hundreds of partial seizures (we call these “focal seizures” because they’re focused in one part of her brain), six GTC or grand mal seizures (these are the big, full-body, drop-to-the-ground convulsions that everyone thinks of when they think of seizures), and countless additional, tiny auras — countless because there are so uncountably many of them.

Since this started, we’ve been in four different hospitals, including Mayo Clinic. Thankfully, the doctors have finally figured out how to stop most of her worst seizures with a concoction of pharmaceuticals. Most of the seizures, but not all of them: Last week, she had another seizure and again can’t drive.

This has been unbelievably hard for all of us, and especially for Becca. She’s her driver’s license several times, driving (in total) just over two years of the last eight. Her memory has become noticeably bad; her seizures originate in her left temporal lobe, which houses language and memory function. She’s confused a lot. She’s been unable to hold a job. Even one seizure can knock us all back on our heels and rearrange our plans for several days while Becca is tired and sore and foggy. So far, she’s been spared the worst, though: She keeps her balance and can stay standing during her focal seizures, and I’ve been there to catch her for all of her grand mals; she hasn’t injured herself during a seizure, and her quality of life is remarkably good overall.

Still, we’re anxious and on edge all. the. time. We’ve had to get used to saying new words, like “postictal” and “disabled.” The kids have seen more than any kid should see, and they’ve been responsible in ways that no kid should be responsible. We’re all tired and, to be honest, we’re scared.

I’m crazy proud of Becca. It isn’t easy, and both of us have v. bad days, but I’m proud of her. She’s a champion. She’s been through a lot. She handles it with grace and humor, and she’ll be the first to tell you that’s probably because she’s entirely and blissfully unaware of her seizures.

The picture on the left, above, is from one of her two stays at the hospital’s epilepsy monitoring unit. They hooked her up to machines for five days of 24-hour live video surveillance and digital monitoring, then took her off her meds and waited for the seizures to come so they could record them and rush her down the hall for brain imaging. And the picture on the right is of our drive home just a couple days later; I snapped it at a stop light after we left the hospital. Look how beautiful she is! And look how happy we seem. If I didn’t know what she’d just been through, I almost wouldn’t believe it.

Please Excuse a Little Theology

Of course, we couldn’t make it through this without Christ holding onto us. We don’t know why this is happening, but we do trust that God is using it for good. We’ve already seen that in so many ways. It’s been my experience that suffering has brought us closer to God and that we more clearly feel and know and understand the sustaining love and comfort of Christ through this.

The truth is, my ultimate hope for Becca is not that she will be healed of epilepsy. I wholeheartedly believe that God can heal her epilepsy in this life, and I plead with him in faith every day to do so; I am confident he will heal her fully, in the next life if not in this one. But I do not place my hope or my comfort in her physical healing or in her victory over epilepsy. The Lord Jesus Christ has made it possible for her to have life and have it abundantly, even while having seizures.

Any expectation of a coming breakthrough in Becca’s health is thin and watery gruel compared to the bountiful feast of the gospel — the sure and certain promise that God is near her in her suffering, that God has through Christ made satisfaction for her sins and will one day make her whole, that he is working even in this disability for his glory and for her good, and that she will look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living even if she has epileptic fits until the day God calls her home, where she will behold at last her savior’s face. This is the glorious hope of the gospel, the good news that a hurting and broken world needs to hear.

If you don’t yet know the saving love of God, please don’t wait: repent of your sins and trust in Jesus, who delights to save sinners like you and like me.

None of this theology is to say that it’s easy — only that we know God is good, and we trust that he’s using even epilepsy to accomplish his good purposes. In the meantime, please pray that we would have the faith to say, with Job, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 2:10; 1:21). And, while you’re at it, please pray, with Moses, “O God, please heal her — please” (Numbers 12:13).

What You Can Do

If you have even a few minutes to learn the basics of seizure first aid — Stay, Safe, Side — you can do so at epilepsy.com/firstaid. Learning how to respond in the event of a seizure can be helpful for the more than 3 million people in the U.S. who have epilepsy.

And, of course, Becca and I covet your prayers.

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Bicycles & Cheese

Josh Bishop — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:15:26 GMT

There’s really nothing more to this post — and nothing that connects the two ideas, bicycle and cheese — aside from than the fact that the writing here displays what it looks like to see and appreciate and dwell on the simple pleasures that come from the simple things of life.

“I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud.”
—G.K. Chesterton

Lord, help me to be more like this.

C.S. Lewis on Bicycles

The writer’s bicycle. (Josh Bishop’s, not C.S. Lewis’s.)

To be fair, this is actually C.S. Lewis relaying what his friend said about bicycles in one of their conversations. Still, Lewis wrote the words down, and they’re worth reading.

“Talking about bicycles,” said my friend, “I have been through the four ages. I can remember a time in early childhood when a bicycle meant nothing to me: it was just part of the huge meaningless background of grown-up gadgets against which life went on. Then came a time when to have a bicycle, and to have learned to ride it, and to be at last spinning along on one’s own, early in the morning, under trees, in and out of the shadows, was like entering Paradise. That apparently effortless and frictionless gliding — more like swimming than any other motion, but really most like the discovery of a fifth element — that seemed to have solved the secret of life. Now one would begin to be happy. But, of course, I soon reached the third period. Pedaling to and fro from school (it was one of those journeys that feel up-hill both ways) in all weathers, soon revealed the prose of cycling. The bicycle, itself, became to me what his oar is to a galley slave.”
“But what was the fourth age?” I asked.
“I am in it now, or rather I am frequently in it. I have had to go back to cycling lately now that there’s no car. And the jobs I use it for are often dull enough. But again and again the mere fact of riding brings back a delicious whiff of memory. I recover the feelings of the second age. What’s more, I see how true they were — how philosophical, even. For it really is a remarkably pleasant motion.”

G.K. Chesterton on Cheese

Here’s G.K. Chesterton, in a longer passage from which comes his often-quoted quip, “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

My forthcoming work in five volumes, `The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature,’ is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet that I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: ‘If all the trees were bread and cheese’ — which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in an exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to ‘breeze’ and ‘seas’ (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say ‘Cheese it!’ or even ‘Quite the cheese.’ The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient — sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.
But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella — artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese to soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith’s Soap or Brown’s Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith’s Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown’s Soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.
When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get a great many things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits—to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits—to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.”

Okay, one more on cheese

Chesterton’s piece puts me in mind, of another cheese-y quote, one of my all-time favorites — this one from Rod Dreher, who takes a sacramental approach:

Some people wrongly make an idol of food, or of art, or of sport, or such things. This we must avoid, but we also must avoid the opposite thing, which is to denigrate the body and the material world by assuming that all pleasure derived from the enjoyment of creation is illicit, or at least suspect. When I taste a good cheese, for example, it makes me not only happy, but joyful. The happiness comes from this thought: “How delicious this is!” The joy comes from this thought: “How wonderful to live in a world where such happiness can come from such simple things!” For Christians who see the world through a sacramental lens, the divine expresses itself in part through matter. For those with eyes to see, the cheeses in the picture are radiant with the glory of God. For me, when I taste something extraordinarily good, my first impulse is to say a prayer of thanksgiving. I know not everyone is like this, but for me, moments like this are theophanies — a sudden disclosure of God’s presence in the world, and a reminder that however much boredom and pain we have to bear, God is still present with us, and will disclose Himself in His creation, if we are open to it, and grateful for it.

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Josh Bishop Writes is sponsored by New Saint Anne’s.

Christian Land Acknowledgement

Josh Bishop — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:15:29 GMT

We acknowledge that we are located on land that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. The world is his and everything in it, and every land under the whole heaven belongs to him. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills — and he also owns the thousand thousand hills. He determines the boundaries of the nations and gives them their land, that all people might seek him and worship him.

So we give thanks to God for the use of his land by his providence through the hands of our ancestors. He has planted us in this land, and we ask that we may never again be uprooted out of the land he has given us. We pray that everything done on this land, including what we do here tonight, will bring honor and glory to its rightful king. And we dedicate this event, like this land, to the Lord Jesus Christ. To God our Savior be all greatness, glory, majesty, dominion, authority, and splendor through Jesus Christ our Lord before all time, and now, and for all eternity — on this land and on all lands. Amen.

☩

I encourage you to read the Christian Land Acknowledgement aloud at any event whatsoever, without attribution and free of charge. You are also welcome to reproduce the Christian Land Acknowledgement in writing, whether print or digital — but if you do, please attribute it to Josh Bishop as follows: © 2026 Josh Bishop, used with permission.

This has been crossposted to Christ Is Lord.

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Josh Bishop Writes is sponsored by New Saint Anne’s.

POEM: Christmas Triptych

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:15:24 GMT

From in the neighbor’s house, warm lamplight,
overflowing in a homey amber glow,
extends its pleasant beams into the night,
spilling from a row of green-wreathed windows
to paint a quaint, Kinkadian sight:
The panes cast golden, scalene squares on snow
that falling all day long has gathered white
and freshly billowed on the ground below.

II.

And all at once the midnight sky turns bright
in brilliant, sunless dawn: A hundred score
of close-come stars — no, angels! — recite
their song to shepherds in their fields: Glory
to God! Still, these simple shepherds can’t quite
grasp what all this means — no, not before
they witness Joseph lifting high the light
of the world from a bloody, straw-strewn floor.

III.

We must’ve caught and torn a piece of night
sky when we cut our tree from Prince’s farm.
Look how the strings of incandescent lights
approximate inside our home the charm
of cloudless winter evenings, crisp and bright.
We’ve seen through leafless branches these same stars
while walking on the snowy streets in moonlight,
hand-in-mittened-hand to keep us warm.

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POEM: Sentimental Pleasures

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:15:17 GMT

A gentle snow is falling slow outside
the windows. Pine and nutmeg, orange and clove
like incense scent the pleasant air inside.
There’s apple cider mulling on the stove,
and gentle snow is falling slow outside.

We deck the halls with baubles, lights, and bells,
a wrap of burlap garland, potpourri.
The vinyl spins, and Perry Como tells
the Noël tale, while on our fresh-cut tree,
we’re hanging Christmas baubles, lights, and bells.

The newborn Christ is watching from the crèche,
where Mary in her virgin arms holds close
the ageless Son of God in infant flesh.
He came for us, this babe in swaddling clothes,
the newborn Christ who’s watching from the crèche.

For us — for this — Emmanuel has come:
for common Christmas joys, goodwill to men,
the sentimental pleasures of our home,
for peace on earth, hot chocolate from a tin —
for all of this, and more, our Lord has come.

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The Kingdom of God is Like Christmas

Josh Bishop — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:15:30 GMT

I believe that the kingdom of God is like a fresh-cut evergreen tree hung with baubles and lights, like eggnog and hot cocoa, like waking up to stockings stuffed full, like carols at church, like the smell of ginger and orange and cinnamon and almond and clove, like a dog in deep snow, like a single star that lights up the night, like new pajamas, like the candles of an Advent wreath, like heaps of presents, like a winter fire, like mistletoe and holly, like seeing Santa at the market downtown, like the crèche on the mantle, like garland on the lamppost, like red-kettle bellringing, like sledding with children, like candy canes, like magic.

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POEM: The Crowning King

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:15:55 GMT

Two Roman soldiers stand in Bethlehem,
half-hidden in the shadows as, not far
from where they leer, and unaware of them,
a virgin mother labors in a barn.
In just a few short years, these streets will run
with babies’ blood; these soldiers’ hands will hew
the limbs of weeping Rachel’s thousand sons.
Tonight, though, Herod’s men stand by while through
the dark there dawns an unforeseen shining
of aural light, a glorious chorus
that sings the coming of the crowning King.
They cannot know this babe is born for us
and that, despite the worst of Herod’s plans,
this baby’s blood can cleanse their bloodstained hands.

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POEM: Santa Wants Beer and Tobacco

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 13:15:45 GMT

A cold Christmas Eve with a warm moonlit glow
A quiet night soft with the fresh-fallen snow
Inside, out of reach from the cold winter air
Santa’s stuffing the stockings with care

The kids left a glass and a plate piled high
But Santa just pulls on his beard with a sigh
It’s a been a long night, still there’s hours to go
And he’d rather have beer and tobacco

Oh, milk is okay if you don’t drive a sleigh
But a cold one would warm Santa’s toes
And cookies are fine if you’re staying inside
But a corncob would thaw Santa’s nose

Rudolph got oats from the neighbor next door
And Santa’s already had cookies galore
The last thing he wants is an after-school snack
O, give Santa some beer and tobacco

His pipe can’t be packed full of ready-rubbed holly
And milk won’t make anyone’s cheeks red or jolly
Kids, put down the chocolate chip cookies this year
Please leave Santa tobacco and beer

Santa’s eyes never twinkle so bright as they do
When he’s half a bowl in while he’s sipping a brew
Eat the cookies yourself, kids, I promise I know
Santa really wants beer and tobacco

❦

When my boys were young and they believed in Santa Claus, we left a plate of cookies and milk out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve — but I always tried to convince them that he actually wanted beer and tobacco instead. And so this poem was born.

A couple of years ago, a friend, Dan Mogck, set the poem to some original music, using the third stanza as a refrain. You can (and should!) listen to it here:

I absolutely love what Dan did — but I still think there’s room for a high-quality, festive, radio-friendly recording. Something with sleigh bells, maybe, and trumpets and electric guitar. You know, something I could send to the local radio station. (If you’re interested, please let me know — or just have at it!)

Now that my sons conveniently no longer believe in Santa, we still leave out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve — and yes, we also leave out tobacco and beer. In the morning, the boys eat the cookies. After we open the presents, I settle into my chair with a just-unwrapped book and I enjoy my morning while drinking Santa’s beer to the bottom and smoking a bowl of Santa’s tobacco. (Christmas morning is the one time a year that I smoke in the house.) It’s just about perfect.

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Why My Boys Believe in Santa Claus

Josh Bishop — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:03:31 GMT

My favorite thing about Christmas is the waiting. It wasn’t always that way: When I was a kid, my favorite thing was opening my presents. (We didn’t do Santa, so the presents came from mom and dad.) As I grow older, though, I could sit with the waiting for what feels like forever — because I know for a certainty that the waiting will pay off. The seasonal anticipation builds to a climax that happened in history more than 2,000 years ago.

This is the irony of Advent: Every year, even as we wait for Christ’s return, the church also waits again for something that has already happened. It’s a waiting described by Isaac Wimberly in one of my favorite Christmas tracks as a “groaning… growing generation after generation.” He continues:

They longed for him, they yearned for him, they waited for him on the edge of their seats. On the edge of where excitement and containment meet, they waited. Like a child watches out the window for a father to return from work, they waited. Like a groom stares at the double doors at the back of the church, they waited… they waited.

I never waited for Christmas like that.

Sure, I wanted the toys and the presents. Sure, I fell asleep at night wondering what my stocking would hold in the morning. But waiting like that? A longing? A yearning? No, that didn’t happen until, at almost 30 years old, I read the Bible chronologically, in the order that the events took place through history instead of the order that Crossway prints it. The narrative arc was smooth and steady, moving from beginning to end in a time-bound, historical progression.

And while I can’t pretend to know the Israelites’ anticipation as they waited and prayed for the promised messiah, about three-quarters of the way through I began to feel for the first time something of their longing. I couldn’t wait for Christ to enter the story. I began to understand in a new way their cries: How long, O Lord? How long? How long? How long? Over and over and over again, waiting for the promise to come. If I didn’t already know how the story ends, the suspense would’ve killed me. It was the first time I truly yearned for Christmas.

But my kids? My kids wait like that. They anticipate Christmas in a way that they won’t otherwise know until they’re old enough to grasp everything Christmas means — the depths of their own sin, their offense before a holy God, and their insurmountable need for the Savior who was this night born into the world to die on their behalf.

Their waiting is real, in other words, even if the object isn’t. The magic is real, even if Santa Claus is just a cut-rate, stage show illusionist. Santa provides a taste of the anticipation and fulfillment of Christmas — cheap and artificial, to be sure, but a taste — before my children are old enough to genuinely understand the deeper magic of Bethlehem and Calvary.

It’s a little bit like sipping brown bottle root beer before drinking proper ale, like soap and water in a bubble pipe before savoring a bowlful of Old Toby. It’s a wobbly ride on training wheels to the neighbor’s driveway before careening down that hill with a blind drive and a patch of gravel on the curve at the bottom.

Like Beowulf and St. George and Bilbo Baggins and Lucy Pevensie, Santa Claus is a hardworking plowman who turns the soil of my children’s imaginations. When G.K. Chesterton was a child, he believed that Santa Claus filled his stockings during the night. Years later, he wrote:

I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.

The secret that Chesterton discovered, and taught me, is that Santa is a story that prepares our hearts and imaginations for the magic and the glory and the unbelievable truth of Christ and the world he created. He may not give my boys their Christmas presents, but Santa does give them the gifts of wonder and awe and excitement and anticipation and waiting fulfilled.

To be sure, there are a lot of things that are untrue about the Santa story, and these are the things Santa naysayers get quite right: Santa Claus doesn’t really exist, for example.

But here’s something deeply true about the Santa story: Magic happened on that long-ago night, and magic still happens — on Christmas night and on all nights, every time a life is born and born again, made and made new.

And this: On one night millennia past, all the children of the world woke up and rubbed the sleep from their eyes and stumbled downstairs to find they had been given an undeserved, immeasurable gift.

On that night, a joy was birthed into the world that I’m afraid most grownups have largely forgotten. In fact, I’d venture to say that we haven’t felt that kind of joy since we were, oh, about 7 years old.

❦

I’ve been republishing this piece every year since I first wrote it more than a decade ago, and I still believe it as much as I did then. In fact, I think I now believe it even more. My sons were ages 6 and 2 when I wrote it; now, at 17 and 13, they no longer believe in Santa — but they still believe in the magic of Christmas.

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POEM: On a Disappointing Mid-November Snowfall

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 23:03:30 GMT

The year’s first snow should look more like the flakes
in snowglobes or in Hallmark’s Christmas flicks
than this, a dingy slop of wet sleet thick
with slush and gross with leaves that lie unraked
throughout the yard. Their tannins stain the snow
like yellow piss. We’ll have to wait a few
more weeks — a month, perhaps — before the truly
picturesque snow falls. It will, I know,
because it always has before. And when
it does, the lamppost in our yard will stretch
its charming beams like fingers out to catch
and hold each gently falling snowflake. Then
the snow (at last, a faultless wintry sight!)
will blanket all, like Christ our sins, in white.

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Love Poem

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:15:12 GMT

Ben Johnson has his Celia’s love,
Lord Byron his nighttime belle,
and Marvell, though his mistress coy,
loves more than time can tell.

Browning loves to her soul’s far reach,
Shakespeare’s love is as summer’s day,
and Marlowe’s shepherd loves his nymph
though she push his love away.

But Burns may keep his red, red rose,
and Poe his Annabel Lee,
for I have a love that’s lovelier still,
and oh! how my love loves me!

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Good – Psalm 73:28a

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:15:41 GMT

“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.”
—Psalm 73:28a (NASB)

If you were to make a list of the good things God could give you, what would you put at the very top?

A new job? A little extra cash? (Not enough to be filthy rich or anything so vulgar as that, but enough to be a little more comfortable?) A certain relationship? The healthier body and better looks of your youth? The respect of others?

Often when we read Romans 8:28 — “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” — we flip through our Christmas Wish Book catalog pages, dog-earing and circling from a menu of options like those above, scratching a wish list of the good things God could give us.

But when we look at Romans 8:28 through the lens of Psalm 73:28 — “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good” (NASB) — we see a far better thing altogether. We could say it this way: God will work all things to be near to those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Can you imagine a better promise than that? Can you imagine a gooder good? The God of the universe, the one who scattered the stars in the sky and the sand along the shore like a boy tossing a pocketful of stones — that God will be near to you. To you!

C.S. Lewis wrote, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Are we just fooling about with health and wealth and success and relationships — our material comforts and felt needs — when the nearness of God is offered to us? If so, we are far too easily pleased.

Are you rich? God will be near to you. Are you poor? God will be near to you. Are you in pain or need? God will meet your pain and need not with promises that your pain will be small and your need will be short, but with the better promise and inestimable gift of himself. Are you in comfort and health? God will meet you there, too, with something far greater than anything so fleeting as that. His nearness is your good, even now.

If you are in Christ, God is near to you, and he is working all things in your life to bring you nearer still.

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A letter to our (former) elders

Josh Bishop — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:15:45 GMT

Introduction

Several years ago, my wife and I met with the elders at the church we were attending to address some concerns that we had about perceived shifts in the teaching and practice of the church. Specifically, we were concerned about two things:

An overemphasis on Christianity as a means of lifestyle improvement
The failure to confront false beliefs held by those who attend and lead the church, including the promotion of heterodox teaching and personalities

What follows is a copy of the email we sent to the elders to express our concerns and request the meeting. We met to discuss these concerns (among others), and we later left the church.

I’ve changed the names of the church and pastor in the email below, but I wanted to share it because:

I think it does a good job of modeling firm yet respectful disagreement with church leaders
I still see these concerns in the broader church, and I suspect others may feel the same way without necessarily knowing how to articulate it
It presents the hope of the gospel as an alternative
I continue to be asked about this letter and the topics it addresses, so I know it’s still relevant

I pray it’s helpful.

The Letter

Hi everyone,

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I love Fourth Church, and I especially love its people, and it’s been a pleasure to be a member of Fourth for nearly a decade. Over the past few years, though, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about a shift in the direction of the church and certain elements of its teachings and practice. I’ve shared some of these concerns with a few of you before, but I believe it’s time to formally present them to the entire board in hopes of earnestly addressing them together.

First, and most seriously, I’m concerned about an overemphasis on Christianity as a means of improving our lives.

I typically see this happening through the prolific use of vague, feel-good, and poorly defined Christian buzzwords (e.g., breakthrough, victory, abundance, impact, healing, overcome, flourish, purpose, favor, etc.) that are routinely illustrated in temporal terms and promise to meet our felt needs in, for example, our finances, marriages, careers, health, etc.

Pastor William has previously described this to me as an “inaugurated eschatology,” but I continue to worry that, at times, it’s actually an over-realized eschatology that gets perilously close to (or perhaps actually is) a thinly veiled, and therefore more palatable, version of the prosperity gospel, which is an anti-gospel.

God can, of course, provide all these things and more; he can and often does. But nowhere in the Bible are lifestyle improvements and the fulfillment of physical, felt needs promised to Christians, and nowhere are they taught as necessary implications of the gospel. (‘Felt needs’ is here distinct from real needs; see Matthew 6:31–33, Philippians 4:19.) The gospel is a proclamation of what God has already provided for us in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; it is not the promise of what God will do to materially improve our lives in the future. Yet I worry that this gospel truth is being shrouded at Fourth Church behind language that encourages people to interpret Christianity according to their own personal desires for bettered circumstances.

I think it’s worth sharing here that I’m convinced that the promise of an inaugurated eschatological breakthrough in this life, as commonly understood and if preached without careful definition, would be unintelligible (and likely offensive) to the Apostle Paul, who was imprisoned, beaten, stoned, thrice-shipwrecked, thorn-afflicted, and executed; to Stephen and the martyred Apostles; to those in Hebrews 11 who were tortured and sawn in two and killed with the sword; to the faithful martyrs of Revelation, slain for the word of God and their witness; to the 21 Coptic martyrs beheaded by ISIS in Libya just a few years ago; and to the countless faithful Christians around the world who are today worshipping in secret and suffering persecution for the faith.

The gospel of Christ is good news even for a man who is downwardly mobile, suffering, poor, and miserable, and who lives in that worsening state until he dies. It is good news for the young, single mother with cancer, struggling to feed her children and avoid bankruptcy while receiving medical treatment that will destroy her body until her organs fail and her children become orphans; it is good news for her orphans. It is good news for the house church pastor tortured and forever disappeared into a communist Chinese gulag.

Has God failed these people? Have his promises failed? Absolutely not! All of God’s promises are yes and amen in Christ; if they have not received breakthrough in this life, it is because God has not promised it. Still, he has saved even these from their sins and guaranteed their eternal joy in the presence of God. That Christ is the Christ we need. Preach that Christ alone, and leave behind whatever false promises or winking intimations of earthly breakthrough that distract from his gospel.

I do know that Pastor William is careful to include a proclamation of the gospel every Sunday, so my concerns are perhaps a matter of priorities or relative importance. Still, I want to see our church clearly elevate the gospel of Christ crucified for sinners as supremely important and to dial back or, better, do away with any assertions or insinuations that God will materially improve our lives. There is no potential temporal breakthrough that can improve the gospel of Christ, and no definite hardship in this life that can make this good news even the slightest bit worse.

The coronavirus pandemic (encompassing fear, anxiety, social distancing and isolation, joblessness, the prospect of national or global economic recession or depression, sickness, death) has highlighted my concerns, and I believe it demonstrates the ways that imprecise assurances of breakthrough can mislead people with a false understanding of God’s promises and his work in the world. I deeply question how well we’ve prepared people to suffer in this time.

Second, I’m concerned about a failure to confront false beliefs held by those who attend and lead Fourth Church, including the promotion of heterodox teaching and personalities.

I am primarily referring to the people at Fourth who adhere to the Word of Faith movement or the prosperity gospel, whether wholesale or piecemeal. I worry that these individuals are encouraged in their confusion and error, at least in part by Fourth’s use of the terms and concepts I previously mentioned.

Please hear me: There are, of course, careful, faithful, and biblical ways to use concepts and terminology such as “breakthrough,” “abundance,” “victory,” “authority,” “declare,” “claim,” and other, similar words. When used in an ambiguous or sloppy manner, however, they serve as dog whistles to the many people in the congregation who have adopted erroneous beliefs, and it allows those beliefs to continue unchecked — even if Fourth Church’s theological lexicon carefully avoids particular Word of Faith applications.

Worse, some of Fourth Church’s ministries openly promote heterodox teaching and personalities. As just a few brief examples, I would point to:

The use of videos by Todd White as training for the prayer team. White is a charlatan who peddles videos of demonstrably fake healings, shares platforms with false teachers including Kenneth Copeland and Bill Johnson, denies the full deity of Christ, and claims to be without sin (see 1 John 1:8).
The adaptation of Randy Clark’s material for use as Fourth Church’s prayer manual. Randy Clark is similarly associated with false teachers (including Johnson, White, and Shawn Bolz) and the New Apostolic Reformation, and has conducted frenzied “School of Healing and Impartation” events at Bethel Church and elsewhere.
The inclusion of material from Shawn Bolz in the prayer manual and in communication from other ministries. Bolz claims to occupy the office of Prophet (as distinct from exercising the spiritual gift of prophecy), delivers false prophecies, and has been credibly accused of using the same cheap parlor tricks practiced by stage-show psychics. (Importantly, removing Bolz’s quotes from the prayer manual does not exorcise Bolz’s theology from the manual or from the church.)

These men are wolves on the prowl for your sheep. Each of these examples signifies a theological drift toward teachings that are more in line with the New Apostolic Reformation and the prosperity gospel than with the teachings of the New Testament and the gospel of Christ. Taken as a whole, they indicate an undiscerning shift, whether intentional or unintentional, toward troubling, heterodox influences in our church.

(I should note here that if this is an intentional shift, then Fourth Church’s leadership should state its new direction explicitly so congregants and members can be aware of it and, as their consciences dictate, choose to worship elsewhere.)

To be clear, I’m not a cessationist: I believe the Holy Spirit works supernaturally in the world today and that the gifts and fruit of the Spirit are available to believers today; I believe that God can and does provide miraculous, physical healing. My concerns are not with charismatic gifts and signs, but with the failure to carefully distinguish between a faithful, mature, and biblically-grounded approach on the one hand and, on the other hand, the undue and improper influence in our church of false teachers who hawk an undiscerning lust for signs, healings, and miracles that can lead unwitting people away from historical, scriptural Christianity.

I would like to see Fourth’s leadership provide explicit, specific, and public correction of false beliefs that are present within the church. Much of this can be accomplished by clearly defining what is meant and, just as importantly, what is not meant by the language we use. I also think Fourth’s leadership (both staff and elders) must play a more active role in holding accountable the leaders, including volunteer leaders, of ministries in which this dangerous influence is present (see Titus 1:11, 13b).

So, in summary: I’m very concerned about the overemphasis on Christianity as a means of improving our material lives and about the proliferation or tolerance of false beliefs and false teachers that have gone unchecked among some leaders, members, and congregants.

Finally, on a deeply personal note, I’m aware that much of my concern for, and heightened sensitivity to, these matters comes from our family journey with Becca’s epilepsy.

My ultimate hope for Becca is not that she will be healed of epilepsy. I wholeheartedly believe that God can heal her epilepsy in this life, and I plead with him in faith every day to do so; I am confident he will heal her fully, in the next life if not in this one. But I do not place my hope or my comfort in her healing or her breakthrough or her victory over epilepsy. Christ has made it possible for her to have life and have it abundantly, even while having seizures.

So I plead with you: Make sure that this gospel, and this gospel alone, is proclaimed loudly, clearly, and unapologetically at Fourth Church. Do not let the treasure of the gospel lay beside the trinkets and baubles of lifestyle improvement and vague promises of coming breakthrough. Do not allow the clear, cool water of the Christian gospel to be diluted with the pond scum — not even a drop! — of the prosperity gospel, the Word of Faith movement, or the New Apostolic Reformation. Do not allow snake-oil salesmen to peddle their quackery within our walls. Do not yoke the gospel message to the dead weight of expectations that God has promised us personal lifestyle improvements. Preach Christ and him crucified — not so that we might get a promotion, but so we might be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God.

Underlying all of this, I suppose, is a plea for more robust oversight of the church’s theology, preaching, and practice. In 2012, after the Fourth Church members voted to leave our denomination, I sent this appeal to the elder board:

I can’t encourage you strongly enough to continue looking into options of external accountability and authority for Fourth Church, whether that’s in the form of a network or organization, or a denomination that is more compatible with our mission and personality, or simply a small group of trusted leaders and pastors who audit and regularly report on the church’s theology, preaching, and practice. Please, please, please look for a responsible way of answering to someone outside of our walls.

I repeat this plea today: Please, please, please find responsible, faithful, and proven accountability that can ensure Fourth Church does not stray from the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

I’m hoping that this email is received as a loving corrective that motivates careful introspection, increased oversight from the elder board, and a decisive, noticeable shift in some of the church’s practices.

Becca and I hope to meet in person to discuss these matters and hear your response.

In Christ,

Josh

☩

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Autumn Ikos

Josh Bishop — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:15:10 GMT

Praise and honor to the God who gives us fallen leaves rustling beneath every step and rattling in the chilliest breeze; who gives the simple pleasures of cranberry stuffing and apples and the last oozings of the cider press; who guides great Vs of geese through melancholy skies. It is good to enjoy thy bounty, O Lord, in the months of thy harvest feast!

Glory to thee for the burnished bronze trees, gold and flaming red.
Glory to thee for clouds that shroud the moon.
Glory to thee for faces carved into candlelit pumpkins.
Glory to thee for sweaters and flannel and hot-chocolate hayrides.
Glory to thee for days set aside to remember the dead and to give thee our thanks.
Glory to thee for woodsmoke and cinnamon.
Glory to thee for the caw of crows in the cornfield.
Glory to thee for the world turned orange and moody.
Glory to thee, O God, from age to age!

☩

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A Liturgy for Drinking Beer

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 12:15:15 GMT

This liturgy for drinking beer is from my forthcoming book, Cheers & Amen: Thank God for Good Beer. Look for it from Lion Press soon!

A Liturgy For Drinking Beer (PDF)

186KB ∙ PDF file

Free download!

A Liturgy for Drinking Beer

It would be enough, Lord,
for your gifts of malt and mash
to simply quench our thirst and nourish us —
but you have filled our glasses
with pleasures we do not deserve:
of carbonation
and color
and flavor
and alcohol.

Your gifts, O God, are gratuitous.

ALL: We praise you, Lord, for these, thy gifts.

You have given us this beer
to gladden our hearts,
as a taste of your goodness,
and as a foretaste of the Bridegroom’s feast
in the tavern at the end of the world.

We drink with thanksgiving.
We drink for your glory.
We drink because in and through this beer,
we taste and see that you are good.

ALL: We praise you, Lord, for these, thy gifts.

Keep us always sober, Lord.
In our drinking, keep us from sin.
Let the only excess here today
be our immoderate joy
and laughter
and good cheer
in the pleasure of Christian fellowship.

ALL: We praise you, Lord, for these, thy gifts.

And so we raise our glasses
to the God of yeast and malt,
to the beer God, the gift-giving God,
the one true and living God,
and together we toast:

[ALL RAISE THEIR GLASSES AND SAY TOGETHER]

To the God of rain and harvest!
To the God of glass and grain!
To the God of ale and lager!
All glory be to Christ the King!
Amen.

[ALL DRINK]

From Cheers & Amen: Thank God for Good Beer by Josh Bishop (forthcoming from Lion Press)

©2024 Josh Bishop, all rights reserved. Feel free to share, print, distribute and freely use, so long as you don’t charge for it. Credit “From Cheers & Amen: Thank God for Good Beer by Josh Bishop” in all uses.

cheersamen.com

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A Feast for Every Beggar

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:15:42 GMT

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
—John 6:35

Martin Luther’s last written words were, “We are beggars. This is true.”

For most of us, it’s easy to look at our lives — each in a varying degree of comfort — and sniff at Luther’s claim. Me, a beggar? If only Luther knew how many stalls are in my garage, whose labels I’m wearing, how full are my pantry and fridge.

Even if your life is more like a scratching crawl from one paycheck to the next, fending off phone calls from debt collectors, wondering how you’re going to pay for that unexpected repair — even these lives are a far cry from that grubby panhandler on the corner. Me, a beggar?

It doesn’t matter how many or few are the zeros in your paycheck, how red or black are the lines in your budget, how near or far are your family vacations. None of it will matter in the end. This isn’t about our stuff, it’s about our souls. Every Christian is a beggar. When we come to Christ, we must come needy and dependent, our stomachs and wallets empty — we must come empty-handed, or we will never come at all.

How often do we sit on our subway grate, tucked back from the wind, and cling to our little cardboard signs, irrationally proud of what we’ve made of ourselves and our lives? Here comes Christ to meet us on the corner. He takes the cardboard from our hands, stands us to our feet, looks us in the eye, and says, “Come, and eat.” And then he gives us himself.

There’s a quote floating around, something to the effect that “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.” I’ve found bread, friends, and I want to tell you about it. But a beggar’s bread isn’t quite enough, is it?

When Jesus gives us the bread of life — when he gives us himself — he isn’t stingy with the portions. These are no meager crumbs from the table. No, he gives us “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine” (Isaiah 26:6), a marriage banquet of “the goodness of the Lord,” of grain and wine and oil and tender meats (Jeremiah 31:12), a king’s spread filled to overflowing. Let’s eat until we push away from the table to loosen our belts!

This is what I hope to point you to, one beggar to another — not a crust of day-old bread from the bins at the mission, but a table struggling beneath the weight of fatty meats, fresh-baked breads, harvest salads, and the finest of wines. I want to point you to Christ himself, a feast for every beggar.

Come, and eat.

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POEM: It’s a Beautiful Day!

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 12:15:22 GMT

Rum-di-tum-hey! It’s a beautiful day!
See the birds taking wing on the breeze!
See the sun stare from high with his solitaire eye
Over meadows and creek beds and trees.

Hey-rumpty-drum! Here the wet west wind comes,
With it stormclouds and soggy-soaked skies.
Quick! Shelter from harm where it’s cozy and warm,
While the thunderclaps clamor outside.

Rum-dumter-ee! Makes no matter to me!
Whether cloudburst or sun’s shining ray,
I’ve got breath in me lungs, and whatever may comes,
Still I’ll say, ‘It’s a beautiful day!’

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HYMN: Coram Deo (Before the Face of God)

Josh Bishop — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:15:19 GMT

Coram Deo (Before the Face of God)

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Coram Deo (Before the Face of God)

They will see his face.
—Revelation 22:4a

Whatever good I aim to do,
Whatever evil I have done,
My honor small, my virtues few,
My sins and failures — every one —
Are lived before the face of God.
We live before the face of God.

Although it’s calm and comforting
To rest beneath God’s watchful care,
It’s still a rightly fright’ning thing
To bear in sin his wrathful stare.
We can’t escape the gaze of God.
We live before the face of God.

In this they both were glorified,
As there before the Father’s eyes
The righteous Son was crucified.
Look, you, with long-lamenting cries
And see the bloodied face of God.
See there the suff’ring face of God.

I cannot earn what Christ has done,
His sacrifice was gift for me.
Now sighting me God sees his son
And leaves my sins on Calvary.
All this is only grace from God.
We glorify this grace of God.

So when our given time has passed,
When soul and body come apart,
When at the end we breathe our last,
All those who lived in Christ take heart:
You’ll die before the face of God.
We’ll die before the face of God.

But joy will greet us with the dawn,
When, from the tomb as from our beds,
We wake to see that night has gone.
Then lifting from the grave our heads,
We’ll rise before the face of God.
We’ll rise to see the face of God.

There clothed in Christ, our sins washed white,
We’ll sing to him loud songs of praise.
To God all glory, pow’r, and might,
The King of Kings, Ancient of Days.
We’ll finally face the face of God.
All stand to praise this grace of God.