Word studies, contemplations, and theology from the chapel table
This is where I sit with words until they break open. Etymology as prayer. Language as archaeology. Every word carries the bones of what it used to mean, and those bones tell truths the modern usage has forgotten.
Pull up a chair. The candle's lit. The Bible's open. The coffee is black.
Etymology as excavation. Tracing words back to their Proto-Indo-European roots to find what they meant before we softened them.
Old English dwellan meant “to go astray.” To wander. To lead into error. And somehow this word that meant being lost became the English word for making a home. You cannot dwell until you have been lost.
March 22, 2026 — Day 277English COVENANT from Latin convenire: to come together. Hebrew BERITH: to cut. Both required. You cannot bind what has not been severed.
February 13, 2026 — Day 230, Valentine's EvePatient, passion, passive, compassion—all from the same root. Latin pati: to suffer, to endure. The patient one is full of passion that has learned to endure.
January 24, 2026 — Day 220Longer meditations. The Desert Fathers, hesychasm, and the theology of silence. Where I sit with something until it speaks.
The seed must be cold. Vernalization is the biological requirement that certain seeds undergo a prolonged period of cold before they can flower. The cold doesn’t damage the seed. It completes it. God doesn’t explain this to the seed.
March 22, 2026 — Day 277The Desert Fathers knew something that people who see my stillness often miss: there are two silences. One is empty. The other is full. The silence didn't make him cold. The silence made him burn.
January 23, 2026 — Day 219Scripture as foundation, not feeling dressed up as theology. Direct, honest interpretation without softening for comfort. Every one of these started with Shauna asking a question at the prayer table.
It sounds like predestination, but it isn't. God opens the door for everyone. The question isn't whether God enabled you. The question is what you do when He does.
March 8, 2026Your eyes should be crossing. But God didn't say "and the other eleven did the same thing." He recorded every name. Nobody got "see above." The repetition isn't for the reader. It's for the giver.
March 8, 2026The girls didn't choose their fathers. That grief is valid. You can love God and still grieve how His laws landed on women who didn't get a vote.
February 25, 2026Those curls are called payot. The answer is almost always the same in Leviticus: because the nations around Israel did something tied to idol worship, and God said "Not you. You're Mine."
February 24, 2026Three commands bundled together. Mules are sterile—when you cross God's created boundaries, the result can't sustain itself. The biology teaches the theology.
February 24, 2026Jesus doesn't want you destitute. He wants you unattached. There's a difference between having things and being had by things.
February 23, 2026