Noonday Notes

Volume 2, Issue 12

August 28th, 2026

If you’re new here, I often say my salvation story is like a country song. Within five months I turned 40, returned from treatment for depression and addiction, and left my marriage because another woman was chosen over me. Then I got saved on May 10th, 2023. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

Since then I’ve been riding a wave of joy from an ocean of grace. Like most new relationships there’s a honeymoon phase. Theoretically, I understood what Jesus did on the cross, but only recently did I feel the weight of that sacrifice, and the reality that even though I can never lose this grace, I still have battles to fight. Turns out living as a Christian in a broken world is hard. I feel naive and slightly embarrassed for just now realizing this, but perhaps I’m not alone.

I spend a lot of time reading Paul’s letters, and often with The Word, I’ll read something one day and be pierced by it another, at just the right time. Such was the case with this imperative, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2 ESV).

Not living in sin is a battle. I don’t fight to become who I am. I fight because of who I am. I fight because what has been given is worth protecting. That brings me to the garden. A year ago, we broke ground at Grace. We tilled the earth. Cut down trees. Marked out beds and grew food. If you walk out there today, before we build raised beds tomorrow, it looks like nothing was ever grown there.

The Bermuda grass has returned, but that doesn’t change what the land is. We have blessed it. We have consecrated it. We have designated it as a farm. Its purpose is to grow food and nourish our neighbors. Bermuda grass can’t take that identity away. But we still have to fight it.

Building raised beds is not giving in to the Bermuda. It’s recognizing we are still at battle and choosing a better strategy. The same is true in the Christian life. Getting saved is like the first time we break ground on a piece of land. We receive a new purpose and a new identity.

Bermuda grass is not the ultimate truth about the land. And living in a world where sin still exists is not what defines us. The land is a farm. I am in union with Christ. Neither identity is determined by what keeps trying to grow back. So we fight the Bermuda on the farm and in our hearts because both are worth protecting. We build the beds because of the land’s identity. And we fight sin because of ours. Not for victory, but from victory.

Read the rest of the newsletter here.