Soy campeón de yoyo y sé por cabeza propia que los que nos dedicamos a esto somos un poco supersticiosos y desconfiados. Personalmente, soy más desconfiado que otra cosa. Pero también sé que hay que ponerle un ojo a “ciertos detalles”.

Cuando nadie me ve, repaso cada centímetro de la cuerda, porque una vez el yoyo se me fue a la ventana.

-¡Ay qué desgracia, pero qué ocurrencia y ahora qué le digo a tu papá, ya no sé qué haceerr! -dijo mi madre.

Pero enseguida empezaron los triunfos, recuperé la autoestima y el pasado, pasado. El triunfo lo justifica todo.

Conocí a Laftan en Japón, en el campeonato 2023. Chocamos en un pasillo y dijo:

-Esto es una coincidencia significativa. Soy Laftan, Romina Laftan, y tú, ¿quién eres? -Soy Rufino. -Sígueme, Ruf -me dijo.

Y desde entonces no nos separamos: según ella, nos traería mala suerte. Por si acaso, pienso igual.

Si Laftan encuentra el reloj de mesa mirando a la pared, piensa que puede ser una señal de que “se le acaba el tiempo”. Ya me entienden.

Cada paso que da tiene un significado positivo o negativo y a veces ambos, porque a continuación matiza.

Es una leyenda. Varias veces campeona del mundo. En competición, incluso contra sus propios pronósticos, hace volar y danzar su yoyo de un modo nunca visto, y si lo hace a dos yoyos, es sublime. En la intimidad, es cariñosa y conversa con el yoyo. Confieso que al principio sentí celos.

Anoche, mientras hacíamos las maletas, se dió cuenta de que le faltaba la yoya a la que bautizó “Barbie”. Me miró espantada. Para reducir el drama, le dije:

-No me dirás que crees que eso significa que no irás a Chicago... -¿Tú lo sentiste también?

Ahora estamos en el aeropuerto para volar. Sangre fría, porque el vuelo se ha demorado, y esto va para largo. Aquí estamos.

Ella está intentando captar si esta demora “es un aviso”. Y yo, que soy desconfiado, no sé cómo, si el avión va tarde, podrá recibir en pista el adecuado mantenimiento. Así que lo mejor es permanecer cada uno en lo suyo, prácticamente sin mirarnos. Nos entendemos perfectamente, somos las dos mitades del yoyo.

You might not want ketchup on your chips after reading this…

Right then. Nineteen eighty-something, this was. I’m working at Sainsbury’s, aren’t I? Stacking shelves. Putting back all the stuff folk had grabbed off ’em during the day.

You’d traipse out the back to the warehouse, grab yourself a trolley piled up with whatever it might be spuds, bog rolls, anything, then wheel the thing out onto the shop floor and get it all up on them shelves quick as you like.

Then you’d go back and get another one. And do it again. And keep on doing it, hour after hour after bloody hour. And you couldn’t just sling it up there any old how neither. You had to dress it. Why a tin of beans needed trousering up, I never did work out.

The Grocery Manager, Maurice, he was called. Five foot two, near enough as wide as he was tall, with a face like a sheep’s arse that someone had taken the clippers to, he comes waddling over and goes: “Yow! Condiments aisle, next. Gerra move on.”

And he jabs his finger at this trolley loaded up with salts and sauces and great jars of beetroot. Heavy as sin, the thing was.

So off I went, good as gold. Keeping one eye on them beetroots the whole way, mind. I didn’t fancy one of them rolling off and turning me and half the shop floor the colour of a plum.

Made it to the pickles section. Got the pickled onions up there careful as you like, and yes, the beetroot and all. No incidents. Stacked the tubs of salt like I was building a little cathedral out of ’em. Lovely job.

Then. The ketchup.

Bottles of the stuff. Glass bottles. This was the Eighties, remember. Nobody gave a monkey’s about recycling back then. The cases — six bottles a go — were stacked two deep on my trolley.

I looked at ’em the way you’d look at a dog you didn’t quite trust. I didn’t fancy them going over neither. Nobody in their right mind wants to be paddling through a lake of sauce.

So I started stacking. Should’ve been simple enough. Get your scalpel out, slice the plastic off, slide the six-pack onto the shelf, next one, job done. Only some clever sod had mis-stacked ’em, hadn’t they.

So I had to lift a six-pack onto my trolley tray, get it ready to go up, and shift what was already on the shelf about a bit to make room.

CRASSHHHHHH!

SPPPPLLLLLAAAAATTTT!!!

The six-pack on my trolley tray made a break for it. Flung itself at the floor like it had somewhere better to be. And the floor caught it a treat. Caught it so well it smashed every last bottle to bits.

Red ketchup went everywhere. Across the floor. Up the shelving. All over my shoes. Started pooling under the trolley like something out of a horror film.

Maurice came barrelling round the corner, hit the sauce at full tilt, and sat himself down a good deal faster than he’d been planning to.

SQUELCH!!!

“AH BLOODY BOLLOCKS!!!”

Which — when you think about it — him sitting there in a spreading puddle of red… well. I’ll let you picture that one for yourselves.

“HOW the FUCK did that HAPPEN?”

“Well, you come running round the corner and—”

“NOT BLOODY ME, YOW DAFT SOD! The fucking sauce!”

“Ah. Right. Well, I had to shift everything about on the shelf and the pack slid off my tray.”

He picked himself up. Stood there dripping. Went stomping off down the aisle leaving a trail of red footprints behind him like some sort of angry, ketchup-soaked hobbit.

“Clean that UP!” 

Now then, I could eat nothing with ketchup on it for months after that. The SMELL. Oh fuck, I can smell it now just thinking about it. It was like somebody had brewed up rotten eggs and gone-off vinegar in a massive vat. And then squatted over it.

Honestly. It has got to be one of the worst smells I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Before or since.

Sixty-two mop buckets later, or thereabouts, I got rid of the evidence. Tipping them buckets of sauce-water down the drain out back was a whole other experience I could’ve done without, and all.

A hundred and sixty-two J-Cloths later, I’d got everywhere else sorted. And Nora — one of the women I worked with, lovely woman, built like a prop forward — put the finishing touches on it with about two gallons of air freshener. Sprayed it about like she was crop-dusting.

Ketchup is very nice. In small amounts. Squeezed out of a little sachet onto your burger. I do not recommend wading through it.

Or walking home with your shoes squelching sauce out of the soles with every step. Folk looking at you on the bus like you’ve murdered someone.

I got home and Mum had got tea on. Chips and fish fingers.

“Does anyone want the sauce—”

NO. NOT FOR A LONG TIME.

I broke up with her. I think she was anyway going to break up with me, but either way I broke up with her first. And it hurts really fucking bad.

I finally realized that I had to set so I’m kind of a boundary or have some concrete thing because otherwise I would never leave and it showed up in the form of her saying that even knowing how much it hurt me, she did not regret that I was recorded without my knowledge. And if she could, she would’ve wanted it to happen the same way again. I know that this is because she is probably hurt by something I said, but I went through the audio for the first time and everything I said I still standby and I do not think I said anything hurtful, so at most it was a miscommunication. They however did say stuff that I did not hear behind my back that was incredibly not OK and the fact that she does not recognize that even fundamentally recording someone in such a vulnerable state without their knowledge gave me enough to finally leave. It hurts a fucking lot, but at least I can have my head held high, because for once I broke up instead of sitting there and begging and hoping that things will change. That being said it’s still fucking hurts so much. So many little things remind me of her, and it hasn’t even been 12 hours. I find myself like at this weird in between of begging and coming to terms with it. I recognize that I need to stand on business here and fully end it. Even if she comes back and she says the right things, I think I need to be strong and begin to move on and heal. I have given her too many chances and she has said the right things before and her actions did not stay consistent with that. There are a lot of things that she has done and I need to recognize the fact that even if people can change, it is a gradual process and it will not happen nearly as fast as would be fair to me. An additionally there has been so many things that she has done that I’ve been incredibly hurtful and fucked up, and I just don’t think that she is currently at the emotional maturity level to be able to make up for those things, and so those Bridges have been burned, and that is it. It still fucking hurts me so much. It hurts that the person I love so much isn’t actually the person they are. I think I’ve gotten high on the fantasy and the hope of who they could be, and I ignored all of the many warning signs and issues. Partially because I haven’t had any relationships before, I think I just told myself that this is normal, and actually healthy. But this is not at all the love that I hoped for. And as much as I want to, I cannot love her into her changing. And I know that there will be plenty of other people out there that would treat me better and be better matches for me. I really wished that she was the one. But I think there’s a lot of different things that I missed because I blinded myself. One thing my sister mentioned was how having such a big intelligence gap in a relationship isn’t super fun, because while it is nice for the moment in the sense of me being able to teach her things and stuff, I would eventually get bored because she doesn’t have things that she can show me in the same way, and it would be a consistent relationship of me teaching her and not really too much the other way around. I think also in terms of maturity there is a big gap there. Also even like practically, she is not good with money and she also does not have any kind of a job lined up and is finishing a useless degree. Even in games she is a low rank, meaning whenever we would play together it would always be having to be me smurfing. I think it’s not that hard to find a partner that is willing to go to the gym with me, and I can even look for explicitly a gym partner if I want that. But I think more than anything else it’s just the emotional maturity. We kept having issues because her struggles with emotional regulation, and I had to walk her through so many different things like how to validate feelings, understanding how certain actions are perceived, or like how to react in certain situations, and there are just so many different issues there where it feels like I have to baby her or teach her simple stuff. There is going to be some partner out there that is smart, funny, successful, kind, open-minded, and most of all closer to me in terms of maturity. And I think it would be a little bit of the best for me to not right now try to search for that. Just focus on being happy again and healing.

Your future is your neighbor.

So I got sick. My throat started aching, my voice disappeared, and the fever was kicking in. Around 8 PM, pretty delirious, I texted my neighbor on the 2nd floor asking if she had any ibuprofen because I had run out. Five minutes later, I was medicated and pampered with freshly baked cake. At this point, we’re basically each other’s pharmacies. Medication is the main thing we usually trade, but honestly, the list is endless.

The other day, she asked me about my leg‑hair removal and where I get it done. So I told her I have the Philips laser machine at home and, by the way, why doesn’t she try it? Oh no, don’t waste money on a clinic; try my Lumea first. All of this exchanged casually in the hallway, as always.

Across the hall lives my neighbor with her 9 yo son and Juanita, a Colombian au pair who helps take care of him part time. Since she’s German and the boy's father is South American, having someone from Colombia at home helps keep the language alive. When they go skiing or to the beach on vacation, the au pair takes the opportunity to visit her family, and I get to water the plants inside or on the terrace. They always come back with the best vegan treats for me.

I only recently learned that my neighbor Evri does nails super well, and she loves doing it. I’m grateful, because doing my own nails was a disaster every time. Now I just pop over while the dogs go wild, and instead of spending out 60 euros at a studio, I treat us to whatever dinner she’s craving. Girls date, win-win.

It feels like a past life, but I still remember my first address in Vienna. I moved to the 8th district, freshly arrived from São Paulo. One day, my neighbor knocked on my door to say he’d noticed me moving in the week before, and wanted me to know he was there if I needed anything. Door 25, feel free to ring anytime. Sounds small, but just knowing someone nearby cared, even in the back of my mind, was comforting.

Truth is, I moved to Austria with nothing but two suitcases. I didn’t own a bowl. Or a fork. It was a full life reset: sixty square meters of pure, echoing emptiness. Not a single familiar object to warm the place up, everything that carried any emotional value stayed behind. A few weeks after I arrived COVID hit. So now I was in an almost empty apartment, suddenly working remotely, not knowing anyone but my cousins living in the 19th district and because I’m excellent at prioritizing in a crisis, what did I do? Yes, exactly that, I bought a Yamaha Clavinova. In a week when other people were panic buying toilet paper, I was panic buying a pianino.
Call it intuition or survival instinct, but that probably kept me from spiraling into a full blown depression in the months that followed. I'd play for hours every day.

Out of nowhere one day, my hallway neighbor, an old man between 80 and immortal, who had spent weeks avoiding any interaction with me, and at the peak of the paranoia even brought a complaint to the house management that I was leaving home “too much” (It was 1x a day, to run), and that by leaving my pair of shoes in the corridor I was risking to bring the virus to him, suddenly opens his door as soon as he heard me leaving.

He kept his distance to avoid any unwanted entanglement and asked if I was the one playing the piano in the “late afternoon.” I answered very dryly “Yes”, because I was fully prepared for the lecture. But instead, he told me it was very beautiful and asked what the “piece” was called. I told him it was “La valse d’Amélie” by Yann Tiersen.

That day, affection somehow won over fear. And because he had turned our differences into curiosity, and his cautiousness, for the first time, into some sort of sympathy, I took the chance to explain that I’d be running like a hamster around Hamerlingpark at night, not meeting anyone, just doing what I needed to keep my mental health intact. He smiled, and with a tiny hand wave, gave me the longest and most reassuring “Paaaasst” of my life.

What I am trying to say is that community resilience shapes individual resilience. And we can’t build a strong future in a socially or emotionally weak neighborhood. As much as we try to project our wildest plans and future accomplishments, the truth is: your future self isn’t some stranger, just a slightly evolved version of who you already are today.

/feb26

There is a particular conversational move that has become common in discussions about AI. Someone demonstrates a new capability, shares a use case, or describes how their workflow has changed, and a familiar response arrives. What about security? What about governance? What about the hallucination problem? What about my twenty years of experience? Each objection arrives wearing the costume of legitimate concern, and each one contains enough truth to feel reasonable in the moment. But taken together, they form something that looks less like careful analysis and more like a defence mechanism.

The pattern is whataboutism in its textbook form. The term originates from Cold War-era Soviet diplomacy, where officials would deflect criticism of human rights abuses by pointing to racial violence in America. The rhetorical structure was never designed to resolve the original issue. It existed to neutralise it. To shift the frame from “is this true” to “but what about that other thing,” and in doing so, to ensure that neither question ever gets properly answered. The AI version of this runs on similar fuel, though the people doing it are rarely aware they’re doing it at all.

The objections are correct and that is beside the point

The uncomfortable thing about AI whataboutism is that the concerns are mostly valid. AI security is genuinely underdeveloped, particularly around Model Context Protocol implementations, where the attack surface is wide and poorly understood. Governance frameworks in most organisations range from nonexistent to laughably outdated. Hallucinations remain a structural feature of large language models, a byproduct of how they generate text rather than a bug that some future update will fix. And twenty years of domain expertise does contain knowledge that no model can replicate, particularly the kind of tacit understanding that comes from watching things break in production over and over again until you develop an instinct for where the next failure will come from.

So all are true, but none is the point.

The point is that these objections are being deployed not as calls to action but as reasons for inaction. There is a significant difference between “AI has security vulnerabilities, so we need to build better guardrails while we adopt it” and “AI has security vulnerabilities, so we’ll wait.” The first is engineering. The second is avoidance dressed up as prudence.

Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, first published in 1957, describes exactly what’s happening. When a person holds a belief about themselves (I am an expert, my skills are valuable, my experience matters) and encounters information that threatens that belief (this technology can do significant parts of my job faster and cheaper than I can), the resulting psychological discomfort has to go somewhere. Festinger identified three common escape routes for that discomfort. You can avoid the contradictory information entirely, you can delegitimise its source, or you can minimise its importance by focusing on its flaws. AI whataboutism is all three at once, packaged as due diligence.

The sunk cost

Samuelson and Zeckhauser’s work on status quo bias adds another layer here that is worth sitting with. Their 1988 paper demonstrated that people disproportionately prefer the current state of affairs, even when alternatives are measurably better, and that this preference strengthens as the number of available options increases. The mechanism underneath isn’t stupidity or laziness. It is loss aversion applied to identity.

When you have spent fifteen or twenty years building expertise in a specific domain, that expertise becomes part of how you understand yourself. It is the thing that justifies your salary, your title, your seat at the table. The suggestion that a tool might compress the value of that expertise, or redistribute it, or make parts of it accessible to people who didn’t put in the same years and hard yards, triggers something that feels like an attack even when it isn’t one. The natural response is to find reasons why the tool can’t possibly do what it appears to be doing. And conveniently, AI provides an inexhaustible supply of such reasons, because it is, in fact, imperfect.

The trap is that imperfect doesn’t mean useless. Imperfect is the condition of every tool that has ever existed. The first commercial aircraft couldn’t fly in bad weather. The early internet went down constantly. Mobile phones in the 1990s weighed a kilogram and dropped calls in buildings. Nobody looked at any of those technologies and concluded that the smart move was to wait until they were perfect before learning how they worked.

Yet that is precisely the position many experienced professionals are taking with AI, and the whataboutism provides them with just enough intellectual cover to feel like they’re being rigorous and righteous rather than scared.

The velocity problem

What makes this particular round of technological change different from previous ones, and what makes the coping mechanisms around it more dangerous than usual, is the speed.

Previous disruptions gave people time to adjust. The internet took roughly a decade to move from novelty to necessity for most businesses. Cloud computing crept in over years, first as a weird thing Amazon was doing with spare server capacity, then gradually as the default. Even mobile took the better part of five years to go from “we should probably have an app” to “our mobile experience is our primary channel.”

AI is not operating on that timeline. The gap between GPT-3 and GPT-4 was measured in months. The capabilities that seemed like science fiction in 2023 are baseline features in 2026. Agentic systems that were theoretical eighteen months ago are shipping in production today. The window in which “wait and see” was a defensible strategy has already closed for most knowledge work, and many of the people deploying whataboutism as a delaying tactic are burning through competitive advantage while they debate whether the fire is hot enough to worry about.

This is where the coping mechanism becomes actively harmful rather than merely unproductive. If the pace of change were slower, there would be time for the concerns to be addressed sequentially. Fix the security model, then adopt. Build the governance framework, then deploy. But the pace doesn’t allow for sequential anything. The security model has to be built while adopting. The governance framework has to be designed while deploying. The two activities are not opposed to each other, and treating them as an either-or is itself a form of denial.

What experience is actually worth now

The most pernicious form of AI whataboutism is the appeal to experience, because it contains the highest concentration of legitimate truth mixed with self-serving reasoning.

Experience matters enormously. The question is which parts of it matter, and for what. The parts that involve pattern recognition accumulated over decades of watching projects succeed and fail, the ability to smell trouble before it shows up in a status report, the judgment to know when a technically correct answer is practically wrong, those parts matter more than ever in a world where AI can generate plausible output at speed. What AI cannot do is evaluate whether the output is appropriate for the specific context, the specific client, and the specific political dynamics of a given organisation. That evaluation requires exactly the kind of accumulated wisdom that experienced people possess.

But the parts of experience that involve doing the work that AI can now do faster, the manual production, the research grunt work, the first-draft generation, the template building, those parts are depreciating rapidly. And for many experienced professionals, the manual production was the majority of how they spent their time, which means the shift feels existential. AI is also moving up the value chain, much as Chinese manufacturing moved from cheap toys to highly complex electronics. This creates a kind of creeping dread that even our most valued, intangible skills will also eventually be under threat.

The whataboutism around experience is often an attempt to avoid this sorting exercise entirely. Rather than doing the difficult work of figuring out which parts of twenty years of expertise are now more valuable and which parts need to be released, it is easier to treat the entire bundle as sacred and dismiss the technology that requires the unbundling.

The way out is through the discomfort

Cognitive dissonance resolves in one of two directions. You can change your beliefs to match the new information, which is uncomfortable but productive. Or you can distort the information to match your existing beliefs, which is comfortable and eventually catastrophic. Whataboutism is the distortion path, and the longer you walk down it, the harder it becomes to turn around, because every objection you’ve raised becomes part of the identity you’re now defending.

The alternative isn’t to abandon caution. It is to be honest about the difference between caution that leads to better decisions and caution that functions as a socially acceptable way to avoid making decisions at all. Build the governance framework, but build it while experimenting, not instead of experimenting. Raise the security concerns, but raise them in the context of “how do we solve this”, rather than “this proves we should wait.” Lean on your experience, but do the honest accounting of which parts of that experience the world still needs and which parts you’re holding onto because letting go feels like losing a piece of yourself.

The concerns are all valid. The coping mechanisms aren’t.

The gospel is the heart of Christianity, proclaiming the transformative work of God through Jesus Christ to reconcile humanity with Himself. It is the message of hope, grace, and redemption for a broken world.

1. God’s Holiness and Humanity’s Sin

Core Truth: God is perfectly holy, while humanity is separated from Him by sin.

God is the Creator of all things, characterized by absolute holiness and righteousness. He designed humanity in His image for a relationship of love and obedience (Genesis 1:26-27; Isaiah 6:3). However, every person has sinned by rebelling against God’s perfect standard, choosing self over Him (Romans 3:23). This sin creates an unbridgeable chasm, separating us from God’s presence and leaving us under His righteous judgment (Isaiah 59:2). This is not an abstract theological problem — it is the weight behind every restless night, every unshakable guilt, and every quiet sense that something is deeply wrong. Without intervention, we are spiritually lost, incapable of restoring this relationship on our own.

• Key Scriptures:
  • Isaiah 6:3 – God’s holiness is exalted.
  • Genesis 1:26-27 – Humanity’s creation in God’s image.
  • Romans 3:23 – All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.
  • Isaiah 59:2 – Sin separates us from God.

2. Jesus’ Perfect Life and Sacrificial Death

Core Truth: Jesus, fully God and fully man, bridges the gap through His sinless life and atoning death.

Because humanity cannot overcome sin, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to accomplish what we could not. Jesus lived a flawless life, fulfilling God’s law perfectly (2 Corinthians 5:21). In love, He willingly died on the cross, taking the punishment for our sins as our substitute (Romans 5:8). His death satisfied God’s justice (1 Peter 3:18), securing forgiveness and reconciliation for all whom God draws to Himself (John 6:37). This act of grace demonstrates God’s profound love and mercy, providing the only way to restore our relationship with Him. Whatever you have done, whatever has been done to you, the cross speaks into the deepest wounds and the darkest corners of your story.

• Key Scriptures:
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21 – Jesus became sin for us.
  • Romans 5:8 – God’s love is shown through Christ’s death.
  • 1 Peter 3:18 – Christ suffered once for sins to bring us to God.
  • John 6:37 – All the Father gives to Christ will come, and none will be cast out.

3. Salvation by Grace Through Faith

Core Truth: Salvation is a free gift received through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

The gospel declares that salvation cannot be earned through good deeds, moral effort, or religious rituals (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is God's gracious gift, offered freely to all who trust in Jesus as their Savior and Lord (John 3:16). Faith is more than intellectual agreement; it is a wholehearted reliance on Christ's finished work on the cross, marked by genuine repentance — a turning away from sin and toward God with a humble heart (Mark 1:15). By trusting in Him, we receive forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a restored relationship with God (Acts 4:12). You do not need to clean yourself up first — Christ draws you to Himself and by His Spirit begins the work of making you new.

• Key Scriptures:
  • Ephesians 2:8-9 – Saved by grace through faith, not by works.
  • John 3:16 – Belief in Jesus brings eternal life.
  • Mark 1:15 – Repent and believe the good news.
  • Acts 4:12 – Salvation is found in no one else.

4. The Purpose of Salvation: Glorifying God

Core Truth: Salvation transforms our purpose, freeing us to live for God’s glory and enjoy Him forever.

Salvation is not merely about personal benefit but about redirecting our lives to honor God. As redeemed people, our ultimate purpose is to glorify God in all we do, reflecting His love, truth, and goodness (1 Corinthians 10:31). This new life involves growing in Christlikeness, pursuing holiness, and shining as a light to others (Matthew 5:16). Salvation reorients our desires, leading us to find true joy in knowing and serving God (Romans 12:1-2).

• Key Scriptures:
  • 1 Corinthians 10:31 – Do all for the glory of God.
  • Romans 12:1-2 – Offer your life as a living sacrifice.
  • Matthew 5:16 – Let your light shine to glorify God.

5. God’s Ongoing Work: Sanctification

Core Truth: God initiates, sustains, and will complete our salvation through a lifelong process.

Salvation is not just a one-time event but the beginning of a journey. The God who calls us to Himself provides the faith to believe and empowers us to grow in holiness—a process called sanctification (Philippians 1:6). Through the Holy Spirit, He transforms us to reflect Christ’s character, enabling us to turn from sin and embrace righteousness (Romans 8:29-30). This lifelong work assures believers of God’s faithfulness to keep and guide them to the end (John 10:27-28). On the days when your faith feels weak and your failures feel loud, remember that your standing before God rests on Christ's faithfulness, not yours.

• Key Scriptures:
  • Philippians 1:6 – God completes the work He begins in us.
  • Romans 8:29-30 – God’s plan is to conform us to Christ’s image.
  • John 10:27-28 – Christ’s sheep are eternally secure in His hand.

6. Sharing the Gospel: The Great Commission

Core Truth: Christians are called to share the good news as God’s ambassadors.

The gospel is not meant to be kept private but shared with the world. God invites every believer to participate in His mission by proclaiming the good news of Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20). As ambassadors, we represent Christ, sharing His message of reconciliation through our words, actions, and transformed lives (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). This calling, known as the Great Commission, is both a privilege and a responsibility, empowering us to bring the hope of the gospel to a broken world (Mark 16:15).

• Key Scriptures:
  • 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – We are ambassadors for Christ.
  • Matthew 28:19-20 – Go and make disciples of all nations.
  • Mark 16:15 – Proclaim the gospel to all creation.

The Power and Promise of the Gospel

The gospel is “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16), offering hope to all who believe. It reveals God’s character, addresses humanity’s deepest need, and provides a purpose that transcends this life. By embracing the gospel, we are not only reconciled with God but are also invited into His mission to redeem and restore the world. If you find yourself drawn to this message — stirred by a longing for God you cannot explain — take heart. That very desire is evidence of His work in you, for no one seeks God apart from His calling (John 6:44). Before the foundation of the world, He set His love on a people for Himself (Ephesians 1:4), and the hunger you feel is His Spirit drawing you home (John 6:65).

This living relationship with God is the very point of our existence, giving us both an unshakeable hope for tomorrow and a profound answer for how to live today. For tomorrow, it offers the certainty of eternal life—the unbreakable promise that we will be with Him forever in a place without sorrow or pain. This future hope gives us the courage to face hardship, knowing that our present struggles are temporary and our ultimate victory is secure.

For today, knowing God provides the strength to endure, the wisdom to navigate complexity, and a peace that anchors us in the midst of life's storms. Our purpose is no longer found in fleeting achievements but in a daily walk with Him, turning our work, our relationships, and even our challenges into acts of worship. He gives our present reality ultimate meaning, transforming our ordinary lives into an extraordinary offering of love, service, and unshakable joy.

If you are looking for a church — or looking to come back to one — here are some things worth considering: How to Find a Faithful Church. You were not meant to walk this road alone, and God ordinarily works through the gathering of His people to strengthen and sustain the faith He gives.

Finding a good church matters. The Christian life was never meant to be lived alone. God saves individuals, but He saves them into a body — a community of Christ's people who gather around His Word, receive His sacraments, and hold one another accountable in love. The church is not an optional add-on to the faith; it is the ordinary means God uses to grow and sustain His people.

But not every church that calls itself a church is faithful to what Scripture teaches. So how do you tell the difference? Here are some things to look for — and a few things to watch out for.

1. The Bible Is the Authority, Not the Pastor's Personality

A faithful church treats Scripture as the final word on all matters of faith and life. The preaching should open the Bible, explain what it says, and apply it to the congregation — not use a verse or two as a springboard for the pastor's opinions or motivational talks. Look for expository preaching that works through books of the Bible and lets the text set the agenda (2 Timothy 4:2). If the sermons could work just as well without the Bible, that is a problem.

2. The Gospel Is Clearly Proclaimed

The gospel — the good news that sinners are reconciled to God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ — should be the heartbeat of everything the church does. Not moralism. Not self-help. Not vague spirituality. The cross and the empty tomb should shape the preaching, the prayers, the songs, and the sacraments. A church that drifts from the gospel has drifted from the point (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

3. The Sacraments Are Practiced

Christ gave His church two sacraments: baptism and the Lord's Supper. A faithful church practices both regularly and takes them seriously as means of grace — not mere rituals or symbolic gestures, but real instruments through which God strengthens the faith of His people (Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). If a church rarely celebrates the Lord's Supper or treats baptism casually, ask why.

4. There Is Real Church Government

The New Testament does not envision a church run by a single charismatic leader with no accountability. Faithful churches have a plurality of elders who shepherd the congregation, teach sound doctrine, and are themselves accountable to one another and to a broader body (Titus 1:5-9; Acts 20:28). Whether the structure is presbyterian, reformed baptist, or another form with meaningful elder oversight, the key is accountability. If one person makes all the decisions and answers to no one, be cautious.

5. Church Discipline Exists

This one may sound harsh, but it is actually a mark of love. A church that never confronts sin in its members is a church that does not care enough to protect them. Church discipline, practiced according to the pattern Jesus laid out in Matthew 18:15-17, is about restoration — calling wandering sheep back before they destroy themselves. A church that practices it carefully and humbly is a church that takes holiness and the wellbeing of its members seriously.

6. The Congregation Is Expected to Grow, Not Just Attend

A faithful church calls its members to more than showing up on Sundays. It provides opportunities for Bible study, prayer, and genuine fellowship. It expects its people to serve one another, to use their gifts, and to grow in their knowledge of God over time (Hebrews 10:24-25). If a church asks nothing of you beyond attendance and a check, it is not asking enough.

7. The Worship Is God-Centered, Not Experience-Centered

Worship is about God — who He is, what He has done, and what He has promised. A faithful church gathers to praise Him, hear from Him through His Word, respond in prayer and song, and receive His grace through the sacraments. The question to ask is not “did I enjoy the experience?” but “was God honored and His Word faithfully proclaimed?” (John 4:24). Be wary of churches where the atmosphere feels more like a concert or a performance than a congregation gathered before a holy God.

8. There Is a Confession or Statement of Faith

A church should be able to tell you what it believes — clearly, specifically, and in writing. Historic Reformed confessions like the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, or the London Baptist Confession provide a tested and proven framework that ties a church to the broader Christian tradition and guards against doctrinal drift. If a church cannot clearly articulate what it believes or dismisses creeds and confessions as unnecessary, there is little to hold it to the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).

A Few Honest Cautions

No church is perfect. You will not find a congregation without flaws, frustrations, or people who sometimes let you down. That is not a reason to stay home — it is actually the point. The church is a gathering of sinners who are being sanctified together, not a collection of people who have arrived. If you wait for the perfect church, you will wait forever and miss what God intends to give you through the imperfect one down the road.

At the same time, do not settle for a church that makes you comfortable but leaves you unchallenged. A good church will step on your toes occasionally. It will tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear. That is not a bug — it is a feature.

If you are coming from a church that hurt you, or if you have never been part of a church at all, the idea of walking through those doors can feel overwhelming. That is understandable. But God uses the ordinary, sometimes messy, gathering of His people to do extraordinary work in the lives of those who show up. Find a faithful church, commit to it, and let God do what He does best — shape you into the image of His Son alongside others who are on the same road.

Where to Start Looking

You may have noticed that I have purposefully avoided pointing toward a specific denomination or church, with the prayer that the Lord would use this page as a starting point for conversation between you and a local congregation. That said, if you are not sure where to begin, here are three confessionally Reformed Presbyterian denominations that hold to the Westminster Standards and take the marks of a faithful church seriously. Each has a church locator to help you find a congregation near you:

• Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) — Find a Church
• Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) — Church Directory
• Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARPC) — Find a Church
• Reformed Church in the US (RCUS) – Find a Church

These are not the only faithful churches out there, but they are a solid place to start. Visit, ask questions, sit under the preaching, and see if the marks described above are present. A good church will welcome your scrutiny — they have nothing to hide.

Você esta oficialmente proibida de me escrever qualquer coisa que tenha mais de 7 linhas.

Meu bem, hoje quando acordei eu pensei em você.

Acho que isso já virou habito, tem dias que antes mesmo de abrir os meus olhos eu já começo a lembrar dos seus.

Mas mesmo acordando pensando em você, mesmo já bolando planos de como falaria com você nas entrelinhas hoje, antes mesmo de sair da cama, eu NUNCA imaginaria que eu terminaria a noite trancado no banheiro do restaurante chorando.

Precisei ir para o andar de cima (já que lá só abre quando tem eventos) e me alojar lá, pois estava chorando de soluçar, o que definitivamente é algo inédito pra mim, e fiquei com medo de alguém escutar...

Então definitivamente, você esta proibida de me escrever qualquer coisa com mais de 7 linhas para o resto da vida.

Meu bem..

Enquanto digito isso ainda estou no restaurante, vim para o escritório e estou piscando freneticamente para impedir que as lagrimas voltem.

O que quero dizer com isso é que eu não tive tempo hábil pra conseguir processar tudo e escrever algo que faça mais sentido.

Mas não consigo esperar chegar em casa porque sei que por ligação conseguirei organizar e pensar menos ainda nas coisas.

O seu texto foi uma das coisas mais bonitas que ja li, senti seu amor em cada palavra e por isso chorei como se fosse aquele menino que voce conheceu.

Não vou me estender pois preciso arrumar as minhas coisas para ir embora.

Só queria te falar 3 coisas.

Te amo, amo com tudo que tenho.

Também não estou pronto para deixar a nossa casa.

Você citou o seu filme, eu ainda não assiste ele todo, mas andei dando uma olhada e tem um trecho dele que eu gostaria de citar:

“Katie, está cometendo um grande erro.

Olhe, se rejeita-lo agora… A grande missão da vida dele será encontrar a garota mais linda e perfeita do mundo e tentar esquecer você.

Ele vai se casar com essa mulher e passar o resto da vida com ela. E dirá a si mesmo que ela é perfeita e que ele tem que ser feliz. Mas ela não é você…”

Você não pode me prometer que vai ficar…

Mas eu também não posso te dizer que não irei te esperar, porque cada átomo do meu corpo grita que é exatamente isso que vai acontecer caso um dia eu “siga em frente”.

Ps: “E se precisar me despedir de você até o fim da vida, para nunca te dizer adeus, assim o farei.”, não fazia parte do poema, eu escrevi porque faz parte de mim, e se hoje de alguma forma isso faz parte de você também, então meu coração já se alegra.

Te amo, minha escritora.

Do seu menino chorão,

Nathan.

In February 2024, Reddit filed for an initial public offering and simultaneously announced a deal worth approximately $60 million per year granting Google access to its vast archive of user-generated conversations for the purpose of training artificial intelligence models. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman captured an emerging paradox of the digital age: “The source of artificial intelligence is actual intelligence. That's what you find on Reddit.” Within months, Reddit struck a similar arrangement with OpenAI, reportedly valued at around $70 million annually. In its IPO prospectus, Reddit disclosed that data licensing arrangements signed in January 2024 alone carried an aggregate contract value of $203 million over two to three years. The company's first earnings report as a public entity showed a 450 per cent year-over-year increase in non-advertising revenue, driven almost entirely by those licensing agreements.

Something strange had happened. A platform built on the unpaid contributions of millions of anonymous users had discovered that the messy, argumentative, sometimes brilliant, often profane corpus of human conversation it had accumulated over nearly two decades was now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Not because advertisers wanted it. Because the machines needed it.

This is the paradox at the heart of artificial intelligence in 2026. AI systems can generate infinite synthetic content, flooding the internet with text, images, video and audio at a pace that dwarfs human output. Yet the data those systems need most, the human-created information that grounds their training and prevents their degradation, is becoming scarcer and more precious by the month. The implications for personal privacy and data rights are profound, unsettling, and largely unresolved.

The Photocopier Problem

In July 2024, a team of researchers led by Ilia Shumailov at the University of Oxford published a landmark paper in Nature demonstrating what happens when AI models train on the outputs of other AI models. The phenomenon, which the researchers termed “model collapse,” showed that large language models, variational autoencoders, and Gaussian mixture models all degrade when successive generations are trained on content produced by their predecessors. The tails of the original data distribution vanish first, eliminating rare events and minority perspectives. Eventually, the model's output bears little resemblance to the distribution of the real world it was supposed to represent.

Nicolas Papernot, an assistant professor of computer engineering at the University of Toronto and a co-author of the study, offered a vivid analogy. “A good analogy for this is when you take a photocopy of a piece of paper, and then you photocopy the photocopy,” he told the University of Toronto News. “Eventually, if you repeat that process many, many times, you will lose most of what was contained in that original piece of paper.” The research, published with collaborators from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and Imperial College London, found that training on AI-generated data not only degrades quality but further encodes the biases and errors already present in the training pipeline. Papernot warned that the findings “cast doubt on predictions that the current pace of development in LLM technology will continue unabated.” The paper received over 500 citations and an Altmetric attention score exceeding 3,600, reflecting the urgency with which the research community received its conclusions.

The timing of this discovery was particularly significant. By April 2025, a study by the SEO research firm Ahrefs, analysing 900,000 newly created web pages, found that 74 per cent contained AI-generated content. A separate analysis by the SEO firm Graphite, reported by Axios in May 2025, found that the share of newly published articles written by AI had reached approximately 52 per cent. Google search results containing AI-written pages climbed from 11 per cent in May 2024 to nearly 20 per cent by July 2025, according to an ongoing study by Originality.ai. An arXiv research paper from March 2025 estimated that at least 30 per cent of text on active web pages originates from AI-generated sources, with the actual proportion likely approaching 40 per cent. The internet is rapidly filling up with machine-generated text, and every drop of it threatens to contaminate the training pipelines of next-generation AI models.

This creates a vicious feedback loop. As AI-generated content proliferates, the proportion of authentic human-created data in any given web scrape declines. Models trained on this increasingly synthetic web produce outputs further removed from genuine human expression, which then get published and scraped again. Researchers at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) in 2025 found that this “strong model collapse” cannot generally be mitigated by simple data weighting adjustments. A separate paper at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in 2024 revealed that as synthetic data grows in training datasets, the traditional scaling laws that have driven AI progress begin to break down entirely.

The upshot is stark. The most valuable commodity in the AI economy is no longer processing power or algorithmic innovation. It is authentic, verified, human-generated data. And that realisation has set off a global scramble with enormous consequences for anyone who has ever posted, typed, spoken, or created anything online.

The Great Data Land Grab

The race to secure human data has produced a wave of licensing agreements that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago. The Associated Press was among the first major publishers to sign a deal with OpenAI in July 2023, granting access to its news archive dating back to 1985. Google struck its first AI content licensing agreement with the AP in January 2025. The Financial Times signed a content licensing deal with OpenAI in April 2024. News Corp agreed to a multi-year arrangement reportedly worth up to $250 million over five years. Conde Nast and Time also entered agreements. By early 2025, the wave had reached The Guardian, The Washington Post, Axios, and the Norwegian publisher Schibsted Media.

These deals represent a fundamental shift in the economics of content creation. For decades, digital publishers watched their revenues erode as platforms aggregated their content and captured the advertising value. Now, the same dynamic is playing out again, but with a new twist: the platforms are not just displaying human content to attract eyeballs. They are consuming it to build intelligence. And this time, at least some publishers are negotiating payment.

But the deals also expose a deeper asymmetry. The individuals who actually created the content receive nothing directly. The Reddit users whose posts are now worth $60 million a year to Google, the journalists whose reporting trains ChatGPT, the photographers whose images teach image generators to see, are not party to any of these agreements. Huffman himself acknowledged this tension in a 2024 interview with Fast Company: “As more content on the internet is written by machines, there's an increasing premium on content that comes from real people.” Reddit, he noted, has “nearly two decades of authentic conversation” and more than 16 billion comments. The premium is real. The compensation flows to the platform, not to the people who made the platform valuable.

Reddit has also aggressively defended its data from unauthorised extraction. After years of being “scraped every which way,” as Huffman put it, the company updated its robots.txt file in July 2024 to block all web crawlers except Google. Huffman publicly accused Microsoft of training its AI services on Reddit data “without telling us,” and named Anthropic and Perplexity as companies that had also trained their systems using Reddit content without permission. In late 2025, Reddit filed lawsuits against Perplexity AI and Anthropic. The company has since proposed a “dynamic pricing” model for its data, seeking compensation that increases as its content becomes more essential to AI-generated answers, rather than accepting fixed licensing fees.

This dynamic echoes a framework articulated by Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard Business School professor emerita whose 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism described the extraction of human behavioural data as the defining feature of the digital economy. Zuboff argued that technology companies had claimed “human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” The AI training data economy takes this logic and intensifies it. Where surveillance capitalism extracted behavioural surplus from user interactions to predict future actions, the new data economy extracts the creative and intellectual output itself, using it not merely to predict behaviour but to replicate and replace the capabilities of its creators.

When Deletion Becomes Impossible

The rising value of human data collides directly with one of the foundational principles of modern privacy law: the right to be forgotten. Under Article 17 of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, individuals have the right to request the erasure of their personal data. California's landmark AB 1008, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2024 and effective from January 2025, went further still, amending the California Consumer Privacy Act to specify that personal information can exist in “abstract digital formats,” including “artificial intelligence systems that are capable of outputting personal information.” Under this law, consumers have the right to access, delete, correct, and restrict the sale of personal data contained within trained AI systems, including data encoded in tokens or model weights. California also passed SB 1223 alongside AB 1008, introducing neural data as a category of sensitive personal information subject to even stricter protections.

The problem is that complying with these rights is, at present, somewhere between extraordinarily difficult and functionally impossible. AI models do not store information in discrete, retrievable entries the way a database does. Once personal data has been absorbed into a model's parameters through the training process, it is distributed across billions of numerical weights in ways that cannot be straightforwardly traced or extracted. Personal data can appear in multiple layers of the AI stack: raw training datasets, tokenised text, embeddings, model checkpoints, and fine-tuned weights. As one expert quoted by MIT Technology Review observed, “You can assume that any large-scale web-scraped data always contains content that shouldn't be there.”

The European Data Protection Board acknowledged this challenge in a January 2025 technical report, stating that the right to erasure requires reversing the “memorisation of personal data by the model,” involving deletion of both “the personal data used as input for training” and “the influence of that data on the model.” The Board has made the right to erasure an enforcement priority for 2025, with 32 Data Protection Authorities across Europe participating in coordinated investigations.

The emerging field of “machine unlearning” attempts to address this gap, but the technology remains immature. Exact unlearning methods, such as the SISA framework, require partitioning training datasets and retraining from earlier checkpoints. Approximate methods aim to selectively remove the influence of specific data points without full retraining. But there is no universally accepted standard for verifying whether unlearning has been effective. As a November 2025 research paper from the Centre for Emerging Policy noted, machine unlearning methods “have been there for several years but have not been put into industry practice, which reflects the immaturity of this stream of methods.” Engineers acknowledge that the only truly reliable method of removing an individual's data from a model is to retrain it from scratch, a process costing millions of dollars and weeks of computation time for frontier models.

The practical reality in 2026 is that the right to erasure operates primarily at the input and output layers, not within the model itself. Companies can delete source training data and implement output filters to prevent models from generating specific personal information. But the influence of that data on the model's learned parameters persists. The Hamburg Data Protection Authority has argued that large language models do not store personal data in a way that triggers data protection obligations. Other authorities disagree sharply. The GDPR itself contains exceptions that further complicate compliance, allowing companies to deny erasure requests on grounds including archiving in the public interest and scientific research, providing potential justification for retaining training data even when individuals demand its removal.

For individuals, the implications are deeply concerning. The more valuable human data becomes, the greater the incentive for companies to acquire, retain, and resist deleting it. And the technical architecture of modern AI makes meaningful erasure a problem that legal frameworks have not yet solved.

Synthetic Abundance and Its Discontents

The mirror image of human data scarcity is synthetic data abundance. The synthetic data generation market, valued at approximately $400 million to $500 million in 2025 according to Mordor Intelligence and Grand View Research, is projected to reach between $2 billion and $9 billion by the end of the decade, with growth rates ranging from 25 to 46 per cent annually. In March 2025, NVIDIA acquired the synthetic data startup Gretel for more than $320 million, integrating its privacy-preserving data generation platform into its AI development tools. Gretel's technology allows organisations to generate realistic datasets that retain the statistical properties of real-world data while ensuring no actual personal information is disclosed.

The appeal of synthetic data for privacy is obvious. If AI models can be trained on data that was never derived from real individuals, many of the thorniest privacy and consent problems simply evaporate. The EU AI Act, fully applicable from 2 August 2026, explicitly establishes a hierarchy in which synthetic and anonymised data should be used before processing sensitive personal data. Article 10(5) specifies that providers of high-risk AI systems may only process special categories of personal data for bias detection and correction if the goal “cannot be effectively fulfilled by processing synthetic or anonymised data.”

Yet synthetic data brings its own considerable risks. The model collapse research demonstrates that over-reliance on synthetic training data degrades model quality over successive generations. Gartner has predicted that by 2027, 60 per cent of data and analytics leaders will face critical failures in managing synthetic data, risking AI governance, model accuracy, and compliance. Synthetic data may be privacy-preserving in principle, but it is not a substitute for the diversity, unpredictability, and grounding in lived experience that human-generated data provides.

The Epoch AI research group has documented the scale of the problem. The total effective stock of human-generated public text data amounts to roughly 300 trillion tokens, with an 80 per cent confidence interval suggesting this stock will be fully utilised for AI training sometime between 2028 and 2032. Pablo Villalobos, lead author of Epoch's study “Will we run out of data? Limits of LLM scaling based on human-generated data,” has acknowledged that “some relatively small but very high-quality sources have not been tapped yet,” including digitised documents in libraries, but warned that dwindling reserves “might not be enough” to postpone the issue significantly. OpenAI researchers have confirmed that during the development of GPT-4.5, a shortage of fresh data was more of a constraint than a lack of computing power.

The scarcity of human data and the abundance of synthetic data create a peculiar economic inversion. In the data broker market, valued at $303 billion to $333 billion in 2025, the average cost of personal data for an individual aged 18 to 25 is just $0.36, according to VPNCentral. For those over 55, it falls to $0.05. These figures reflect the commoditised value of personal data in the advertising economy. But in the AI training economy, the same human data takes on an entirely different character. It is not purchased per record from a broker. It is licensed in bulk, for millions of dollars, from platforms that aggregated it. The value of your data is simultaneously trivial and enormous. You are paid for neither.

The Question of Data Dignity

This asymmetry has revived interest in a concept first articulated by Jaron Lanier and E. Glen Weyl in their 2018 Harvard Business Review essay “A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society.” Lanier and Weyl proposed the idea of “data dignity,” arguing that data generated through interactions with digital systems constitutes a form of labour that should be compensated. They envisioned organisations called “mediators of individual data,” or MIDs, functioning as unions for data contributors. These MIDs would negotiate collectively with technology companies over access, usage, and royalties.

The concept remained largely theoretical until generative AI made the exploitation of human creative output visible at an industrial scale. Artists, writers, musicians, and photographers discovered that their work had been scraped from the internet and fed into training datasets without consent or compensation. Reddit users learned their posts were training chatbots. Authors found their books in the Books3 dataset. Photographers recognised their images in the outputs of image generators. The discovery was not that data had value. It was that the people who created it had been systematically excluded from capturing any of that value.

The “data as labour” framework has gained renewed academic attention. A paper published in Business Ethics Quarterly examined the labour analogy in depth, arguing that if data contributions are “characterised by asymmetric bargaining power of the kind found in the labour market, we should embrace proposals such as the creation of data unions and data strikes and similar collective actions by data contributors.” The American Economic Association has published research on the concept, arguing that treating data as capital “neglects users' roles in creating data, reducing incentives for users, distributing the gains from the data economy unequally, and stoking fears of automation.”

Yet the data dignity framework has its critics. The communications theorist Nick Couldry has suggested that paying people for their data may actually undermine rather than enhance human dignity, by “further commodifying our lives, treating us as mere labourers or passive resources to be mined.” If the solution to the exploitation of human data is to make that exploitation transactional, have we resolved the problem or merely normalised it?

The Regulatory Scramble

Legislators and regulators around the world are grappling with these questions, but responses remain fragmented and often contradictory.

The European Union's AI Act represents the most comprehensive legislative attempt to govern AI and data. Fully applicable from August 2026, it imposes strict requirements on data governance for high-risk AI systems, mandating that training data be relevant, representative, and accompanied by documentation of collection methods. Non-compliance carries penalties of up to 35 million euros or 7 per cent of global annual turnover. Transparency obligations for general-purpose AI model providers, including requirements to disclose copyrighted training data, took effect in August 2025.

In the United States, the landscape is more fractured. California's AB 1008 is the most ambitious state-level effort, explicitly extending privacy rights into AI model weights. Colorado's Algorithmic Accountability Law, effective February 2026, grants consumers rights to notice, explanation, correction, and appeal for high-risk AI decisions. But there is no federal data protection law. David Evan Harris, who teaches AI ethics at UC Berkeley, has described this gap as leaving Americans with “no standardised legal right to opt out of AI training.” Marietje Schaake, international policy director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Centre, has observed: “We have the GDPR in Europe, we have the CCPA in California, but there's still no federal data protection law in America.”

The 47th Global Privacy Assembly, held in Seoul in September 2025 and attended by over 140 authorities from more than 90 countries, adopted a resolution noting that “the public availability of personal data does not automatically imply a lawful basis for its processing” for AI training purposes. France's CNIL has been particularly active, publishing recommendations urging AI developers to incorporate privacy protection from the design stage.

In the United Kingdom, the approach has been characteristically principles-based. The Financial Conduct Authority confirmed in September 2025 that it would not introduce AI-specific regulations. The Competition and Markets Authority, armed with new powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, can now investigate breaches of consumer protection law directly and impose fines of up to 10 per cent of global turnover. Whether these powers will be used to address the extraction of personal data for AI training remains to be seen.

The Emerging Stratification of Data

The convergence of model collapse, data scarcity, privacy regulation, and the rising economic value of authentic human content is producing a new stratification of information. At the top sit curated, high-quality datasets licensed from publishers, platforms, and institutions. These command premium prices and form the foundation of frontier AI models. In the middle sits synthetic data, cheap and abundant but requiring careful curation to avoid degrading model performance. At the bottom sits the vast, unsorted mass of web-scraped content, increasingly contaminated by AI-generated material and of diminishing value for training purposes.

This hierarchy has implications for power as well as privacy. The organisations that control large repositories of authentic human data occupy a position of increasing strategic importance. Reddit understood this early, monetising its user base not through advertising alone but through the licensing of its conversational corpus. The question is whether the individuals whose contributions created that corpus will ever share in the value it generates.

Tamay Besiroglu, a co-author of the Epoch AI study on data depletion, compared the situation to “a literal gold rush” that depletes finite natural resources, warning that the AI field might face challenges in maintaining its current pace of progress once it drains the reserves of human-generated writing. If that projection proves correct, the organisations that have already secured exclusive access to high-quality human data will possess an advantage that is difficult to replicate.

For ordinary individuals, this future raises uncomfortable questions. Every social media post, every product review, every comment thread contributes to a collective resource that is being enclosed and monetised by corporations. The privacy frameworks designed to protect personal data were built for an era of databases and profiles, not for an era in which the very patterns of human thought and expression have become the raw material of a trillion-dollar industry.

What Authentic Expression Is Actually Worth

Stanford's Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence has proposed a shift from opt-out to opt-in data sharing, arguing that the default should be that data is not collected unless individuals affirmatively allow it. The precedent is instructive: when Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency in 2021, requiring apps to request permission before tracking users, industry estimates suggest that 80 to 90 per cent of people chose not to allow tracking. If a similar opt-in framework were applied to AI training data, the supply of available human data would contract dramatically, further increasing its scarcity value and the incentive to either circumvent consent mechanisms or develop viable synthetic alternatives.

Cisco's 2025 Data Privacy Benchmark Study found that 64 per cent of respondents worry about inadvertently sharing sensitive information with generative AI tools. That concern is not unfounded. A California lawsuit filed in 2025 accuses Google's Gemini of accessing users' private communications, alleging that a policy change gave the chatbot default access to private content such as emails and attachments, reversing a previous opt-in model. Technology companies, as Al Jazeera reported in November 2025, are “rarely fully transparent about the user data they collect and what they use it for.”

The tension between privacy and utility is not new, but AI has sharpened it beyond recognition. Privacy advocates argue that individuals should have meaningful control over how their data is used, including the right to withdraw it from AI training pipelines. AI developers counter that the technology cannot advance without access to diverse, representative human data, and that restricting access will entrench the dominance of companies that have already amassed large datasets. Both arguments contain truth, and neither resolves the fundamental question: in an economy where human creativity and expression have become the most valuable raw material for machine intelligence, who should decide how that material is used, and who should benefit from its exploitation?

The answer will not emerge from a single regulation, technology, or market mechanism. It will require a renegotiation of the relationship between individuals, platforms, and the AI systems that increasingly mediate our experience of the world. The data we generate is not merely a commodity to be bought and sold. It is an expression of who we are, how we think, and what we value. In the age of synthetic abundance, human data is not becoming less important. It is becoming more important, more contested, and more urgently in need of protection. The machines can generate infinite content. But they cannot generate meaning. That still comes from us. And until we collectively decide what that is worth, the value will continue to accrue to those who have the infrastructure to extract it.

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References & Sources

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

There comes a moment in every believer’s journey when the familiar practices of faith begin to feel too small for the questions rising inside them, and few subjects expose this tension more than tithing and church giving. For generations, Christians have been told that the ten-percent tithe is the unshakable standard for honoring God with financial obedience, and many have embraced this with sincerity, devotion, and even sacrificial commitment. Yet in quiet corners of their hearts, some have also wondered why the New Testament does not repeat the command, reinforce the number, or regulate giving with the same legal weight that defined ancient Israel’s system of temple support. The more a person reads the Gospels and the letters of the apostles, the more they discover that something shifts at the cross—something profound enough to reframe the entire conversation about generosity. This shift is not merely doctrinal but deeply relational, and it replaces obligation with transformation in a way that many churches today rarely explain from the pulpit. When believers begin to uncover this truth for themselves, they often find that their understanding of giving is not weakened but strengthened, not reduced but reborn, and not restricted by percentages but expanded by love. This article invites the reader into that journey, exploring how the early Christian community navigated finances, shared resources, and embodied generosity as an expression of grace instead of a requirement of law.

When we look honestly at the New Testament, we are not confronted by a continuation of Levitical tithing but by a radical reorientation of the human heart toward the life of God. Jesus does not instruct His disciples to tithe, nor does He command the early church to maintain the temple tax, yet He speaks often and directly about the posture of the heart toward money. He challenges greed, warns against storing treasure on earth, invites believers into a life of trust, and praises the widow who gave everything while giving almost nothing in measurable value. His teaching reveals that generosity is not meant to be measured by calculators but by character, not by the percentage given but by the condition of the heart doing the giving. The idea that one could fulfill righteousness through a fixed amount collapses under the weight of a kingdom built on sacrificial love. To follow Jesus is not to ask, “How little can I give and still be obedient?” but rather, “How fully can I live open-handed in a world trying to close my fists?” The tithe served a purpose under a covenant designed to shape a nation, sustain a priesthood, and preserve temple worship, but the cross ushers in a kingdom that no longer needs those structures to reveal the presence of God. As the curtain in the temple tears from top to bottom, the entire framework of religious obligation gives way to a new creation built on grace, and financial stewardship becomes a response to love rather than a requirement of law. This is the heartbeat of New Testament giving, and the early Christians embraced it with a passion that still echoes through the centuries.

It is important to understand that ancient Israel did not give one tithe but several, adding up to far more than ten percent when all requirements were combined. The people supported the Levites, provided for festivals, cared for the poor, and participated in a national economic system intertwined with worship, land ownership, and community identity. The tithe was part of a theocratic structure in which civil, ceremonial, and religious life were inseparable. When pastors today preach that Christians are commanded to give ten percent because “the Bible says so,” they are often collapsing an entire ancient economic system into a single generalized instruction. By the time Jesus steps into human history, the temple tithe is still practiced, but the heart of the people has drifted far from the God who instituted it. Jesus confronts this disconnect not by reinforcing the tithe but by exposing the deeper issue: the human heart had become a place of calculation instead of communion. His sharpest critiques fall upon those who tithed meticulously yet ignored justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He does not condemn the practice itself, but He makes it clear that the measure of devotion cannot be contained in numerical requirements. The coming kingdom demands something far more costly than percentages—it demands the transformation of the entire person. When the church was born, the apostles understood this shift, and they never reinstituted the tithe as a Christian requirement. Instead, they taught giving rooted in grace, accountability, compassion, and voluntary generosity inspired by the Spirit of God.

The book of Acts provides the clearest window into the heart of early Christian giving, and its picture is breathtaking in its simplicity and its power. The believers shared what they had not because they were commanded but because their hearts were awakened to a new kind of community. They sold property, redistributed resources, and ensured no one lived in lack, not because a legal system forced it but because love compelled it. Their generosity flowed from the realization that everything they possessed was ultimately God’s and that the Spirit was forming a family where each member was responsible for the well-being of the others. This was not socialism, nor was it religious taxation. It was voluntary, Spirit-driven, relational generosity shaped by the reality of resurrection life. The apostles never assigned percentages, never established tithing quotas, and never demanded fixed contributions from their congregations. Instead, they emphasized willing hearts, cheerful giving, and contributions that reflected gratitude, unity, and mutual care. The absence of the tithe in every instruction to the early churches is not accidental—it reveals that the apostles understood the difference between living under law and living under grace. Paul, Peter, James, and John never once instruct believers to give ten percent, yet they speak constantly about generosity, stewardship, accountability, and supporting the work of the ministry. Their vision of giving is not smaller than the tithe; it is far greater. It expands beyond the boundaries of obligation and invites believers into a life where everything belongs to God and generosity becomes a hallmark of spiritual maturity.

One of the clearest teachings on giving in the New Testament comes from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, where he addresses financial support for the church and relief for suffering believers. His teaching is thorough, practical, spiritual, and strikingly free of legalism. Paul never once cites the tithe as a standard for the Christian life. Instead, he outlines a pattern rooted in voluntary generosity, intentional planning, sacrificial love, and joy. He tells believers to give as they have been prospered, but he does not assign a percentage or define prosperity in rigid terms. He emphasizes cheerful giving, which cannot be commanded without contradicting its essence. He avoids coercion, refuses manipulation, and rejects the idea that giving should be driven by guilt. His instruction is pastoral and relational, encouraging believers to participate in the work of the gospel and the care of the poor in ways that reflect their personal capacity and spiritual maturity. In short, Paul redefines giving from something believers must do to something they get to do. The difference is staggering. It shifts giving from a tax to an act of worship and from a duty to a declaration of devotion. The power of his teaching lies not in how much he asks believers to give but in how deeply he calls them to belong to one another through generosity.

Yet, it is equally vital to acknowledge that the New Testament does not portray giving as optional or casual. Grace does not lower the standard; it raises it. The absence of law does not free believers from responsibility; it deepens their accountability to love. Generosity becomes a reflection of discipleship, an outflow of transformation, and a response to the love of Christ. The early church took this seriously. They did not give less than the tithe; in many cases, they gave far more. They gave until the needs of the community were met. They gave until the gospel advanced. They gave until their love became visible. Their giving was not measured by what they contributed but by what they withheld. The tithe asked for a portion; grace asks for the whole heart. The tithe required a percentage; grace requires participation in the life of the kingdom. The tithe demanded obedience to a number; grace calls believers into a life where generosity becomes a natural expression of character shaped by God. When churches today emphasize the tithe without teaching the deeper call of the New Testament, they risk reducing generosity to a transaction rather than elevating it to an act of transformation.

The modern conversation around tithing becomes even more complicated when we consider the financial structures of contemporary churches. Buildings must be maintained, staff must be paid, ministries must be supported, and outreach must be funded. Many pastors lean on the tithe not because the New Testament commands it but because churches struggle to survive without predictable financial support. Yet this practical need does not rewrite Scripture, nor does it justify teaching requirements the apostles never gave. The early church survived and flourished without commanding a ten-percent tithe. They relied on love, community, stewardship, and Spirit-led generosity. They trusted that if believers were spiritually healthy, giving would follow naturally. They believed that teaching truth was more important than maintaining institutions. While modern churches face challenges the early church did not, the solution is not to reimpose the law but to deepen discipleship. When people fall in love with God, generosity becomes instinctive. When believers understand the mission of the gospel, they give toward it joyfully. When a church teaches stewardship as a lifestyle instead of a requirement, financial health follows as a fruit rather than a demand. The New Testament model invites us to build communities where giving flows from love, participation, and purpose, not pressure.

As the early church expanded beyond Jerusalem and reached into cities like Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and Thessalonica, the apostles consistently reinforced a model of giving that was relational rather than legal, communal rather than transactional, and deeply spiritual rather than merely financial. Their writings reveal an unbroken commitment to generosity rooted in changed hearts rather than external compulsion. Believers contributed to the needs of the saints, supported missionaries, cared for widows and orphans, and funded the spread of the gospel across the Roman world. These contributions were sometimes substantial, sometimes modest, and always voluntary. Paul often thanked churches for their generosity by highlighting their poverty, not their wealth, demonstrating that sacrificial giving is never measured by the size of the gift but by the depth of the devotion behind it. The Macedonian believers, described as giving beyond their ability, stand out as a profound example of New Testament generosity. They were not obeying a law; they were overflowing with grace. This distinction matters, because when generosity becomes a fruit of the Spirit rather than an obligation of the law, the result is a community shaped by love rather than fear, by abundance rather than scarcity, and by participation rather than pressure.

One of the most misunderstood passages concerning giving appears in Jesus’ teaching about the Pharisees, where He acknowledges their tithing practices before redirecting them to the weightier matters of the law. Many have taken these words as evidence that Jesus endorsed tithing for all believers, but the context reveals something entirely different. Jesus was speaking to Jews still living under the Old Covenant, still bound to temple worship, still subject to the law that He had not yet fulfilled. His acknowledgement of their tithe is not an instruction for Christians but a confrontation aimed at revealing their hypocrisy. They tithed carefully but neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness. His teaching was not about how much they gave but how little their giving meant in the absence of a transformed heart. The cross had not yet taken place; the New Covenant had not yet been inaugurated. After the resurrection, after the church was born, after grace replaced law as the foundation of Christian discipleship, the apostles never instructed Gentile believers to adopt Israel’s tithing system. Instead, they invited them into a generosity shaped by gratitude for the gospel, partnership in the mission, and love for the family of faith. This shift is not subtle. It reshapes the entire landscape of Christian giving and exposes how incomplete many modern teachings on tithing truly are.

It is also important to recognize that the New Testament church operated in a world without church buildings, staff salaries, mortgages, utility bills, or modern budgetary pressures. Their gatherings were often in homes, open spaces, or borrowed facilities. Their resources flowed directly into the lives of believers and the advancement of the gospel rather than into institutional structures. This reality does not delegitimize the needs of modern churches, but it does provide perspective. Church expenses today can be significant, and ministries require financial support to function effectively. However, the solution is not to reinterpret Scripture but to cultivate communities of believers who understand the mission deeply enough that their generosity naturally sustains it. When pastors teach stewardship as a way of life rather than a numerical obligation, people respond with a sincerity that far exceeds the limits of a percentage. Generosity grows best in soil prepared by discipleship, prayer, transparency, and spiritual maturity. When the church operates with integrity, communicates its needs openly, and models accountability, believers are more likely to participate joyfully in supporting the ministry. The early church did not rely on the tithe, and yet the gospel spread like wildfire across nations, cultures, and languages. What propelled them was not a mandatory system but a movement of hearts awakened to the reality of Christ’s love.

In exploring the New Testament model of giving, it becomes clear that Jesus consistently elevates the conversation from obligation to transformation. He praises extravagant generosity not because of the amount but because of the surrender it reflects. He challenges a rich young ruler not to fulfill a percentage but to release a rival god from his heart. He teaches that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also, making generosity not merely an economic act but a spiritual diagnostic. He warns against storing up earthly riches, knowing that money often becomes the greatest competitor for human devotion. He encourages believers to give in secret, protecting generosity from becoming a performance. These teachings reveal that the essence of giving in the kingdom is not about meeting quotas but about cultivating hearts free from greed, fear, and self-reliance. The New Testament does not ask believers to calculate a tenth; it asks them to calculate the cost of discipleship. It is not concerned with the precision of one’s financial math but with the posture of one’s spirit. When the heart is transformed, generosity follows instinctively, joyfully, and powerfully, reflecting the character of Christ rather than the requirements of law.

Another crucial piece of this conversation is the relationship between giving and trust. The tithe under the Old Covenant functioned as a tangible reminder that everything belonged to God, but under grace, trust becomes the foundation of all generosity. The New Testament repeatedly links giving with faith, encouraging believers to see their resources not as possessions but as tools for kingdom impact. Paul’s teaching to the Corinthians emphasizes that God supplies seed to the sower, making generosity a cycle of provision rather than a loss. He assures the church that God is able to make all grace abound, freeing them from the fear that generosity will lead to lack. This promise does not guarantee wealth but assures believers that God will equip them for every good work. Giving becomes an expression of confidence in God’s faithfulness, a declaration that our security is found in Him rather than in what we store. When Christians understand this truth, they step into a level of freedom that transforms the way they view money. Fear loosens its grip, generosity becomes joyful, and stewardship becomes a natural extension of discipleship. Trust and generosity are inseparable in the life of the believer, and this truth is at the core of the New Testament model.

However, while the New Testament does not require the tithe, it does require something much deeper: a life fully surrendered to God. Grace does not shrink responsibility; it expands it. The call to follow Jesus includes every part of a believer’s life—time, talents, relationships, and finances. The early church understood that belonging to Christ meant holding nothing back. They lived with open hands, ready to share, ready to give, ready to serve, ready to respond to the needs of the body. Their generosity was not formulaic but dynamic, shaped by the needs of their community and the leading of the Spirit. They gave not because they had to but because they could not imagine doing anything else in light of what Christ had done for them. Their giving was not an act of compliance but an act of worship. They did not measure generosity by what they contributed but by how fully they lived for the kingdom. This is the model that many modern churches overlook when they reduce giving to a percentage. The New Testament asks for the heart, not for the tithe, and a surrendered heart always exceeds the boundaries of legal obligation.

There is a quiet tragedy in how often Christians today feel guilt, pressure, or shame around giving. Many have been taught that failure to tithe brings curses, misfortune, or spiritual blockage. Others have been told that blessings are directly tied to whether they give ten percent, turning generosity into a transactional exchange rather than a relational expression of faith. These teachings distort the heart of the gospel and misrepresent the character of God. In Christ, believers are invited into a relationship where blessings flow from grace, not from performance. Generosity is meant to be joyful, not fearful. It is meant to be liberating, not burdensome. It is meant to reflect love, not legalism. When giving becomes a tool for manipulation or fear, it ceases to reflect the kingdom Jesus proclaimed. The New Testament never weaponizes giving. It never threatens believers with curses for failure to meet percentages. Instead, it invites them into a life shaped by gratitude, trust, and participation in the mission of God. When churches rediscover this truth, they do more than free their people—they free themselves from the need to sustain their ministries through pressure instead of through discipleship.

One of the most beautiful outcomes of embracing New Testament generosity is the way it transforms community. When believers give from the heart, relationships deepen, empathy grows, and the church becomes a place where needs are met through love rather than obligation. People feel seen, valued, and supported. Giving ceases to be a ritual and becomes a shared expression of belonging. The early church understood this intuitively. Their generosity created a community that astonished the ancient world, a fellowship so compelling that people were drawn to it even before they understood the message of Jesus. They witnessed a love that transcended status, wealth, culture, and background, and they saw lives marked by sacrifice that reflected the character of Christ. This kind of generosity cannot be produced by legalism. It arises only when people have encountered grace so profoundly that they cannot help but mirror it with their lives. When the modern church embraces this model, it becomes a beacon of light, compassion, and transformation, demonstrating the power of a community shaped by the Spirit of God.

In the end, the question is not whether Christians should give but how they should give. The New Testament answers this with clarity: believers give willingly, cheerfully, sacrificially, intentionally, and relationally. They give in response to grace, not in obedience to law. They give not because ten percent is required but because one hundred percent belongs to God. They give not to earn blessings but to participate in the work of the kingdom. They give not to avoid curses but to reflect the character of Christ. The early church did not tithe—they did something far more powerful. They lived generously in every aspect of their lives, demonstrating that the love of God transforms not only the soul but the wallet, the priorities, and the way one sees the world. When modern believers return to this vision, they discover a freedom that legalism cannot offer and a joy that calculation cannot produce. Generosity becomes a way of life, a mark of discipleship, and a testimony to the world that the people of God are defined not by what they must give but by what they are empowered to give through grace.

The deeper you explore what the New Testament truly says about tithing and church giving, the more you discover that the question was never about percentages. It was always about the heart. It was about trust, transformation, love, and participation in the mission of God. The early church did not need the tithe to flourish, and neither does the modern believer need legalism to live generously. What we need is the same Spirit that filled those early Christians with courage, compassion, and conviction. When that Spirit shapes the heart, generosity becomes as natural as breathing, and giving becomes one of the most powerful ways to embody the love of God in a world desperate for hope. The New Testament invites us into this life—a life where generosity is not a rule but a rhythm, not a calculation but a calling, not a burden but a blessing. When believers embrace this truth, they step into a freedom that transforms both their lives and their communities, revealing the kingdom of God not in theory but in practice. This is what the apostles taught. This is what Jesus modeled. This is what the early church lived. And this is what every believer is invited to rediscover: a generosity shaped by grace, sustained by love, and empowered by the Spirit who makes all things new.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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In Summary: * Got my weekly laundry all done today: 2 loads, washed, dried, folded and put away. So, productive. Now I'm fully into radio basketball mode. Go Spurs Go!

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I'll add this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 226.64 lbs. * bp= 130/80 (70)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 05:55 – 1 banana * 07:05 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 09:25 – whole kernel corn * 10:30 – breaded pork chop * 14:00 – noodles, green vegetables and egg rolls, rice, cooked pork

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:20 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, and nap * 09:20 – start my weekly laundry * 10:20 – watching old episodes of Classic Doctor Who * 14:00 to 15:00 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 15:00 – listen to The Jack Riccardi Show * 17:00 – tuned to 1200 WOAI for the call of tonight's Spurs game, and the pregame and postgame shows.

Chess: * 16:00 – moved in all pending CC games

There are chapters in Scripture that feel like standing with your back against eternity while the winds of history rush past your face, and Luke 21 is one of them. It reaches toward you with a weight that refuses to be ignored, a gravity that draws you in even if you think you already understand it. This chapter does not simply record what Jesus said; it reveals the steady pulse of a Savior who refuses to let His people drift blindfolded into the storms that are coming. It reveals the quiet authority of the One who sees the beginning and the end with equal clarity, who can stand inside a single moment while still speaking with the language of ages. And if you read it slowly enough, long enough, honestly enough, you begin to realize the chapter is not merely about future events or ancient warnings, but about the condition of the human spirit when confronted with a world unraveling. It is about you. It is about me. It is about what endures when civilizations tremble and kingdoms collapse. It is about what matters when nothing else does. In this way, Luke 21 is less a prophecy lecture and more a mirror, revealing what Jesus sees when He looks at the world, at His disciples, and at the generations that will follow long after their footsteps fade from the dust of Jerusalem’s streets.

Many readers rush past the opening scene as if it were only a prelude, but that quiet moment with the widow’s offering is the doorway through which the rest of the chapter must be understood. In a way only Jesus could design, the entire architecture of the chapter hangs on that single act of surrender. While others give from comfort, the widow gives from collapse. While others donate without denting their future, she gives in a way that costs her the very life she is trying to sustain. And Jesus watches this with an attentiveness that tells you something about the Kingdom that human systems never quite grasp. Strength is not measured by what you have, but by what you willingly release. Security is not built by accumulation, but by trust. In a world obsessed with the visible, God is drawn to what cannot be seen: the motive of the heart, the posture of dependence, the quiet courage of a soul that refuses to hoard what little it has because it believes God is still enough. That is why her story is the key that unlocks the chapter. Luke 21 will speak of collapse, signs, upheaval, and events that shake nations, yet the first image offered is a woman who trusts God in a world that offers her nothing back. Jesus seems to be saying that no matter what happens next, those who stand firm in that spirit will never be swept away.

This becomes essential as the chapter pivots toward the disciples’ admiration of the Temple. They see stonework; Jesus sees history’s expiration date. They see permanence; Jesus sees impermanence disguised in stone. They see strength; Jesus sees fragility beneath the surface. And He does not rebuke their admiration; He simply replaces it with reality. The things you assume will stand forever may fall in your lifetime. The structures you believe are too large to fail may crumble within a generation. The systems you anchor yourself to may not survive the pressure of the future. Jesus is not trying to frighten them; He is trying to free them. He is teaching them that the Kingdom of God is never secured by architecture, institutions, or the visible pillars of culture. It is secured by the human heart fully yielded to the will of the Father, the way the widow was. The Temple itself, magnificent and seemingly eternal, would fall. But the faith forged in surrender, humility, and trust would outlast it. This is the heartbeat of Luke 21: the collapse of the temporary is not the collapse of the eternal.

When Jesus begins to speak of wars, earthquakes, famines, and fearful signs, He is not offering sensational predictions; He is offering perspective. Humanity tends to interpret turmoil as evidence that God has abandoned the world, yet Jesus reframes the coming chaos not as abandonment but as transition. The old world trembles when the new world begins to break through its cracks. The Kingdom of God does not rise without friction against the kingdoms of earth. And the more tightly the world clings to its illusions of control, the harder it shakes when confronted by the One who actually holds time in His hands. Jesus speaks of these events not as random disasters, but as birth pains. The imagery is intentional. Pain with purpose. Turmoil with trajectory. Suffering that leads somewhere. It is a difficult truth, but a liberating one: God does not lose control when the world loses stability. The shaking is not a sign of His absence, but a sign that the earth cannot remain as it is when the Kingdom draws near.

Then Jesus turns the lens inward, shifting from geopolitical events to the personal cost His followers will endure. Before any world-ending calamity arrives, the disciples themselves will face betrayal, accusation, persecution, and hostility from those closest to them. Jesus does not romanticize faithfulness; He describes it with precision. Following Him will not insulate them from the world’s anger; it will provoke it. Their allegiance will expose the insecurity of those who cling to worldly power. Their peace will confront the chaos in others’ hearts. Their loyalty to the Kingdom will create conflict with the kingdoms around them. Yet Jesus gives them a promise unlike anything found in any other worldview: when you stand before rulers, accusers, or adversaries, do not worry about your defense, for the Spirit of God will speak through you in that moment. In a world where every voice tries to secure its own platform, Jesus offers something radically different: the assurance that when your moment comes, the words will not be born from your own strength but from His presence within you. For the disciples and for every generation after them, this promise becomes the foundation of courage.

As Jesus continues describing events that would eventually unfold in the destruction of Jerusalem, His words carry both compassion and solemnity. He warns of days when fleeing will be wiser than fighting, when discernment will be more crucial than bravado, and when survival will require humility rather than stubborn allegiance to what God is removing. There is a tenderness in His warnings, because He is not trying to frighten; He is trying to shepherd. He is preparing His followers to recognize when judgment is unfolding and when the window of escape is open. The fall of Jerusalem was not just a historical event; it was a collision between human rebellion and divine patience reaching its limit. And Jesus, knowing what was coming, chose not to leave His disciples unprepared. His warnings were acts of love, not fear.

Yet Luke 21 never allows itself to become merely historical. Jesus expands the horizon again, lifting the conversation from the fall of one city to the trembling of the entire world. Signs in the sun, moon, and stars. Nations in distress. The roaring of the seas. People fainting from fear as the powers of heaven themselves appear unstable. All of these images are meant to communicate something deeper than meteorological events. They speak of a world losing its ability to hold itself together, of creation groaning under the weight of human rebellion, of cosmic systems responding to the spiritual reality unfolding within history. Jesus is not describing hysteria; He is describing the moment when the fabric between the seen and unseen becomes thin enough for humanity to realize that it is not the master of the universe. And then, in the midst of global fear, Jesus offers a sentence that has comforted believers for centuries: when you see these things begin to take place, stand up and lift your heads, for your redemption is drawing near. In other words, when the world sees an ending, the believer sees a beginning.

This contrast is essential. Jesus does not call His followers to panic but to posture. He does not call them to dread but to expectation. He does not call them to collapse inward but to rise in confidence. In a world defined by reaction, Jesus calls His people to response—a response rooted in the certainty that God does not lose His children in the chaos of collapsing systems. Redemption does not arrive when everything is calm; redemption arrives when everything else fails. That is why Jesus invites us to lift our heads. Our salvation is not behind us; it is approaching. Our hope is not fading; it is advancing. And our future is not determined by the instability of the world, but by the steadfastness of the One who promised to return.

Part of what makes Luke 21 so profoundly relevant is the way Jesus ties spiritual vigilance to ordinary life. He warns that the hearts of people will become heavy with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life. It is striking that He pairs reckless indulgence and destructive distractions with the same seriousness as fear and worry. Jesus seems to be saying that the greatest danger in the last days is not merely catastrophic events; it is the slow, quiet erosion of the human spirit through a life numbed by consumption, entertainment, or the relentless pressure to survive. People may not fall away because of persecution; they may fall away because of preoccupation. They may not reject God out of rebellion; they may simply drift because their souls became too tired to look up. This is the quiet tragedy Jesus warns against: not dramatic defiance, but spiritual sleep.

Yet the chapter does not leave the reader in dread or resignation. Jesus offers a final instruction that becomes the anchor of every generation that reads Luke 21: be always on the watch, and pray that you may have the strength to escape what is coming and to stand before the Son of Man. Watchfulness is not paranoia; it is attentiveness. It is living awake in a world that is spiritually sedated. It is refusing to let your heart become dulled by the noise around you. It is learning to recognize God’s movement even when it happens beneath the surface. And prayer, in this context, is not merely asking for help but aligning your soul with the reality of the Kingdom so deeply that you remain steady when the world becomes unsteady. Jesus is not telling His followers to survive the future by their own strength; He is telling them that the strength they need comes from the connection they maintain with Him in the present.

Luke 21 ends with a rhythm of Jesus teaching in the Temple by day and withdrawing to the Mount of Olives at night, a rhythm that embodies the very message He delivered. Public engagement anchored by private communion. Ministry rooted in stillness. Clarity sustained by prayer. The One who tells the world to stay awake models what a life of spiritual attentiveness looks like. And the people rise early each morning to hear Him because something in them knows they are listening to a voice unlike any other. A voice that does not merely predict the future, but defines it. A voice that does not tremble at history, but directs it. A voice that does not fear the collapse of earthly kingdoms, because it comes from the One whose Kingdom will never collapse.

The significance of Luke 21 is not merely in the events Jesus describes, but in the kind of people He is shaping through His words. When you listen to Him speak in this chapter, you realize He is not trying to produce fearful followers but focused ones, not panicked believers but prepared ones, not people who cling to the world with white-knuckled desperation but people who live with the kind of spiritual clarity that sees through the illusions of the age. The entire chapter operates like a spiritual lens being adjusted with gentle, precise movements until what is blurry becomes sharp and what is overwhelming becomes understandable. Jesus knows the human mind becomes anxious when confronted with uncertainty, so He replaces uncertainty with awareness. He knows the human heart becomes unstable when pressured by chaos, so He replaces chaos with calling. And He knows the human soul becomes weary when burdened by the world’s weight, so He replaces burden with a promise: you are not forgotten, and the story is not spiraling out of control. Rather, it is moving exactly as He has said it would, and He will not lose you in the middle of it.

The quiet brilliance of Luke 21 is that Jesus does not separate the spiritual life from the external world. He never speaks as if faith is something sealed off behind the walls of private devotion. Instead, He shows that faith is lived at the intersection of history and eternity, where empires rise and fall, where nations tremble, and where ordinary disciples continue carrying the flame of the Kingdom in a world that has lost its bearings. Jesus does not promise them ease; He promises them endurance. He does not guarantee that the storms will bypass them; He guarantees that the storms will not break them. Every instruction He gives is shaped by the truth that faith is not an escape route but a lifeline, not a shelter from hardship but a strength within hardship, not a fantasy that denies reality but a clarity that interprets reality through the eyes of God. This is why He speaks with both tenderness and authority. He is not simply informing them of the future, but forming them for it.

Many people assume Jesus gives these warnings only to frighten or to condemn, but the opposite is happening. These words are mercy. They are preparation. They are the loving instructions of a Savior who refuses to let His people wander blindly into a season of upheaval. If you listen carefully, His voice in Luke 21 carries the same tone a loving father uses when he kneels beside his child before a difficult journey, ensuring they understand what lies ahead, not to scare them but to steady them. Jesus refuses to let the disciples mistake temporary structures for eternal foundations. He refuses to let them anchor their hope in buildings, positions, institutions, or cultural stability. He wants their security to be unshakeable because it is rooted in something unshakeable. And so He tells them plainly what will fall, not to traumatize them, but to liberate them from trusting what was never meant to carry the weight of their souls.

The destruction of the Temple becomes a symbol for every generation, because every age has its own temples: the things it believes will outlast time, the things it expects to remain unmovable, the things it assumes are too powerful to fall. But history has shown, again and again, that every human kingdom has an expiration date. Every empire eventually becomes a relic. Every monument eventually becomes a ruin. Yet the Kingdom Jesus announced continues to advance, continues to transform lives, continues to rewrite the human story from within. Luke 21 is not about despair; it is about discernment. It is about learning to see what God sees. It is about recognizing that even when the visible world trembles, the invisible Kingdom stands. And it is about understanding that the true stability of a believer does not come from the world’s predictability, but from God’s faithfulness.

When Jesus transitions to the imagery of cosmic signs and global upheaval, He is not describing fantasy but revelation. The world as we know it is not built to last forever. Creation itself is waiting, groaning, longing for the redemption God promised. Humanity often believes it can sustain the world through innovation, governance, or progress, yet Jesus tells the truth without apology: there is coming a moment when the world will reach the limits of its strength. The systems we trust will fail. The wisdom we rely on will falter. The stability we take for granted will evaporate. And in that moment, humanity will finally confront the truth it has ignored for centuries—that the world is not self-sustaining, and that the true King is not any earthly ruler, but the Son of Man returning in glory.

And yet, for the believer, this moment is not terror but triumph. Jesus says, when these things begin—begin, not conclude—stand up and lift your head, for your redemption is near. That single instruction overturns every instinct of human fear. When the world collapses inward, the believer rises upward. When the nations tremble, the believer looks toward the horizon where the King is approaching. Jesus does not tell His followers to cower, hide, or despair; He tells them to stand. This standing is not physical arrogance but spiritual clarity. It is the recognition that the moment the world fears most is the moment the believer has longed for. It is the moment when faith becomes sight, when promises become reality, when the hopes of every generation reach their culmination. Jesus is not warning His followers of disaster; He is preparing them for deliverance.

The parable of the fig tree deepens this message. Jesus, as He often does, frames eternal reality within the rhythm of creation. Just as leaves on the tree signal the change of seasons, so the signs He describes signal the approaching fulfillment of God’s plan. This is not meant to produce date-setting or speculation, but awareness. Jesus wants His followers to live with the same attentiveness a farmer has when studying the land. Disciples are not called to panic at every tremor, but to discern the difference between random disturbance and prophetic fulfillment. They are not called to interpret every global event through fear, but through faith. And they are not called to be experts in speculation, but experts in spiritual readiness. The fig tree does not try to predict the exact moment summer arrives; it recognizes the indicators and responds naturally. So must the follower of Jesus.

Jesus then speaks a phrase that has puzzled many: this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Some assume this refers to the immediate disciples, but Jesus is speaking of the generation that sees the signs unfold. Every time Scripture refers to a generation in prophetic context, it refers to the collective group living during the unfolding of the events described. Jesus is not limiting the prophecy to the first century; He is anchoring its fulfillment to the season when the signs converge. And so, the chapter retains its relevance not because it predicts the exact timing, but because it shapes the posture required for every generation leading up to that moment.

Then Jesus offers a statement that feels like both thunder and reassurance: heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away. This is one of the most astonishing declarations in Scripture, because Jesus is placing His own words above the durability of creation itself. Everything visible will fade. Everything tangible will vanish. Everything temporal will dissolve. But what He has spoken will remain. This is the foundation that believers are meant to stand on when the world shakes. If His words outlast the world, then the one who stands on His words stands on something more secure than the world itself. And this is what Luke 21 is ultimately calling us toward: the kind of life anchored so deeply in His words that no amount of pressure, confusion, or turmoil can uproot it.

It is no surprise, then, that Jesus warns His followers not to let their hearts become weighed down. A weary heart is more dangerous than a hostile world. A distracted mind is more destructive than external persecution. Jesus describes dissipation and drunkenness not merely as immoral behaviors but as symptoms of a soul trying to numb itself. When life becomes overwhelming, many people try to escape through distraction, indulgence, or avoidance. Others collapse under the anxieties of survival. But Jesus warns that these inward conditions make the heart too heavy to respond when the moment of divine awakening arrives. The danger is not only missing the signs, but missing the ability to stand with clarity when they appear. A heart weighed down is a heart unable to lift its head. And so Jesus urges a life of attentiveness, not fear-driven but faith-driven, where the mind stays awake, the spirit stays connected, and the soul stays receptive.

Luke 21 concludes with an image of Jesus that is both simple and profound: He teaches in the Temple during the day and withdraws to the Mount of Olives at night. This rhythm is the secret to understanding the entire chapter. Jesus does not ask His followers to live in unbroken adrenaline, nor to survive by constant vigilance. He models a life of outward ministry grounded in inward communion. He teaches publicly from a place of private strength. He confronts the chaos of the world from a place of deep intimacy with the Father. He navigates conflict with clarity because His spirit is aligned with heaven. And the people, sensing something in Him that cannot be manufactured, rise early each morning to listen. Their hearts recognize the voice that carries eternity in it.

When you allow Luke 21 to settle into your spirit, you realize it is not primarily a chapter about the end of the world; it is a chapter about the end of superficial faith. It is the moment Jesus draws a line between those who follow Him casually and those who follow Him with conviction. It is the moment He invites His disciples to move from admiration to allegiance, from emotional reaction to spiritual readiness, from living in the comfort of the present to anchoring their identity in the unshakeable reality of His return. The chapter forces us to ask what we are really trusting. Are we trusting systems, comforts, routines, or assumptions? Or are we trusting the One who will remain when everything else fades?

If Jesus were standing in front of us today, speaking Luke 21 with the same tone He used that day, He would not be calling us to fear the future; He would be calling us to prepare for it with the same quiet courage He instilled in His disciples. He would be calling us to cultivate a heart like the widow’s: surrendered, trusting, unafraid to release what keeps us comfortable. He would be calling us to stop anchoring our identity to things that cannot survive the shaking. He would be calling us to discern the signs not so we can speculate, but so we can stay steady. He would be calling us to lift our heads when the world bows low in fear. He would be calling us to stay awake when others fall asleep spiritually. And He would be calling us to pray for the strength to stand before Him with a life lived in faith, hope, and steadfast endurance.

Luke 21 is ultimately an invitation to live with clarity in a world addicted to confusion. It is an invitation to live with courage in a world trained by fear. It is an invitation to live with hope in a world shaped by despair. It is an invitation to live with spiritual attention in a world lulled into distraction. And it is an invitation to anchor your soul in a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, a Word that cannot fade, and a Savior who will return exactly as He promised. The chapter is not a threat; it is a roadmap. It is not a warning of doom; it is a promise of redemption. It is not the collapse of hope; it is the revelation of hope. And it calls every reader, in every generation, to be a person who lives awake, lives ready, and lives confident in the God who holds all of history in His hands.

Luke 21 is not meant to frighten the believer but to fortify them. Not to leave them anxious but to make them anchored. Not to create dread but to produce discernment. And when you finally reach the end of the chapter, what remains is not fear but a strange, steady courage. The kind of courage that comes from knowing Jesus sees the future with absolute clarity and still tells you not to be afraid. The kind of courage that comes from knowing He has already accounted for every hardship, every pressure, every event, and every moment you will face. The kind of courage that comes from living with your heart tuned to the voice of the One who said heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away. And when His words become the foundation beneath your feet, no amount of shaking can unsettle you.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

For some weeks now I’m having a Teams notification on the computer. I’ve got a new chat message somewhere, but when I click on it, on the icon, there’s nothing new.

Nothing is there

And yet the notification,

Were I an electron app (God forbid), then it’ll be this teams installation with this confused message which is not to be found, probably an important message hidden in some obscure channel

Or maybe just nothing

But I’ll never know and thank God I’m human although I’d like to be an elf or something but that’s off topic

We just get this hand of cards we’ll have to play as best we can

No one asks for this

There is a quiet thread woven through the New Testament that rarely receives the attention it deserves, yet it shapes the architecture of the entire movement of Jesus in ways that are nothing short of astonishing. When I sit with the Scriptures long enough for the noise of the world to fall away and for the text to breathe in the way it was always meant to, I begin to sense the overwhelming intentionality behind the stories that are told and, perhaps even more importantly, the stories that are left untold. Not untold in the sense that their actions were hidden, but untold in the sense that their names were withheld. That deliberate absence, that purposeful silence, that gentle restraint from identifying certain people becomes its own kind of revelation once you notice it. Because once you notice it, you begin to realize that God was shaping a message that would stretch across millennia and touch the lives of every person who would ever feel unseen, unnoticed, uncelebrated, or overshadowed by the loudness of the world. And when you let that truth land deeply in your spirit, you begin to see a portrait of a God who does not just work through the headline-makers of history, but through the hidden ones whose faithfulness became the backbone of the Kingdom.

As I look across the span of the New Testament, what becomes clear is that Jesus consistently lifted up people the world barely acknowledged, as if He were quietly rewriting the criteria for greatness from the inside out. He honored widows whose offerings seemed small to everyone else but whose trust in God outweighed their financial poverty. He praised the faith of centurions whose names never appear in the story but whose belief surpassed that of the religious elite. He told stories where heroes were hidden in plain sight: a woman who swept her entire home looking for a lost coin, a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to find one, a servant who remained faithful with a few talents in the shadows where no one could applaud his diligence. In each of these narratives, something deeper is happening beneath the surface. Jesus is telling us that the Kingdom does not measure value the way the world measures value, and that the people we overlook are often the very people God is most inclined to use. It is as though every unnamed character becomes a mirror, inviting each ordinary believer to see themselves in the story, to realize that their anonymity does not diminish their worth in God’s eyes.

When I reflect on these moments, I begin to understand why so many people in the modern world resonate with the idea of being unseen. We live in an era of constant noise, constant comparison, constant striving for recognition in a culture that seems to reward visibility almost as much as virtue. People wake up each day carrying responsibilities no one praises, doing acts of love that never trend, shouldering burdens that never make it into conversation. They raise children at kitchen tables where no cameras are watching, care for aging parents in quiet moments where exhaustion weighs heavy, show up to jobs where their effort is taken for granted, and hold families together in ways that no one will ever truly understand. And in the midst of that, they hope their lives still matter to God. They wonder whether their story still holds weight, whether their contributions have been seen by the One whose eyes are said to roam the earth seeking the faithful. The New Testament answers those questions with a gentle certainty: yes, you matter, and yes, heaven sees you in every hidden moment of obedience.

As I continue to explore this theme, I begin to realize that the anonymity in Scripture is not a gap; it is a message. It is not an oversight; it is a teaching tool. It is not a lack of detail; it is a revelation about the heart of God. If the Scriptures included the names of every single person whose faith contributed to the early movement of Jesus, it would be easy for generations to come to believe that significance belongs only to the ones with names recorded in holy history. Instead, by leaving so many people unnamed but unforgettable, God created a pathway where every generation could walk into the story, not as spectators but as participants. It is as though the Spirit left open seats at the table for every believer who would ever feel like their life existed in the margins. By leaving space in the narrative, the New Testament becomes not just a record of past faithfulness but an ongoing invitation for present faithfulness. The story keeps breathing through the lives of those who embrace the hidden, humble, unseen work of the Kingdom.

The deeper I go into this truth, the more I realize that anonymity itself becomes a kind of refining fire in the life of a believer. When you serve without applause, your motives are purified. When you love without recognition, your heart is tested and strengthened. When you give without being seen, your faith grows roots that sink deeper than any public affirmation could ever reach. The early church was built not on celebrity but on surrender, not on fame but on faithfulness, not on spotlight but on sacrifice. These unseen believers carried the gospel into places where it was dangerous, into homes where it was illegal, into cities where it cost them their social standing, their families, and sometimes their very lives. They carried letters across miles of rough terrain, they opened their homes for gatherings, they risked imprisonment for hospitality, they shared meals with strangers, they prayed in secret, and they lived with a courage that would have made angels stop and watch. And yet their names are lost to us. Their actions are not.

What moves me most is the realization that God could have chosen to record their identities. He could have given us lists of names and biographies and lifelong stories. But He didn’t, because the purpose was not to elevate the individuals but to elevate the principle: the Kingdom advances through the faithful, not the famous. If God had named every hidden servant, generations might have read their stories as something unreachable, something reserved for an elite group of spiritual giants. But by leaving them unnamed, the New Testament says something far more generous: this could be you. You, with your quiet faith. You, with your uncelebrated obedience. You, with your daily sacrifices, your sleepless nights, your whispered prayers. You, with your desire to honor God in the unseen corners of life. The Kingdom was designed for people like you because the God who sees in secret delights in the ones who live in secret.

As I meditate on this truth, I begin to see the heart of Jesus more clearly. He was not drawn to the public image of people; He was drawn to their depth. He was not impressed by status; He was moved by sincerity. He did not elevate the ones who demanded attention; He elevated the ones who simply believed. And that remains true today. There is something sacred about the person who keeps showing up when no one notices, something holy about the person who stays faithful in seasons that feel thankless, something powerful about the person who continues to serve when exhaustion presses heavily on their shoulders. These are the ones God entrusts with His deepest work. These are the ones He shapes into pillars. These are the ones heaven celebrates long before the world ever sees their value. In this truth lies an unshakable hope: the God of the New Testament is still writing His story through people who have never chased recognition but have chased His heart.

As I move deeper into this exploration, I begin to understand that the New Testament’s emphasis on hidden faithfulness becomes a direct invitation for every generation to redefine greatness in a world desperate for attention. We have slowly drifted into an age where visibility is treated as virtue, where applause is mistaken for anointing, and where recognition is often confused with calling. Yet the Scriptures call us back to something far quieter and far more transformational. They remind us that God does not measure our impact by the reach of our platform, but by the reach of our obedience. They remind us that heaven’s algorithms are not influenced by trends, metrics, or public enthusiasm. They remind us that a whispered prayer in the darkness can shape history more than a shouted proclamation in the spotlight. When we allow this truth to reshape our understanding of ourselves, a powerful liberation begins to happen in the soul. Suddenly, a person does not need to be seen to be significant. They do not need to be known to be meaningful. They do not need public validation to carry divine purpose.

What becomes unmistakably clear is that the New Testament celebrates the people who live in the shadows with a faith that does not require recognition to remain steadfast. Every unknown disciple who carried the gospel across rugged roads, every unnamed woman who opened her home to weary believers, every quiet follower who risked their livelihood to be part of the early gatherings, every unrecorded encourager who strengthened the apostles in their lowest moments, every nameless intercessor who prayed with trembling hands for the church to survive another day—these are the details Scripture chooses not to spotlight with names but to spotlight with spiritual weight. Their hidden sacrifices were the scaffolding of revival. Their unseen courage was the architecture of the early church. Their ordinary faithfulness, multiplied thousands of times over, became the engine that carried the message of Jesus across empires, languages, and centuries. The absence of their names is not an erasure of their legacy; it is a divine strategy to ensure that their legacy becomes accessible to all who follow.

When a person begins to grasp this truth, it dismantles the lie that their life is too small to matter. It confronts the quiet narrative that has woven its way into many hearts—the narrative that says meaning comes from achievement, applause, recognition, or being known by the masses. But God tells a different story through the pages of the New Testament, one that lifts the weight off the shoulders of every listener who has ever felt like their efforts disappeared into the background. He shows us that the ones who felt unseen were the ones who carried the greatest spiritual authority. He shows us that the ones who lived quietly were the ones who shaped eternity most loudly. He shows us that the ones who were overlooked on earth were honored in heaven’s records with a glory that cannot fade. And if God has always worked through the invisible faithful, then no one who follows Jesus today ever walks in insignificance. Their entire life becomes a sacred vessel through which God continues the same unstoppable pattern He established in the first century.

The more I sit with this truth, the more I realize that this is not merely an observation about the past; it is a framework for how God continues to move today. If the New Testament was built through hidden servants, then the present-day church is also being carried by hidden servants. It is carried by parents who pray over their children late at night when worry comes in waves. It is carried by employees who work with integrity in environments where compromise is celebrated. It is carried by caretakers who quietly serve loved ones with tenderness that rarely receives recognition. It is carried by volunteers who show up early and leave late, creating spaces of worship and growth for others. It is carried by people who endure private battles with faith still intact. It is carried by believers who stand at gravesides with tears in their eyes and hope in their hearts. It is carried by the resilient, the kind, the steady, the gentle, and the ones who persist in loving others even when love seems costly. These modern-day unsung disciples mirror the nameless ones in Scripture, not because they seek anonymity but because their hearts remain anchored in something deeper than public applause.

What astonishes me is the way Jesus Himself affirms the value of the unseen in His teachings. When He tells His followers that the Father sees what is done in secret, He is not merely offering comfort; He is correcting an entire human instinct. He is pulling the soul away from the need for validation and pulling it toward a faith rooted in the unseen God who measures devotion differently than the world does. He teaches that the quiet giver, the hidden intercessor, the gentle servant, the one who forgives without being thanked, the one who keeps walking when weary—all of these hold a beauty that heaven celebrates even when earth does not. This is why Jesus pointed so often to the ones the world overlooked. Not because they were incidental characters, but because they embodied the truth that the Kingdom does not rise on fame but on faithfulness. If the New Testament had celebrated celebrity, we would all be left chasing shadows. But because it celebrated hiddenness, we find ourselves invited into a purpose no one can take away.

As I consider all of this, what becomes overwhelmingly clear is that this theme has the power to heal hearts in a way that few truths can. It reaches the person who has spent their entire life giving without receiving. It reaches the one who has carried a family, a marriage, a ministry, or a burden in silence. It reaches the one who has served others so faithfully that they have forgotten what it feels like to be appreciated. It reaches the one who feels backgrounded in their own story. It reaches the one who wonders whether God sees their effort, their loyalty, their exhaustion, or their long nights of pressing through. And it tells them that God has never looked away. Every hidden act of love has been seen. Every quiet prayer has been heard. Every unnoticed sacrifice has been recorded in the only place where records never fade. And every moment that felt small to them has been magnified in the eyes of heaven.

The New Testament teaches us that there is no such thing as an unimportant believer. There is no such thing as a life that doesn’t matter. And there is no such thing as insignificance in the hands of a God who builds His Kingdom through the ones who are willing to say yes in the shadows. When you take this truth into your soul, you find a freedom that the world cannot manufacture and a purpose that no circumstance can diminish. You find that the God who worked through the unnamed faithful then is still working through the unnamed faithful now. And in that realization comes a quiet strength, a deep assurance, a sense of holy dignity that rises like morning light in the hearts of those who have long walked unseen.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Right, pull up a chair. Not that one, it’s got a loose leg and a grudge against shins.

I thought I would share with you, my comprehensive knowledge of our galaxy. Because I know lots of interesting things about it. 

For example, you may hear the galaxy described as a ‘majestic spiral’. Total twaddle. It is in fact, a celestial hoover that is very hungry. Our galaxy is basically that one relative at a wedding buffet who hides cocktail sausages in their pockets. We’re not floating in space; we’re just sitting in the stomach of a giant that’s currently eyeing up Andromeda for dessert. It puts the 'Great Void' into perspective, it’s just the galaxy waiting for the kettle to boil.

The scientists, men with very high foreheads and even higher trousers, say the centre of the Milky Way smells of rum and raspberries. This is a lie. If it smelled of rum, my Uncle Arthur would have been there years ago with a straw and a bucket, and we’d never have seen him again.

The truth is much worse. The Milky Way is a cannibal. It’s currently eating a smaller galaxy called Sagittarius. Just swallowing it whole! No salt, no pepper, not even a polite “Do you mind if I tuck in?“ 

Those same boffin-types estimate there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Don’t know about you, but I find that inconsiderate. Because I can’t keep track of my socks. 

While we are dealing with baffling things. Look outside, your window, not mine, I can’t have you all at my house. All that stuff you can see, cars, houses, that pigeon on a chimney, it’s only taking up 10% of what is actually there. Yes, that is what I said. 10%. The rest is taken up by dark matter. So dark, nobody can see it. You can’t touch it and don’t bother trying to explain it. It’s a dark matter. 

Here’s another thing, We are currently hurtling toward the Andromeda Galaxy at about 250,000 miles per hour. We’ll smash into it in about 4 billion years. That is going to be one long, drawn-out Insurance claim isn’t it? 

“Er, blog post?”

“Yes? Who are you? Stop interrupting, I’m doing science.”

“I’m Andy, the author of this blog—“

“Well, sod off then, while I finish revealing more splendid galaxy knowledge.”

“Okay, fine. I just wanted to make it clear that you are not an Astronomer.”

“Rude. I didn’t say I was.”

“Oh, I think the readers will pick up on that…”

Never mind him, here’s another great fact. The sun (and us) orbits the centre of the galaxy. It takes a while. 230 million years to complete one trip. Our local bus services have their timetables based on it. The last time we were in this exact spot in the galaxy, dinosaurs were just starting to think about maybe evolving. It gives a whole new meaning to “Are we there yet?”

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few snippets of knowledge. I’m one of those people that loves science, astronomy and all that clever stuff. While at the same time, not really having a clue how it all works. 

Right, must go, I have to water the goldfish.