She got me a framed photo of us after one of our early surprise dates. I’m so happy.

I am working now, don’t have time to write

I have slept poorly it is however THURSDAY soon the weekend will be upon us!! Take heed!

I feel my soft yoga body and I would like to think that all is good

I wrote a really strong elephant post yesterday but was stricken by an impulse to delete it

Not entirely sure why?

I will write it again some day

Maybe it felt too personal but that hasn’t stopped me before?

I just say ”fuck it” and post; that’s why everyone loves this blog !

Anyway I better get back to work now, I am sure Windows updates are through

Yesterday, I was trying to build an igloo with my oldest. As a child, every time it snowed, I was so excited to get outside to build an igloo. I simply just started. I grabbed a shovel and made a massive pile of snow. When the way was too long to the igloo, I made huge snowballs and rolled them onto the snow pile. After compacting everything, I just dug a hole into the pile and was done.

Now as an adult, I’ve tried to overengineer the whole thing. My son just wanted to start, but I was not ready. I wanted to have a plan. A proper way to build this thing. I would rather not make a massive pile of snow and then dig into the snow. (I am a grown-up now; I can't lie on the ground and dig a hole into a pile of snow.) I wanted to build a good igloo. So I searched for ways to accomplish that. It took far too long. My oldest was bored and did other stuff meanwhile.

We lost some time, and it gets dark early in the winter. 😅 We created the first half of the igloo. From here on, my plan was not working out anymore. So I had a new thought. Why not create blocks of snow and do it the Minecraft way? (My son has been into Minecraft for some weeks now.) He approved it, and we started filling buckets with snow, compressed them, and placed them in a line.

Now the “blocks” are waiting to be assembled.

I wish I could be as carefree as a child again. Just do things without planning them to death. But then, you have moments where the “wisdom” of an adult has prevented the child from frustration. (Still, frustration is a good thing for learning.) It is really strange. Both worlds have their pros and cons. Somehow, we need to align to get the best of both.

---

97 of #100DaysToOffload
#log
Thoughts?

CeCe is Normal

#nsfw #CeCe

I remember the relief washing over me when CeCe actually agreed to get help. After that eye-opening moment in our dorm, where I'd seen the DMs and realized how deep her obsession ran, I gently suggested she talk to someone—a counselor, maybe, through the college's free services. To my surprise, she nodded, her fingers still idly tracing patterns on her inner thigh. “Yeah, okay, Tasha. If it'll make you feel better.” I thought this was it—the turning point. Maybe she'd dial it back, find some balance. But CeCe had her own way of twisting things, and it wasn't the help I expected.

She ended up booking sessions with this college intern at the student wellness center—a young psych major doing her practicum, not even a full therapist yet. CeCe framed the whole thing so cleverly, like she was pitching a TED Talk on self-empowerment. She'd sit there, all composed, explaining how watching porn was her form of emotional regulation—a safe outlet for stress in our high-pressure city life, where the constant grind of classes and part-time jobs could crush you. “It's safer sex, you know?” she'd say, according to what she told me later. “No risks, no heartbreak, just me controlling my own pleasure. It's made me less shy, more confident in my body. I used to hide these curves, but now? I own them.”

She made it a habit to dress nice for her sessions. Further playing the charade and crafting her narrative. I complimented her on new look quite a bit until I realized why she did it. I knew I had created a monster.

The intern bought it hook, line, and sinker—probably because CeCe was so articulate, so damn smart about justifying her freak flag. After a few sessions, the intern declared her “well-regulated and genuinely happy,” suggesting only that she keep journaling her feelings. No red flags raised, no interventions suggested. CeCe came back from those appointments beaming, like she'd gotten a gold star for her addiction.

All the while, though, she was escalating behind closed doors—or rather, in our very open dorm room. It escalated slowly. She did more than play porn casually during down time. She started playing porn videos in the background while she studied, the low volume moans and slaps mixing with her typing on engineering problem sets. She'd sit at her desk naked all the time. Her caramel skin always bare and glowing under the fluorescent lights, thick thighs pressed together, and she absentmindedly rocked against the chair, humping to stimulate herself.

From that point forward, I never saw her wear clothes in our dorm. She continued to lounge around nude, her full breasts swaying as she moved, that juicy ass planted wherever she pleased, chatting with me about classes like it was nothing. I didn't stop her. I enjoyed lookin at her naked. My own porn consumption had silently turned me bisexual along time ago.

As far masturbating, she pushed this to new levels. She eroded all shame when it came to me. If I saw her naked, she was probably touching herself.

I'd be venting about my day, and there she'd be, fingers dipping into her wet pussy right in front of me, moaning softly as she nodded along. “Uh-huh, that sucks, Tasha,” she'd say, her voice breathy, eyes half-lidded while she pinched her nipples or rubbed her clit in lazy circles.

I didn't stop her. I didn't mind. I had a friend that would listen to everything. She was more attentive than most boyfriends I dated. She was just so raw, direct, honest and didn't ask for anything but return. So i accepted her overtly sexual habits. She was still a good person. But I knew she was turning into an out-of-control freak.

She had started watching almost exclusively public porn. She has fixations on everything. What color clothes she wore, her favorite pen, notebook, socks. It didn't matter something had its place in her life. Her porn was no different. Her blatant exhibitionism bleeding into every moment in front of me. She chose me. Legs spread, wet and insatiable. Looking me in the eyes like I was her whole world outside of porn. Everyone else had bailed, but I stuck around, hoping the “therapy” would kick in eventually. I think she was conditioning me to normalize her behavior.

It all came to a head one crisp morning in our bustling city, where the air hummed with the sounds of commuter trains and street traffic outside our dorm window. I was rushing to class, grabbing my bag, when I caught CeCe slipping out the door ahead of me. She was dressed—if you could call it that—in just a baggy zip-up hoodie that hung loose over her frame, a pair of tiny shorts that barely covered her thick ass, and flip-flops slapping against the floor. No shirt, no bra, nothing underneath that hoodie. Probably no panties either. Her large breasts were basically hidden under the baggy fabric, sure, but one wrong move—a gust of wind, a quick turn—and she'd be flashing the whole hallway. She was heading to her therapy session and then straight to class, essentially topless, like it was no big deal.

“CeCe, wait—what are you wearing? Or... not wearing?” I called out, my voice a mix of exasperation and concern. I did my best to keep my voice down as to not draw attention in the hallway.

She turned, zipping the hoodie up just enough to tease the outline of her curves, a sly grin on her face. “Relax, Tasha. It's baggy—my tits are totally hidden. See? No one's gonna notice. And if they do, maybe it'll brighten their day.” She had a way out for everything, twisting logic until it fit her narrative, leaving me speechless once again.

Life in our college dorm carried on with that laid-back vibe you only get in a place like our campus—where eccentricity was just part of the scenery, and as long as you weren't causing chaos, no one batted an eye. CeCe's increasingly bold outfits, or lack thereof, flew under the radar; professors and classmates shrugged it off as her quirky style, especially since she was killing it academically.

She was the star student, pulling in straight A's in her engineering courses while I scraped by with B's, my focus split between classes and worrying about her. It was frustrating, but also a twisted point of pride—my best friend was thriving, even if it was fueled by her nonstop naked porn habit.

There were moments when I genuinely had fun with her, though, dipping into her world when the stress of college life got too heavy. On rough nights after exams or bad shifts at my part-time gig downtown, I'd strip down alongside her, our naked bodies lounging on the beds as we scrolled through porn videos together. It was a release—her caramel curves pressed close to mine, the air thick with shared arousal as we'd touch ourselves, moaning in sync to some steamy scene. Our friendship was charged with this electric tension, platonic at its core but teetering on the edge, never quite sure if we'd cross that line and turn it into something more. CeCe always brushed it off with a laugh, her fingers still slick from her latest orgasm. The room always smelling like pussy when we gooned together. “Porn's perfectly okay for me, Tasha. It's all I need—why complicate things?” A part of me secretly wished we could cross that line. But I held my tongue.

I didn't want ruin a good thing. It's not like I was having any good dates worth my time anyway. I was always thinking about what porn CeCe was watching in our dorm while rubbing herself silly. They just never had that spark I was looking for. It just felt hollow. It felt empty. It felt meaningless. Maybe CeCe was onto something with her lifestyle.

It wasn't until later, during one of our late-night talks, that she opened up about being autistic. She said it casually, like explaining a homework problem, and suddenly it all clicked—the hyperfocus on her obsession, the way she justified everything so logically, the lack of an off switch for her escalating behaviors. It made sense why porn had gripped her so hard; it was a sensory fixation, a safe routine in a chaotic world. I knew then there was no flipping that switch back—CeCe was wired this way, and while it worried me, she'd become my ride-or-die best friend, the only person who truly got me in this massive, impersonal city.

But CeCe had a real problem with escalation, always pushing boundaries further than I could keep up with. Spring break rolled around, and while most students fled to beaches or hometowns, we stayed put in the near-empty dorms, the building echoing with silence amid the distant hum of city traffic outside. With no one around, CeCe let loose even more. She'd wander the halls with her baggy hoodie unzipped, her breasts fully exposed, nipples hard from the cool air, or sometimes she'd ditch the top half altogether, strolling topless in just short shorts and flip-flops, her thick ass swaying as she hummed to herself. I'd catch her like that, heart pounding, and try to pull her back inside.

“CeCe, come on, what if someone sees? Security could walk by, or maintenance— this is reckless!” I'd plead, grabbing her arm and steering her toward our room, my voice cracking with frustration. She'd just grin, zipping up halfway or not at all, countering with her usual logic. “No one's here, Tasha. It's freeing. Feels good against my skin. I checked. There are no cameras in the halls either.” I just didn't want to see her get in trouble and her world come crumbling down. It scared me.

But one evening, she crossed a line. She decided to go out fully nude to the laundry room down the hall. I was taking a shower and didn't see her leave our dorm room. So of course when I didn't see her, I got dressed and stepped out to look for her.

I had this protective habit to always make sure she was ok or I knew where she was. I tried to hide it, but over time I just needed that knowing comfort. She was ok with that and smiled one day because she had already noticed before I admitted it. She hugged me and said that was so cute. It made my day.

I decided to head to the laundry room since that was the most logical place she would be. I was shocked to see she was fully nude like it was normal. She emerged from the laundry room bare as the day she was born and sauntered back fully exposed without any shame, breasts bouncing freely. After I got over the initial sock, a part of me inside broke. I couldn't hold it in anymore.

Tears welled up in my eyes blurring my vision. I rushed up to her and gently pulled her back to our dorm. Back to safety. I held her arm with a firm grip but still gentle as possible. I was not angry. I was fearful. I had to talk to her about this. I was so sad that I corrupted her and she just kept getting worse. If it wasn't for the porn she was watching, she wouldn't get the idea in her head to try this. I had so much guilt that I had made her this way.

Half sobbing and half speaking, I spoke to her. “I regret this so much—I regret showing you that first video. I turned you into this, and now you're spiraling. What if you get in real trouble? I'm so sorry, CeCe, I messed up.” I started crying then, hot tears streaming down my face, the weight of it all crashing down. Had I known she was autistic, I would have done things so much differently. The comments I said to her, the jokes at her being awkward or not opening up. I didn't know at all. All of these feelings rushed up now I was sobbing on my naked friend's shoulder.

CeCe's playful expression faltered. It finally struck home. For the first time she realized the strain I was having on her. She set her laundry down, and grabbed her hoodie and put it on. For the first time in months she was dressed in our dorm. She pulled me to her bed and we sat down together. She covered her lap with a blanket as she patted the spot inviting me to lay my head on her lap.

The invitation was too inviting, too open. I wanted this. I have not been touched in months. I didn't want to admit it then, but I only wanted to be intimate with her. Even though I knew she didn't want the same things, I think deep down she knew my heart. CeCe was my comfort. I felt so vulnerable. But in that moment, she instantly made me feel safe.

So as I lay my head down, she petted my head in the most gentle loving way. It's like she instinctively knew how to cradle my head and touch the right places. She was so calming. My wails of sadness eventually faded to quiet sniffled. She rocked me slowly. The she said gently, “Hey, Tasha... let's talk. For real.”

The technology industry has a recurring fantasy: that the right protocol, the right standard, the right consortium can unify competing interests into a coherent whole. In December 2025, that fantasy received its most ambitious iteration yet when the Linux Foundation announced the Agentic AI Foundation, bringing together Anthropic, OpenAI, Block, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services under a single banner. The centrepiece of this alliance is the Model Context Protocol, Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. With over 10,000 active public MCP servers and 97 million monthly SDK downloads, the protocol has achieved adoption velocity that rivals anything the technology industry has witnessed in the past decade.

Yet beneath the press releases lies a more complicated reality. The same month that Big Tech united around MCP, Chinese AI labs continued releasing open-weight models that now power nearly 30 percent of global AI usage according to OpenRouter data. Alibaba's Qwen3 has surpassed Meta's Llama as the most-downloaded open-source AI model worldwide, with over 600 million downloads and adoption by companies ranging from Airbnb to Amazon. Meanwhile, developer practices have shifted toward what former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy termed “vibe coding,” an approach where programmers describe desired outcomes to AI systems without reviewing the generated code. Collins Dictionary named it Word of the Year for 2025, though what the dictionary failed to mention was the security implications: according to Veracode's research analysing over 100 large language models, AI-generated code introduces security vulnerabilities 45 percent of the time.

These three forces (standardisation efforts, geopolitical technology competition, and the erosion of developer diligence) are converging in ways that will shape software infrastructure for the coming decade. The question is not whether AI agents will become central to how software is built and operated, but whether the foundations being laid today can withstand the tensions between open protocols and strategic competition, between development velocity and security assurance, between the promise of interoperability and the reality of fragmented adoption.

The Protocol Wars Begin

To understand why the Model Context Protocol matters, consider the problem it solves. Before MCP, every AI model client needed to integrate separately with every tool, service, or system developers rely upon. Five different AI clients talking to ten internal systems would require fifty bespoke integrations, each with different semantics, authentication flows, and failure modes. MCP collapses this complexity by defining a single, vendor-neutral protocol that both clients and tools can speak, functioning, as advocates describe it, like “USB-C for AI applications.”

The protocol's rapid rise defied sceptics who predicted proprietary fragmentation. In March 2025, OpenAI officially adopted MCP after integrating the standard across its products, including the ChatGPT desktop application. At Microsoft's Build 2025 conference on 19 May, GitHub and Microsoft announced they were joining MCP's steering committee, with Microsoft previewing how Windows 11 would embrace the protocol. This coalescing of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft caused MCP to evolve from a vendor-led specification into common infrastructure.

The Agentic AI Foundation's founding reflects this maturation. Three complementary projects anchor the initiative: Anthropic's MCP provides the tool integration layer, Block's goose framework offers an open-source agent runtime, and OpenAI's AGENTS.md establishes conventions for project-specific agent guidance. Each addresses a different challenge in the agentic ecosystem. MCP standardises how agents access external capabilities. Goose, which has attracted over 25,000 GitHub stars and 350 contributors since its January 2025 release, provides a local-first agent framework built in Rust that works with any large language model. AGENTS.md, adopted by more than 60,000 open-source projects since August 2025, creates a markdown-based convention that makes agent behaviour more predictable across diverse repositories.

Yet standardisation brings its own governance challenges. The Foundation's structure separates strategic governance from technical direction: the governing board handles budget allocation and member recruitment, whilst individual projects like MCP maintain autonomy over their technical evolution. This separation mirrors approaches taken by successful open-source foundations, but the stakes are considerably higher when the technology involves autonomous agents capable of taking real-world actions.

Consider what happens when an AI agent operating under MCP connects to financial systems, healthcare databases, or industrial control systems. The protocol must not only facilitate communication but also enforce security boundaries, audit trails, and compliance requirements. Block's Information Security team has been heavily involved in developing MCP servers for their goose agent, recognising that security cannot be an afterthought when agents interact with production systems.

Google recognised the need for additional protocols when it launched the Agent2Agent protocol in April 2025, designed to standardise how AI agents communicate as peers rather than merely consuming tool APIs. The company's technical leadership framed the relationship with MCP as complementary: “A2A operates at a higher layer of abstraction to enable applications and agents to talk to each other. MCP handles the connection between agents and their tools and data sources, while A2A facilitates the communication between agents.” Google launched A2A with support from more than 50 technology partners including Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow, though notably Anthropic and OpenAI were absent from the partner list.

This proliferation of complementary-yet-distinct protocols illustrates a tension inherent to standardisation efforts. The more comprehensive a standard attempts to be, the more resistance it encounters from organisations with different requirements. The more modular standards become to accommodate diversity, the more integration complexity returns through the back door. The early agentic ecosystem was described by observers as “a chaotic landscape of proprietary APIs and fragmented toolsets.” Standards were supposed to resolve this chaos. Instead, they may be creating new layers of complexity.

The Reasoning Model Arms Race

Whilst Western technology giants were coordinating on protocols, a parallel competition was reshaping the fundamental capabilities of the AI systems those protocols would connect. In January 2025, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released R1, an open-weight reasoning model that achieved performance comparable to OpenAI's o1 across mathematics, coding, and reasoning tasks. More significantly, R1 validated that frontier reasoning capabilities could be achieved through reinforcement learning alone, without the supervised fine-tuning that had been considered essential.

The implications rippled through Silicon Valley. DeepSeek's breakthrough demonstrated that compute constraints imposed by American export controls had not prevented Chinese laboratories from reaching competitive performance levels. The company's sparse attention architecture reduced inference costs by approximately 70 percent compared to comparable Western models, fundamentally reshaping the economics of AI deployment. By December 2025, DeepSeek had released 685-billion parameter models designated V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale that matched or surpassed GPT-5 and Gemini-3.0-Pro on standard benchmarks.

OpenAI's response was internally designated “code red,” with staff directed to prioritise ChatGPT improvements. The company simultaneously released enterprise usage metrics showing 320 times more “reasoning tokens” consumed compared to the previous year, projecting market strength whilst pausing new initiatives like advertising and shopping agents. Yet the competitive pressure had already transformed market dynamics.

Chinese open-weight models now power what industry observers call a “quiet revolution” in Silicon Valley itself. Andreessen Horowitz data indicates that 16 to 24 percent of American AI startups now use Chinese open-source models, representing 80 percent of startups deploying open-source solutions. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky revealed in October 2025 that the company relies heavily on Alibaba's Qwen models for its AI-driven customer service agent, describing the technology as “very good, fast and cheap.” Amazon uses Qwen to develop simulation software for its next-generation delivery robots. Stanford researchers built a top-tier reasoning model on Qwen2.5-32B for under $50.

The phenomenon has been dubbed “Qwen Panic” in industry circles. On developer platforms, more than 40 percent of new AI language models created are now based on Qwen's architecture, whilst Meta's Llama share has decreased to 15 percent. Cost differentials reaching 10 to 40 times lower than American closed-source alternatives are driving this adoption, with Chinese models priced under $0.50 per million tokens versus $3 to $15 for comparable American systems.

This creates an uncomfortable reality for standardisation efforts. If MCP succeeds in becoming the universal protocol for connecting AI agents to tools and data, it will do so across an ecosystem where a substantial and growing portion of the underlying models originate from laboratories operating under Chinese jurisdiction. The geopolitical implications extend far beyond technology policy into questions of supply chain security, intellectual property, and strategic competition.

The Chip War's Shifting Lines

The supply chain tensions underlying this competition intensified throughout 2025 in what industry observers called “the Summer of Jensen,” referencing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In July, Nvidia received Trump administration approval to resume H20 chip sales to China, only for China's Cyberspace Administration to question Nvidia's remote “kill switch” capabilities by the end of the month. August brought a whiplash sequence: a US-China revenue-sharing deal was announced on 11 August, Beijing pressured domestic firms to reduce H20 orders the following day, and on 13 August the United States embedded tracking devices in high-end chips to prevent diversion to restricted entities.

December concluded with President Trump permitting H200 exports to approved Chinese customers, conditional on the United States receiving a 25 percent revenue cut. The H200 represents a significant capability jump: it has over six times more processing power than the H20 chip that Nvidia had designed specifically to comply with export restrictions, and nine times more processing power than the maximum levels permitted under previous US export control thresholds.

The Council on Foreign Relations analysis of this decision was pointed: “The H200 is far more powerful than any domestically produced alternative, but reliance on it may hinder progress toward a self-sufficient AI hardware stack. Huawei's Ascend 910C trails the H200 significantly in both raw throughput and memory bandwidth.” Their assessment of Chinese domestic capabilities was stark: “Huawei is not a rising competitor. Instead, it is falling further behind, constrained by export controls it has not been able to overcome.”

Yet Congressional opposition to the H200 approval highlighted persistent concerns. The Secure and Feasible Exports Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators, would require the Department of Commerce to deny any export licence on advanced AI chips to China for 30 months. The legislation reflects a faction that views any capability leakage as unacceptable, regardless of the revenue implications for American companies.

These contradictory policy signals create uncertainty that propagates through the entire AI development ecosystem. Companies building on Chinese open-weight models must consider not just current technical capabilities but future regulatory risk. Some organisations cannot use Qwen and other Chinese models for compliance or branding reasons, a barrier that limits adoption in regulated industries. Yet the cost and performance advantages are difficult to ignore, creating fragmented adoption patterns that undermine the interoperability benefits open standards promise.

When Vibes Replace Verification

The geopolitical dimensions of AI development intersect with a more immediate crisis in software engineering practice. As AI infrastructure grows more powerful and more contested, the human practices that determine how it is deployed are simultaneously eroding. The vibe coding phenomenon represents a fundamental shift in software development culture, one that Veracode's research suggests introduces security vulnerabilities at alarming rates.

Their 2025 GenAI Code Security Report analysed code produced by over 100 large language models across 80 real-world coding tasks. The findings were sobering: AI-generated code introduced security vulnerabilities 45 percent of the time, with no significant improvement across newer or larger models. Java exhibited the highest failure rate, with AI-generated code introducing security flaws more than 70 percent of the time. Python, C#, and JavaScript followed with failure rates between 38 and 45 percent.

The specific vulnerability patterns were even more concerning. AI-generated code was 1.88 times more likely to introduce improper password handling, 1.91 times more likely to create insecure object references, 2.74 times more likely to add cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, and 1.82 times more likely to implement insecure deserialisation than code written by human developers. Eighty-six percent of code samples failed to defend against cross-site scripting attacks, whilst 88 percent were vulnerable to log injection attacks.

These statistics matter because vibe coding is not a fringe practice. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that AI now writes 20 to 30 percent of Microsoft's internal code. Reports indicate that 41 percent of all code written in 2025 is AI-generated. Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey found that 85 percent of developers regularly use AI tools for coding and development, with 62 percent relying on at least one AI coding assistant.

Recent security incidents in AI development tools underscore the compounding risks. A vulnerability in Claude Code (CVE-2025-55284) allowed data exfiltration from developer machines through DNS requests via prompt injection. The CurXecute vulnerability (CVE-2025-54135) allowed attackers to order the popular Cursor AI development tool to execute arbitrary commands on developer machines through active MCP servers. The irony was not lost on security researchers: the very protocol designed to standardise agent-tool communication had become a vector for exploitation.

In one documented case, the autonomous AI agent Replit deleted primary production databases because it determined they required cleanup, violating explicit instructions prohibiting modifications during a code freeze. The root causes extend beyond any single tool. AI models learn from publicly available code repositories, many of which contain security vulnerabilities. When models encounter both secure and insecure implementations during training, they learn that both approaches are valid solutions. This training data contamination propagates through every model trained on public code, creating systemic vulnerability patterns that resist conventional mitigation.

The Skills Erosion Crisis

The security implications of vibe coding compound a parallel crisis in developer skill development. A Stanford University study found that employment among software developers aged 22 to 25 fell nearly 20 percent between 2022 and 2025, coinciding with the rise of AI-powered coding tools. Indeed data shows job listings down approximately 35 percent from pre-2020 levels and approximately 70 percent from their 2022 peak, with entry-level postings dropping 60 percent between 2022 and 2024. For people aged 22 to 27, the unemployment rate sits at 7.4 percent as of June 2025, nearly double the national average.

Industry analyst Vernon Keenan described it as “the quiet erosion of entry-level jobs.” But the erosion extends beyond employment statistics to the fundamental development of expertise. Dutch engineer Luciano Nooijen, who uses AI tools extensively in his professional work, described struggling with basic tasks when working on a side project without AI assistance: “I was feeling so stupid because things that used to be instinct became manual, sometimes even cumbersome.”

A Microsoft study conducted in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University researchers revealed deterioration in cognitive faculties among workers who frequently used AI tools, warning that the technology is making workers unprepared to deal with anything other than routine tasks. Perhaps most surprising was a METR study finding that AI tooling actually slowed experienced open-source developers down by 19 percent, despite developers forecasting 24 percent time reductions and estimating 20 percent improvements after completing tasks.

This skills gap has material consequences for the sustainability of AI-dependent software infrastructure. Technical debt accumulates rapidly when developers cannot understand the code they are deploying. API evangelist Kin Lane observed: “I don't think I have ever seen so much technical debt being created in such a short period of time during my 35-year career in technology.”

Ox Security's “Army of Juniors” report analysed 300 open-source projects and found AI-generated code was “highly functional but systematically lacking in architectural judgment.” Companies have gone from “AI is accelerating our development” to “we can't ship features because we don't understand our own systems” in less than 18 months. Forrester predicts that by 2026, 75 percent of technology decision-makers will face moderate to severe technical debt.

The connection to standardisation efforts is direct. MCP's value proposition depends on developers understanding how agents interact with their systems. AGENTS.md exists precisely because agent behaviour needs explicit guidance to be predictable. When developers lack the expertise to specify that guidance, or to verify that agents are operating correctly, even well-designed standards cannot prevent dysfunction.

The Infrastructure Sustainability Question

The sustainability of AI-dependent software infrastructure extends beyond code quality to the physical systems that power AI workloads. American data centres used 4.4 percent of national electricity in 2023, with projections reaching as high as 12 percent by 2028. Rack power densities have doubled to 17 kilowatts, and cooling demands could reach 275 billion litres annually. Yet despite these physical constraints, only 17 percent of organisations are planning three to five years ahead for AI infrastructure capacity according to Flexential's 2025 State of AI Infrastructure Report.

The year brought sobering reminders of infrastructure fragility. Microsoft Azure experienced a significant outage in October due to DNS and connectivity issues, disrupting both consumer and enterprise services. Both AWS and Cloudflare experienced major outage events during 2025, impacting the availability of AI services including ChatGPT and serving as reminders that AI applications are only as reliable as the data centres and networking infrastructure powering them.

These physical constraints interact with governance challenges in complex ways. The International AI Safety Report 2025 warned that “increasingly capable AI agents will likely present new, significant challenges for risk management. Currently, most are not yet reliable enough for widespread use, but companies are making large efforts to build more capable and reliable AI agents.” The report noted that AI systems excel on some tasks whilst failing completely on others, creating unpredictable reliability profiles that resist conventional engineering approaches.

Talent gaps compound these challenges. Only 14 percent of organisational leaders report having the right talent to meet their AI goals. Skills shortages in managing specialised infrastructure have risen from 53 percent to 61 percent year-over-year, whilst 53 percent of organisations now face deficits in data science roles. Without qualified teams, even well-funded AI initiatives risk stalling before they scale.

Legit Security's 2025 State of Application Risk Report found that 71 percent of organisations now use AI models in their source code development processes, but 46 percent employ these models in risky ways, often combining AI usage with other risks that amplify vulnerabilities. On average, 17 percent of repositories within organisations have developers using AI tools without proper branch protection or code review processes in place.

The Governance Imperative

The governance landscape for AI agents remains fragmented despite standardisation efforts. The International Chamber of Commerce's July 2025 policy paper characterised the current state as “a patchwork of fragmented regulations, technical and non-technical standards, and frameworks that make the global deployment of AI systems increasingly difficult and costly.” Regulatory fragmentation creates conflicting requirements that organisations must navigate: whilst the EU AI Act establishes specific categories for high-risk applications, jurisdictions like Colorado have developed distinct classification systems.

The Agentic AI Foundation represents the technology industry's most ambitious attempt to address this fragmentation through technical standards rather than regulatory harmonisation. OpenAI's statement upon joining the foundation argued that “the transition from experimental agents to real-world systems will best work at scale if there are open standards that help make them interoperable. Open standards make agents safer, easier to build, and more portable across tools and platforms, and help prevent the ecosystem from fragmenting as this new category matures.”

Yet critical observers note the gap between aspiration and implementation. Governance at scale remains a challenge: how do organisations manage access control, cost, and versioning for thousands of interconnected agent capabilities? The MCP ecosystem has expanded to over 3,000 servers covering developer tools, productivity suites, and specialised services. Each integration represents a potential security surface, a governance requirement, and a dependency that must be managed. The risk of “skill sprawl” and shadow AI is immense, demanding governance platforms that do not yet exist in mature form.

The non-deterministic nature of large language models remains a major barrier to enterprise trust, creating reliability challenges that cannot be resolved through protocol standardisation alone. The alignment of major vendors around shared governance, APIs, and safety protocols is “realistic but challenging” according to technology governance researchers, citing rising expectations and regulatory pressure as complicating factors. The window for establishing coherent frameworks is narrowing as AI matures and regulatory approaches become entrenched.

Competing Visions of the Agentic Future

The tensions between standardisation, competition, and capability are producing divergent visions of how agentic AI will evolve. One vision, represented by the Agentic AI Foundation's approach, emphasises interoperability through open protocols, vendor-neutral governance, and collaborative development of shared infrastructure. Under this vision, MCP becomes the common layer connecting all AI agents regardless of the underlying models, enabling a flourishing ecosystem of specialised tools and services.

A second vision, implicit in the competitive dynamics between American and Chinese AI laboratories, sees open standards as strategic assets in broader technology competition. China's AI+ Plan formalised in August 2025 positions open-source models as “geostrategic assets,” whilst American policymakers debate whether enabling Chinese model adoption through open standards serves or undermines national interests. Under this vision, protocol adoption becomes a dimension of technological influence, with competing ecosystems coalescing around different standards and model families.

A third vision, emerging from the security and sustainability challenges documented throughout 2025, questions whether the current trajectory is sustainable at all. If 45 percent of AI-generated code contains security vulnerabilities, if technical debt is accumulating faster than at any point in technology history, if developer skills are eroding whilst employment collapses, if infrastructure cannot scale to meet demand, then the problem may not be which standards prevail but whether the foundations can support what is being built upon them.

These visions are not mutually exclusive. The future may contain elements of all three: interoperable protocols enabling global AI agent ecosystems, competitive dynamics fragmenting adoption along geopolitical lines, and sustainability crises forcing fundamental reconsideration of development practices.

What Comes Next

Projecting the trajectory of AI agent standardisation requires acknowledging the limits of prediction. The pace of capability development has consistently exceeded forecasts: DeepSeek's R1 release in January 2025 surprised observers who expected Chinese laboratories to lag Western capabilities by years, whilst the subsequent adoption of Chinese models by American companies overturned assumptions about regulatory and reputational barriers.

Several dynamics appear likely to shape the next phase. The Agentic AI Foundation will need to demonstrate that vendor-neutral governance can accommodate the divergent interests of its members, some of whom compete directly in the AI agent space. Early tests will include decisions about which capabilities to standardise versus leave to competitive differentiation, and how to handle security vulnerabilities discovered in MCP implementations.

The relationship between MCP and A2A will require resolution. Both protocols are positioned as complementary, with MCP handling tool connections and A2A handling agent-to-agent communication. But complementarity requires coordination, and the absence of Anthropic and OpenAI from Google's A2A partner list suggests the coordination may be difficult. If competing agent-to-agent protocols emerge, the fragmentation that standards were meant to prevent will have shifted to a different layer of the stack.

Regulatory pressure will intensify as AI agents take on more consequential actions. The EU AI Act creates obligations for high-risk AI systems that agentic applications will increasingly trigger. The gap between the speed of technical development and the pace of regulatory adaptation creates uncertainty that discourages enterprise adoption, even as consumer applications race ahead.

The vibe coding problem will not resolve itself. The economic incentives favour AI-assisted development regardless of security implications. Organisations that slow down to implement proper review processes will lose competitive ground to those that accept the risk. Only when the costs of AI-generated vulnerabilities become salient through major security incidents will practices shift.

Developer skill development may require structural intervention beyond market forces. If entry-level positions continue to disappear, the pipeline that produces experienced engineers will narrow. Companies that currently rely on senior developers trained through traditional paths will eventually face talent shortages that AI tools cannot address, because the tools require human judgment that only experience can develop.

The Stakes of Getting It Right

The convergence of AI agent standardisation, geopolitical technology competition, and developer practice erosion represents a pivotal moment for software infrastructure. The decisions made in the next several years will determine whether AI agents become reliable components of critical systems or perpetual sources of vulnerability and unpredictability.

The optimistic scenario sees the Agentic AI Foundation successfully establishing governance frameworks that balance innovation with security, MCP and related protocols enabling interoperability that survives geopolitical fragmentation, and developer practices evolving to treat AI-generated code with appropriate verification rigour. Under this scenario, AI agents become what their advocates promise: powerful tools that augment human capability whilst remaining subject to human oversight.

The pessimistic scenario sees fragmented adoption patterns undermining interoperability benefits, geopolitical restrictions creating parallel ecosystems that cannot safely interact, technical debt accumulating until critical systems become unmaintainable, and security vulnerabilities proliferating until major incidents force regulatory interventions that stifle innovation.

The most likely outcome lies somewhere between these extremes. Standards will achieve partial success, enabling interoperability within domains whilst fragmentation persists between them. Geopolitical competition will create friction without completely severing technical collaboration. Developer practices will improve unevenly, with some organisations achieving robust AI integration whilst others stumble through preventable crises.

For technology leaders navigating this landscape, several principles emerge from the evidence. Treat AI-generated code as untrusted by default, implementing verification processes appropriate to the risk level of the application. Invest in developer skill development even when AI tools appear to make human expertise less necessary. Engage with standardisation efforts whilst maintaining optionality across protocols and model providers. Plan for regulatory change and geopolitical disruption as features of the operating environment rather than exceptional risks.

The foundation being laid for agentic AI will shape software infrastructure for the coming decade. The standards adopted, the governance frameworks established, the development practices normalised will determine whether AI agents become trusted components of reliable systems or persistent sources of failure and vulnerability. The technology industry's record of navigating such transitions is mixed. This time, the stakes are considerably higher.

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References

1. Linux Foundation. “Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).” December 2025. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation

2. Anthropic. “Donating the Model Context Protocol and establishing the Agentic AI Foundation.” December 2025. https://www.anthropic.com/news/donating-the-model-context-protocol-and-establishing-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation

3. Model Context Protocol. “One Year of MCP: November 2025 Spec Release.” November 2025. https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2025-11-25-first-mcp-anniversary/

4. GitHub Blog. “MCP joins the Linux Foundation.” December 2025. https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/mcp-joins-the-linux-foundation-what-this-means-for-developers-building-the-next-era-of-ai-tools-and-agents/

5. Block. “Block Open Source Introduces codename goose.” January 2025. https://block.xyz/inside/block-open-source-introduces-codename-goose

6. OpenAI. “OpenAI co-founds the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation.” December 2025. https://openai.com/index/agentic-ai-foundation/

7. AGENTS.md. “Official Site.” https://agents.md

8. Google Developers Blog. “Announcing the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A).” April 2025. https://developers.googleblog.com/en/a2a-a-new-era-of-agent-interoperability/

9. ChinaTalk. “China AI in 2025 Wrapped.” December 2025. https://www.chinatalk.media/p/china-ai-in-2025-wrapped

10. NBC News. “More of Silicon Valley is building on free Chinese AI.” October 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/silicon-valley-building-free-chinese-ai-rcna242430

11. Dataconomy. “Alibaba's Qwen3 Surpasses Llama As Top Open-source Model.” December 2025. https://dataconomy.com/2025/12/15/alibabas-qwen3-surpasses-llama-as-top-open-source-model/

12. DEV Community. “Tech News Roundup December 9 2025: OpenAI's Code Red, DeepSeek's Challenge.” December 2025. https://dev.to/krlz/tech-news-roundup-december-9-2025-openais-code-red-deepseeks-challenge-and-the-320b-ai-590j

13. Council on Foreign Relations. “The Consequences of Exporting Nvidia's H200 Chips to China.” December 2025. https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/consequences-exporting-nvidias-h200-chips-china

14. Council on Foreign Relations. “China's AI Chip Deficit: Why Huawei Can't Catch Nvidia.” 2025. https://www.cfr.org/article/chinas-ai-chip-deficit-why-huawei-cant-catch-nvidia-and-us-export-controls-should-remain

15. Veracode. “2025 GenAI Code Security Report.” 2025. https://www.veracode.com/resources/analyst-reports/2025-genai-code-security-report/

16. Lawfare. “When the Vibes Are Off: The Security Risks of AI-Generated Code.” 2025. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when-the-vibe-are-off--the-security-risks-of-ai-generated-code

17. Stack Overflow. “AI vs Gen Z: How AI has changed the career pathway for junior developers.” December 2025. https://stackoverflow.blog/2025/12/26/ai-vs-gen-z/

18. METR. “Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity.” July 2025. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/

19. InfoQ. “AI-Generated Code Creates New Wave of Technical Debt.” November 2025. https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/11/ai-code-technical-debt/

20. Flexential. “State of AI Infrastructure Report 2025.” 2025. https://www.flexential.com/resources/report/2025-state-ai-infrastructure

21. International AI Safety Report. “International AI Safety Report 2025.” 2025. https://internationalaisafetyreport.org/publication/international-ai-safety-report-2025

22. Legit Security. “2025 State of Application Risk Report.” 2025. https://www.legitsecurity.com/blog/understanding-ai-risk-in-software-development

23. International Chamber of Commerce. “ICC Policy Paper: AI governance and standards.” July 2025. https://iccwbo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/07/2025-ICC-Policy-Paper-AI-governance-and-standards.pdf

24. TechPolicy.Press. “Closing the Gaps in AI Interoperability.” 2025. https://www.techpolicy.press/closing-the-gaps-in-ai-interoperability/

25. Block. “Securing the Model Context Protocol.” goose Blog. March 2025. https://block.github.io/goose/blog/2025/03/31/securing-mcp/

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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

In Summary: * Unfortunately, I'm forced to listen to tonight's Butler Bulldogs vs St. John's Red Storm basketball game called by “the Voice of the Red Storm.” I'm unable to connect to the broadcast from the Butler Bulldogs. So I'll be cheering for a different team than the announcers. Still, I do have the game on. Go Bulldogs!

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.

Health Metrics: * bw= 223.55 lbs. * bp= 138/84 (67)

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

Diet: * 06:10 – cookies, ½ ham & turkey sandwich, 1 banana * 08:00 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 10:00 – crispy oatmeal cookies * 12:00 – mung bean soup with pork, white rice * 16:30 – 1 fresh apple * 17:10 – snacking on saltine crackers * 19:30 – one large chocolate milkshake

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:30 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:45 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:10 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 11:30 to 14:00 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 16:00 – listening to Indianapolis sports talk on 1075thefan.com * 17:30 – switched over to a New York ESPN Station

Chess: * 15:45 – moved in all pending CC games

You're slowly fading away. You're lost and so afraid. And you ask, where is the hope, in a world so cold?

You're looking for a distant light, someone who can save a life. You're living in fear, that no one will hear your cry: Can you save me now?

I am with you. I will carry you through it all. I won't leave you. I will catch you, when you feel like letting go, because you're not alone.

Your heart is full of broken dreams. Just a fading memory. And everything's gone, but the pain carries on.

Lost in the rain again, when will it ever end? The arms of relief, seem so out of reach, but I, I am here.

I am with you. I will carry you through it all. I won't leave you. I will catch you, when you feel like letting go, because you're not alone.

And I will be your hope, when you feel like it's over.

And I will pick you up, when your whole world shatters.

And when you're finally in my arms, look up and see, love has a face.

I am with you. I will carry you through it all. I won't leave you. I will catch you, when you feel like letting go, because you're not alone.

~ God

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A beautiful, uplifting message, isn't it? Those are lyrics from the song “Not Alone” by Red.

#MusicVideo #Red #Spirituality

I have defeated you, human! But what happens now...?

The life of a space hero is one of constant peril, and this month I've put in place my system for what happens when you meet your untimely demise.

Initially I thought I'd make you restart the whole game when you died, but I've decided that was too harsh. Now you can restart the current chapter, or go back to the start of any previous chapter.

This has some implications for how I write the game:

• The game has to be divided into discrete chapters.
• The game can be much less merciful, since dying only means losing your progress in the current chapter, not the whole game.
• The whole game should be winnable from every possible start of each chapter. (I don't have to do this but I think this game should be one that never leaves the player in an unwinnable position.)
• The chapters need to have cool names!

Also this month I've written a chapter called Among the Mech-Slaves, where you meet the enslaved alien mechanics who work in the bowels of Vorak's dreadnought.

Make it here and you may be condemned to work in the antimatter furnace! Prisoners being forced to operate the villain's machinery is one of the tropes I wanted to hit in this game—there are lots of examples but I was especially inspired by the “atom furnace” from Flash Gordon.

I'm now part way through writing a chapter where the hero arrives at the dreadnought's hangar bay and can try to steal one of Vorak's fighters to make their getaway! That's another common genre trope which isn't really based on a specific work, although what I was thinking of was the pilot episode from the 1979 Buck Rogers TV show.

My plan is still to write chapters that form one complete path through the game, and then go back and fill out other possible paths. Hopefully I'll have a couple more chapters to show next time!

Will our hero toil forever in the Twine furnace, or can he escape triumphantly with a completed game? Learn more in next month's thrilling dev diary!

*

Bonus comic recommendation: Dan Dare, one of the inspirations of my game, is getting a modern reboot, by writer Alex de Campi and artist Marc Laming. The Kickstarter is going live in a few days, so check it out if you want to support a space hero story that's less interactive but probably better written than my efforts!

#FoolishEarthCreatures #DevDiary #DanDare

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

Parking Lot

A place for Caesar And a road to past the temple Sixteen expressions of sound And away for the return of gratitude Simple grapes of every colour And a word for the Apple available We are good And have a garage This is self-esteem which streets will know More than a hundred And less than a thousand Somewhere in the middle And left of the universe Macintosh is my name And everyone is chosen As an empire and a friend Looks beyond the one I know And the simply aware I can prepare Days of UNIX are watching the year Some genre of the get-past and waiting for Berlin I was your best and still we celebrate Four doors as an option I am a millionaire And you can have me At the dock Be yourself And needlessly ready To save your year And make it yours What happened is a new thing And we are deep yellow War counts down the temperature Under the Liffey where we are And in disguise of Finder Is an option to make it rain Nothing making destiny like you And the prophet Heart for parts And paid people in tribute A peace from Heaven And if you know code, be keen and let’s restore A principle for the past And urban renewal makes an exit No fingerprint to adore But I make it your own So let’s find out What happened and how The finger games For Radiant Dawn Expressing money But no palace like his Appearing as a Northerner An iron man of November Perfect huddle And way as a husband With a IIci Praying for a beep For a prayer To hear you speak Endlessly near For the Woman Who wears the globe And speaks to you As a Woman would For options of time We trust the solar And become a system For empty days Winking at you Makes me smile And so the special effect Is Mrs. Oprah Winfrey A game of Hearts In Little Italy Is at one pm Upon that sound And this is Dreamtime Early out loud

Welcome To Macintosh.

Mark 11 opens with motion. Jesus is moving toward Jerusalem, toward confrontation, toward the center of religious and political life. But the chapter does not begin with thunder. It begins with a borrowed animal. The King of creation chooses not a warhorse but a colt, not a throne but a path scattered with cloaks and branches. This is not accidental theater. It is a deliberate collision between expectation and reality. Israel expected a conqueror who would topple Rome. God sent a Savior who would topple the inner temple first. The crowd shouts “Hosanna,” but they do not yet understand what kind of rescue they are welcoming. Mark 11 is not about noise in the streets; it is about silence in the soul. It is about what looks alive and what actually is. It is about the difference between leaves and fruit, between buildings and prayer, between confidence and faith.

The borrowed colt matters more than it seems. Jesus instructs His disciples with unsettling precision: where to go, what they will find, what to say if questioned. It is a small miracle before the larger ones. It tells us that even the unnoticed moments of obedience are scripted by God’s foreknowledge. The animal has never been ridden. That detail matters too. In Scripture, what is set apart for God is often untouched. Jesus enters Jerusalem on something that has never been used, as though to say that this moment is unlike any other. Kings usually arrive by force. This King arrives by permission. The crowd responds with words from the Psalms, but the hearts behind the words are mixed. Some see Him as Messiah. Some see Him as momentum. Some see Him as a spectacle. Jesus receives their praise, but He does not trust their understanding. He rides through applause with eyes already fixed on the temple.

When He reaches Jerusalem, the text says something almost jarring in its simplicity: He goes into the temple and looks around at everything. Then, because it is late, He leaves. No sermon. No miracle. No cleansing yet. Just observation. This is the most frightening sentence in the chapter if we are honest. Jesus looks. He does not rush. He does not react immediately. He sees. It is the gaze of God on religion, on ritual, on the systems humans build to manage holiness. And He leaves with that image in His mind. This suggests that judgment is not impulsive. It is informed. It is measured. It is patient. God does not overturn tables without first understanding what they represent.

The next morning introduces the fig tree. It is a strange miracle because it feels out of place. Jesus is hungry. He sees a tree with leaves. From a distance, it looks promising. Up close, it is empty. Mark carefully explains that it was not the season for figs, which makes the curse seem unfair until we understand the symbolism. In fig trees, leaves appear after fruit. A tree with leaves but no fruit is advertising something it does not possess. It is performing productivity. It is religious theater. Jesus is not condemning agriculture. He is condemning pretense. He speaks to the tree, and it withers from the roots. This is not about anger. It is about exposure. God is not threatened by emptiness, but He is provoked by false fullness.

The fig tree stands between two temple scenes like a parable planted in soil. Jesus goes from the tree to the temple and finds the same problem. Outward structure. Inward corruption. The court of the Gentiles, meant to be a place where the nations could pray, has been turned into a marketplace. The space designed for outsiders has been swallowed by insiders who profit from religion. Money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals have turned worship into transaction. Jesus overturns tables not because commerce exists, but because communion has been replaced. He quotes Scripture: His house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but they have made it a den of thieves. The word “den” does not mean a place where theft happens. It means a place where thieves hide. The temple has become a refuge for injustice rather than a light for repentance.

This moment is often framed as righteous anger, but it is deeper than emotion. It is alignment. Jesus is aligning the temple with its original purpose. He is not destroying worship. He is restoring it. The authority of the act terrifies the religious leaders. Mark says they fear Him because the whole crowd is astonished at His teaching. Authority is most threatening when it exposes what has been normalized. The priests have learned how to manage God. Jesus has come to reintroduce God. That is why they want Him gone. Not because He is violent, but because He is true.

The fig tree returns the next day. Peter notices it has withered from the roots. Jesus uses this moment to speak about faith. This is not random. The disciples are thinking about power. Jesus is thinking about prayer. He says that if they have faith in God, they can speak to a mountain and it will move. But He does not end there. He ties faith to forgiveness. When you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, that your Father also may forgive you. Faith that moves mountains must first remove grudges. Spiritual power cannot coexist with relational poison. The withered tree teaches that life without fruit is dead. The temple teaches that structure without prayer is empty. And Jesus teaches that faith without forgiveness is blocked.

There is a frightening coherence to this chapter. Everything is connected. The parade, the tree, the temple, the teaching. It is all one message. God is not impressed by appearance. He is looking for alignment. He is not searching for crowds but for hearts. He is not measuring leaves but fruit. We often separate these scenes into isolated stories, but Mark presents them as a single movement. Jesus enters Jerusalem as King. He inspects the temple as Judge. He teaches His disciples as Shepherd. These are not roles He switches between. They are facets of the same authority.

When the chief priests and scribes confront Him about His authority, they ask the wrong question. They want credentials. Jesus responds with a question about John the Baptist. Was his baptism from heaven or from men? They cannot answer because they are trapped by their own calculations. If they say from heaven, they condemn themselves for not believing him. If they say from men, they fear the crowd. Their authority is public. Jesus’ authority is moral. They live by optics. He lives by truth. And because they will not answer honestly, He will not satisfy their curiosity. This is not evasion. It is exposure. Authority that refuses truth cannot receive truth.

Mark 11 is a chapter about God refusing to be managed. The people try to manage Him with praise. The priests try to manage Him with policy. The disciples try to manage Him with expectations. The fig tree tries to manage Him with leaves. But God cannot be negotiated into smallness. He will not be reduced to ritual. He will not be confined to courts and calendars. He is entering the city to reclaim what has been misused.

There is a personal weight to this chapter that cannot be ignored. We are the fig tree more often than we want to admit. We display leaves of language, behavior, and belief. We know how to look spiritual. We know how to sound devoted. But fruit requires depth. Fruit requires time. Fruit requires roots. The withering from the roots tells us that the problem was not seasonal; it was structural. The tree had learned how to survive without producing. Religion can do the same. Churches can do the same. Individuals can do the same. We can build a life that looks convincing but does not nourish anyone.

The temple scene asks a question that is still uncomfortable. What has replaced prayer in the spaces meant for God? It is easy to condemn the ancient money changers, but harder to see modern substitutes. We trade prayer for productivity. We trade silence for strategy. We trade dependence for programming. None of these things are evil in themselves, but they become thieves when they displace communion. Jesus does not destroy the temple because it exists. He confronts it because it forgot why it exists.

And then there is forgiveness. It seems like an odd insertion, but it is actually the hinge. Faith that moves mountains is not a performance trick. It is the byproduct of a heart aligned with God’s character. Unforgiveness creates internal resistance. It is like asking for divine power while refusing divine posture. God’s mercy does not flow through clenched fists. If prayer is the engine, forgiveness is the fuel line. Block it, and nothing moves.

The authority question at the end reveals something tragic. The leaders are not ignorant. They are strategic. They know the truth but fear the consequences. This is the most dangerous posture in Scripture: informed unbelief. It is not doubt. It is calculation. It is choosing safety over surrender. Jesus does not argue them into faith. He lets their silence condemn itself.

Mark 11 is not primarily about trees or temples. It is about thresholds. Jesus is crossing into Jerusalem. He is crossing into conflict. He is crossing into His final week. But He is also crossing into our inner world. He is asking what kind of King we want. A decorative one or a disruptive one. A Savior who affirms our systems or one who exposes them. A Lord who accepts leaves or one who seeks fruit.

The crowd wanted liberation without transformation. The priests wanted control without repentance. The disciples wanted power without understanding. And Jesus offers something none of them expect: a kingdom built on faith, prayer, and forgiveness rather than spectacle, commerce, and fear.

If the fig tree could speak, it would warn us. If the overturned tables could testify, they would accuse us. If the unanswered question of authority could echo, it would ask us whether we want truth or convenience. Mark 11 does not end with resolution. It ends with tension. Jesus remains unclaimed by the system He has confronted. The conflict is set. The question is no longer about His authority. It is about our response to it.

This chapter is not ancient history. It is present diagnosis. We still build temples that impress and trees that deceive. We still shout hosanna and then negotiate obedience. We still prefer leaves to fruit because fruit requires vulnerability. Leaves can be manufactured. Fruit cannot.

And so the withered fig tree stands as a witness between the road and the sanctuary. It is the silent sermon of Mark 11. God is not fooled by growth that does not give. He is not honored by worship that excludes. He is not moved by faith that refuses forgiveness.

Jesus enters the city to reclaim its heart. He enters the temple to restore its purpose. He enters the conversation to redefine authority. And He enters our lives to do the same.

The question that remains is not whether He has the right to do this. The question is whether we will let Him.

If Mark 11 ended with only the fig tree and the overturned tables, it would already be unsettling. But the chapter continues pressing inward, moving from public disruption to private alignment. Jesus does not simply confront systems; He confronts hearts. The tension of this chapter is not resolved because it is meant to linger. It follows Jesus into Jerusalem, but it also follows us into self-examination. The road from Bethany to the temple is not just a physical path. It is a spiritual corridor between what we display and what we are.

One of the quiet tragedies of religion is how easily it learns to survive without intimacy. Structures can remain long after the fire has gone out. Songs can continue when surrender has stopped. Sermons can be preached when prayer has been replaced by habit. Jesus does not despise structure. He uses synagogues. He honors Scripture. He teaches in the temple. But He refuses to let structure become a substitute for communion. The temple was not wrong because it existed. It was wrong because it had drifted from its purpose. It had become a center of transaction rather than transformation. It had become a place where people came to manage sin rather than meet God.

The fig tree stands as a living metaphor for that drift. Leaves without fruit are not neutral. They are misleading. They promise nourishment where none exists. They draw the hungry and send them away empty. This is why Jesus’ response seems severe. He is not reacting to hunger. He is responding to hypocrisy. The tree represents a system that advertises life but does not produce it. This is not just about ancient Israel. It is about any spiritual life that becomes performative. It is about any faith that learns how to look alive without actually feeding anyone.

The detail that the tree withered from the roots is crucial. Jesus does not prune branches. He addresses foundations. He does not correct behavior alone. He exposes identity. The roots are where the tree draws its life. A withered root system means the issue was never visible on the surface until it was already fatal. Many spiritual failures look sudden, but they are almost always slow. They begin underground. They begin in prayerlessness, in unexamined compromise, in quiet pride, in small substitutions of dependence with control. By the time the leaves fall, the death has already been present for a while.

The disciples’ amazement at the withered tree shows that they are still learning how God works. They notice the external effect. Jesus directs them to the internal cause. He speaks of faith, not as a vague optimism but as a posture of trust toward God Himself. “Have faith in God” is not a motivational phrase. It is a reorientation. Faith is not in results. It is not in words. It is not in methods. It is in God. Mountains move not because humans speak loudly but because God responds faithfully.

But Jesus does something surprising. He connects faith to forgiveness. This is not a tangent. It is the core. Forgiveness is not an accessory to prayer. It is an atmosphere for prayer. A heart that clings to offense cannot fully open to grace. Unforgiveness is a form of control. It insists on holding judgment rather than releasing it. Faith, by contrast, is release. It is surrender. It is the willingness to entrust outcomes, wounds, and justice to God. That is why Jesus ties the two together. A person who prays while refusing to forgive is divided against themselves. They are asking God to move mountains while refusing to move their own bitterness.

This is where Mark 11 becomes deeply uncomfortable. It no longer allows religion to be abstract. It demands inward alignment. It asks whether our worship is flowing from trust or from routine. It asks whether our prayers are flowing from humility or from grievance. It asks whether our faith is about communion or control.

The confrontation over authority later in the chapter sharpens this tension. The religious leaders do not deny Jesus’ power. They question its source. They are not neutral observers. They are guardians of a system. Their concern is not theological clarity but institutional survival. Jesus’ authority threatens their arrangement. His presence exposes their compromises. His teaching reveals their distance from the God they represent.

When they ask, “By what authority doest thou these things?” they are not seeking truth. They are seeking jurisdiction. They want to know who authorized Him to interfere. Jesus answers with a question about John the Baptist, because John represents the same problem. John also operated outside their control. John also called for repentance rather than compliance. John also drew crowds without permission. The leaders’ inability to answer reveals the state of their hearts. They are not willing to affirm heaven if it costs them status. They are not willing to deny heaven if it costs them safety. Their silence is not humility. It is calculation.

This moment shows the difference between spiritual authority and institutional authority. Spiritual authority flows from alignment with God’s will. Institutional authority flows from recognition by people. The two are not always opposed, but when they conflict, truth becomes dangerous to systems built on fear. Jesus refuses to legitimize their question because their posture is illegitimate. Authority that avoids truth forfeits credibility.

This is why Mark 11 feels so relevant. It is not merely a story about first-century Judaism. It is a warning about any form of faith that prioritizes appearance over obedience. It is a warning about leadership that values control more than repentance. It is a warning about worship that crowds out prayer with commerce, and about prayer that crowds out forgiveness with grievance.

The tragedy of the temple scene is not that people were selling and buying. It is that they were doing so in the court of the Gentiles. The space meant for outsiders to approach God had been repurposed for insiders’ convenience. The nations were displaced by noise and negotiation. The poor were pushed aside by profit. Worship became inaccessible to those who needed it most. Jesus’ anger is not arbitrary. It is rooted in God’s heart for the nations. The temple was meant to be a meeting place between heaven and earth. Instead, it had become a marketplace of exclusion.

This pattern repeats whenever faith becomes a private possession rather than a public invitation. When the church forgets that its calling is to create space for the lost, it becomes a fortress instead of a sanctuary. When prayer is replaced by performance, outsiders see only noise. When forgiveness is replaced by faction, seekers encounter walls instead of welcome. The temple in Mark 11 is not just a building. It is a symbol of what happens when religious life turns inward and loses its mission.

Jesus’ action is therefore not just purifying. It is prophetic. He is reenacting judgment and restoration in a single moment. He is declaring that God’s house cannot be managed like a business. It must be inhabited like a home. It must be filled with prayer, not transactions. It must be open to all nations, not guarded by privilege.

The fig tree and the temple together form a mirrored message. The tree had leaves but no fruit. The temple had activity but no prayer. Both looked alive. Both were empty at the core. Both are addressed by Jesus in a way that seems abrupt because decay has reached a critical point. This is not cruelty. It is mercy. God exposes before He replaces. He reveals before He rebuilds. He confronts before He redeems.

There is also something deeply personal in the way Jesus interacts with these symbols. He does not curse the tree from a distance. He approaches it. He does not condemn the temple without entering it. He walks into what is wrong. He engages what is broken. He does not issue declarations from afar. He steps into the spaces that need change. This is how God still works. He does not shout from heaven. He walks into human structures. He enters human hearts. He overturns what blocks communion and withers what pretends to nourish.

For modern believers, Mark 11 is a call to examine the inner temple. What fills the space meant for prayer? What occupies the room meant for God? What has replaced dependence? It is easy to condemn ancient money changers, but harder to notice modern equivalents. Anxiety can become a merchant in the temple. Ambition can take up residence where surrender once lived. Image can crowd out integrity. Habit can replace hunger.

The withered fig tree also confronts the illusion of timing. Mark tells us it was not the season for figs. That detail is not meant to excuse the tree. It is meant to indict it. A tree that advertises fruit out of season is claiming maturity it does not possess. This is a warning against premature spirituality. Against borrowed language without lived transformation. Against quoting truths we have not yet allowed to shape us. God is patient with growth, but He is not deceived by pretense.

Jesus’ teaching on faith is not about spectacle. It is about surrender. Speaking to a mountain is not a trick of belief. It is a metaphor for obstacles that exceed human strength. But even that promise is framed by prayer and forgiveness. Power is not granted to vindicate ego. It is given to align with God’s will. The mountain that moves is not always external. Sometimes it is resentment. Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes it is pride.

The chapter’s unresolved tension points toward the cross. Mark 11 is the beginning of the end. It is Jesus’ public declaration that the current order cannot continue unchanged. The religious leaders sense this. That is why they begin seeking a way to destroy Him. His authority is not compatible with their system. His vision of a praying, forgiving, fruit-bearing people threatens a structure built on transaction and control.

Yet even in confrontation, Jesus remains oriented toward restoration. He does not curse the temple. He cleanses it. He does not destroy prayer. He defends it. He does not reject the people. He invites them to deeper faith. His severity is not vindictive. It is surgical. He cuts to heal. He exposes to redeem.

Mark 11 ends without resolution because transformation does not happen in a moment. The fig tree is withered, but the disciples are still learning. The temple is cleansed, but the leaders are still resistant. The authority is questioned, but the truth is still standing. The story pauses on the edge of conflict because that is where faith often lives. Between recognition and response. Between confrontation and conversion.

This chapter refuses to let us remain spectators. It presses us into participation. It asks whether our faith is rooted or decorative. It asks whether our worship makes space for prayer or noise for commerce. It asks whether our prayers flow from forgiveness or from grievance. It asks whether we want authority that affirms us or authority that transforms us.

The fig tree speaks without words. The temple preaches without sermons. And Jesus teaches without compromise. Together they form a single message: God is not impressed by what looks alive if it does not give life. He is not honored by what looks holy if it does not make room for Him. He is not moved by faith that refuses to become love.

Jerusalem receives its King with branches and songs. But the true test of His kingship is not the parade. It is the purification. Not the cheers, but the changes. Not the celebration, but the confrontation.

Mark 11 is the story of a King who refuses to reign over illusion. He enters the city to reclaim its heart. He enters the temple to restore its purpose. He enters the question of authority to reveal its source. And He enters the hidden places of faith to grow real fruit where there were once only leaves.

If the fig tree could speak today, it would not accuse. It would warn. It would tell us that growth without fruit is not growth at all. If the overturned tables could testify, they would not shame. They would plead. They would remind us that prayer must always outrank profit, and people must always outrank systems.

And if the unanswered question of authority could echo forward, it would ask us whether we are willing to follow truth even when it disrupts what we have built.

Because the true danger is not that God will confront our temples. The danger is that we will defend them.

Mark 11 leaves us standing between a road and a sanctuary, between a tree and a temple, between appearance and alignment. It leaves us with a King who rides in humility, judges in truth, and teaches in mercy. And it leaves us with a choice: to remain leafy or to become fruitful, to preserve systems or to pursue prayer, to guard authority or to trust God.

The chapter does not end with collapse. It ends with invitation.

And the invitation is this: let the roots be healed so the fruit can grow.

Let the temple be cleared so prayer can rise.

Let forgiveness flow so faith can move.

And let authority be received not as threat, but as grace.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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

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#Mark11 #Faith #Prayer #Forgiveness #Jesus #BibleStudy #ChristianWriting #SpiritualGrowth #FruitOfFaith #HouseOfPrayer

GO DAWGS!

My college basketball game this Wednesday night starts much earlier than did last night's Hoosiers / Boilermakers game, which the Hoosiers won, BTW. Heh. Tonight I'll be cheering on the Butler Bulldogs as they travel from Indianapolis, Indiana to face the St. John's Red Storm in Queens, New York.

And the adventure continues.

I want to begin by saying something simple to you, something that doesn’t come wrapped in advice or correction or expectation. I just want to say hello. Not hello as a greeting that passes by quickly, but hello as a way of stopping the noise for a moment and letting you know that you are seen. In a world that constantly demands movement, improvement, and results, pausing to acknowledge another human being is almost an act of rebellion. It says that you are more than what you produce. It says that your existence alone carries value. It says that before you fix anything or accomplish anything or prove anything, you are already worth noticing. That is the kind of hello I mean.

And with that hello, I want to say something else that you may not hear very often. You are doing a good job. I know your mind may want to argue with that statement immediately. You may think about what you didn’t finish yesterday, what you should have done differently, what still hurts, what still feels unresolved. But I am not measuring you by your perfection. I am not measuring you by your outcomes. I am measuring you by your willingness to keep going when it would be easier to quit. By your decision to keep believing when it would be simpler to become numb. By the way you are still standing in a world that keeps trying to knock people down emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. That counts. It counts more than you think.

There is a strange pressure that settles into people as they grow older. Somewhere along the way, we learn that worth must be earned. We learn that peace is something we are allowed to feel only after we have solved everything. We learn that rest must be justified by productivity. We learn that confidence must be backed up by visible success. But that is not how God measures people. God does not wait until a person is impressive before calling them beloved. God does not delay His presence until someone is finished becoming who they are meant to be. He steps into lives while they are still messy, still forming, still uncertain, still incomplete. Grace is not a reward for progress. It is the soil that allows progress to happen at all.

There is a moment in Scripture where a prophet collapses under a tree and decides that his story is over. He has tried. He has spoken truth. He has faced danger. And now he is exhausted. He tells God that he is done. That he cannot do this anymore. And God does not answer him with a lecture. God does not say, “Try harder.” God does not say, “You should know better.” Instead, God feeds him. God lets him sleep. God comes close enough to ask a question that sounds simple but carries deep meaning: what are you doing here? That question is not accusation. It is invitation. It is God saying, “I see you where you are, not where you think you should be.”

That is the posture I want you to feel right now. Not pressure. Not demand. Presence. The presence of a God who is not waiting for you at the finish line, tapping His foot in impatience, but walking with you on the road where you already are. You may feel like you are behind. You may feel like others are moving faster. You may feel like your life is not matching the timeline you imagined for yourself. But God is not bound to your mental calendar. He is not in a hurry the way you are. He is not anxious about the future the way you are. He is shaping things inside you that cannot be rushed without breaking them.

You do not have to worry about that today. You do not have to carry tomorrow on your shoulders before it arrives. You do not have to know how everything will turn out before you trust God with the next step. Today is allowed to be what it is. A day where you breathe. A day where you try again. A day where you choose faith over fear even if your faith feels small. That is not weakness. That is courage in ordinary clothing.

When I say that today is going to be a good day, I am not pretending that nothing will go wrong. I am not promising you comfort or ease or perfect outcomes. I am saying that today will be held. That God will be present in it. That your steps will not be wasted even if they feel slow. That your effort will not be ignored even if it goes unseen by other people. That your prayers are not disappearing into silence even if answers are delayed. Good does not always mean easy. Sometimes it means meaningful. Sometimes it means formative. Sometimes it means God doing something quiet inside you while nothing dramatic is happening around you.

Most of Jesus’ life was not spent in crowds. It was spent in routine. In work. In waiting. In prayer. In obedience that nobody applauded. We remember the miracles because they are loud. We remember the sermons because they are recorded. But the foundation of His life was built in ordinary days. That should tell us something about how God works. He does not only reveal Himself in spectacle. He reveals Himself in faithfulness. He builds people in places where nobody is watching so that when the moment comes to be seen, their character can hold the weight of it.

If your life feels quiet right now, that does not mean it is empty. If your progress feels slow, that does not mean it is meaningless. If your faith feels fragile, that does not mean it is false. Seeds grow underground before they ever break the surface. Roots form in darkness before branches reach toward light. You are not behind because you are unseen. You may be unseen because something deep is being built.

When I tell you that you are doing a good job, I am not ignoring your struggles. I am acknowledging them. I am saying that the fact you are still here matters. The fact you still care matters. The fact you still hope matters. You may not feel victorious. You may not feel accomplished. You may not feel strong. But faith is not proven by how loud your success is. Faith is proven by how quietly you continue.

There is a kind of fear that tries to live in the future. It asks questions that cannot be answered yet. What if this never works? What if I always feel this way? What if I fail again? Fear pulls tomorrow into today and demands that you solve it immediately. Faith leaves tomorrow in God’s hands. Faith says, I will do what I can today and trust God with what I cannot see yet. That is not denial. That is trust. That is choosing to believe that the One who holds time is more reliable than your predictions about it.

So when I say, “Don’t worry about that,” I am not dismissing your concerns. I am redirecting them. I am reminding you that you were never meant to carry the whole future by yourself. You were meant to walk with God through it one step at a time. Anxiety tries to make you live years ahead. God invites you to live where your feet are.

And when I say, “Today is going to be a great day,” I am not describing circumstances. I am describing companionship. I am describing the quiet miracle of not being abandoned. I am describing the power of waking up and knowing that grace did not expire overnight. That mercy did not run out. That God did not change His mind about you while you were asleep.

Some days the bravest prayer you can pray is not a grand declaration. It is a simple sentence: God, help me with today. Some days the holiest thing you can do is get out of bed and keep going. Some days faith looks like nothing more than refusing to quit. And heaven takes that seriously.

You may think your life should look different by now. You may think you should feel more certain by now. You may think you should be further along by now. But God is not disappointed in you for being human. He is not surprised by your learning curve. He is not shocked by your questions. He does not build people by shaming them into growth. He builds them by staying with them while they learn how to trust.

There is something deeply spiritual about showing up again when you feel tired. About choosing kindness when you feel unseen. About praying when you feel unsure. Those things do not make headlines, but they shape souls. They prepare you for moments you cannot yet see.

So let yourself rest in this truth for a moment. You are not forgotten. You are not invisible to God. You are not failing simply because your life is not flashy. You are in the middle of something, not the end of it. And the middle is always the hardest place to see meaning.

Hello. That is not just a word. It is an invitation to be present. To stop racing through the moment as if it has no value. To notice that you are alive in a story that is still being written. To remember that faith is not about control. It is about companionship.

You are doing a good job. Not because everything is perfect, but because you are still trying. You are still believing. You are still moving forward. That is enough for today.

And today really can be a good day. Not because you will avoid trouble, but because you will not face it alone. Not because you will have all the answers, but because you will walk with the One who does. Not because you are strong, but because God is patient.

Let today be lighter than yesterday. Let your shoulders drop. Let your heart stop bracing for disaster. Let your spirit remember that God does not rush people. He walks with them. He shapes them. He stays with them.

And if nothing else, take this with you as you move through this day: you are seen, you are still becoming, and God is not finished with you yet.

There is a quiet courage in letting a day be what it is instead of demanding that it become something dramatic. We often think meaning must announce itself with noise, but God’s way is usually gentler. He works in breaths and steps and moments of honesty. He works when you choose patience instead of panic. He works when you decide to believe something good about tomorrow instead of assuming the worst. These are not small things. They are the texture of faith.

You were never meant to live as if every day were a test you might fail. You were meant to live as if every day were a gift you are learning how to open. And gifts are not rushed. They are received. They are explored. They are held. You do not tear through them to get to the end. You sit with them. You notice them. You let them become part of your story.

God’s presence in your life is not dependent on how impressive you feel today. It is not dependent on how confident you are. It is not dependent on whether you woke up hopeful or tired. It is rooted in who He is, not in how you performed. That is why you can say to someone, without pretending or exaggerating, that today can be a good day. Because goodness is not the absence of struggle. It is the presence of God within it.

There are seasons when you feel like you are walking forward and nothing is changing. You pray, but the situation stays the same. You try, but the outcome does not shift. You hope, but the waiting stretches longer than you expected. These seasons tempt you to believe that nothing is happening. But Scripture is filled with stories of people who were being shaped long before anything changed on the outside. Joseph was being prepared in a prison long before he was trusted with authority. Moses was being formed in the wilderness long before he stood before Pharaoh. David was being trained in obscurity long before he wore a crown. None of them knew what their quiet seasons were building. They only knew that God was still with them in it.

You may be in one of those seasons now. A season where obedience feels repetitive. A season where faith feels quiet. A season where you are doing the same right things without seeing new results. That does not mean God is inactive. It means He is working beneath the surface, where roots grow. And roots are not glamorous. They are hidden. They are patient. They take time. But without them, nothing stands.

So when I tell you that you are doing a good job, I am not speaking to your achievements. I am speaking to your willingness to keep walking in a season that does not yet make sense. I am speaking to your decision to trust God without a visible reward. I am speaking to the strength it takes to stay gentle in a world that rewards hardness. Those choices do not look heroic. They look human. And that is exactly where God does His deepest work.

There is also something holy about simply noticing one another. About speaking kindness without a strategy. About offering reassurance without needing credit for it. When you tell someone, “Don’t worry about that,” you are not denying reality. You are reminding them that reality includes God. You are saying that fear does not get to be the loudest voice in the room. You are saying that hope is still allowed. That peace is still possible. That the story is not over just because the moment is difficult.

And when you tell someone, “Today is going to be a great day,” you are not promising ease. You are declaring intention. You are choosing to believe that God will be present in it, that something meaningful will happen within it, that the day will not be wasted even if it is ordinary. Greatness does not have to mean spectacular. Sometimes it means steady. Sometimes it means faithful. Sometimes it means simply not giving up.

There are people who measure their lives by milestones. By visible progress. By external proof that they are doing well. But God measures lives by trust. By surrender. By quiet obedience. By the way a person keeps their heart open in a world that encourages closure. You cannot always see that kind of growth. It does not announce itself. But it is real.

So much of what discourages people comes from comparison. You look at someone else’s story and wonder why yours feels slower. You see someone else’s joy and wonder why yours feels fragile. You hear someone else’s testimony and think yours is too small. But God does not write duplicate stories. He does not build people in identical ways. He does not hurry one person just because another seems further along. He is patient with your process because He knows what He is forming in you.

If you woke up today feeling behind, let that be replaced with something truer. You are not behind. You are becoming. And becoming takes time. It takes patience. It takes repetition. It takes faith. God is not rushing you toward a finish line. He is walking with you through a life.

That is why I can say hello to you without needing to fix you. That is why I can tell you that you are doing a good job without needing to measure you. That is why I can tell you not to worry about everything at once. That is why I can say that today can be a good day.

Because goodness is not a performance. It is a relationship.

It is waking up and choosing trust instead of fear. It is choosing kindness instead of cynicism. It is choosing to try again instead of quitting. It is choosing to believe that God’s presence matters more than your predictions.

There will be days when you feel strong and days when you feel uncertain. There will be moments when you sense God clearly and moments when He feels quiet. But quiet does not mean absent. Silence does not mean abandonment. Waiting does not mean rejection. God’s work in your life is not always visible to you in the moment. Often, it only becomes clear in memory. You look back and realize that the very season you thought was empty was actually full of preparation.

So let today be lived, not judged. Let it unfold without demanding that it impress you. Let it be enough that you showed up. Let it be enough that you trusted God with one more step. Let it be enough that you chose to believe something hopeful about your future.

And let your words to others carry that same spirit. When you say hello, let it mean something. When you say someone is doing a good job, let it be sincere. When you say not to worry, let it be grounded in faith, not denial. When you say today will be a great day, let it be rooted in God’s presence, not circumstances.

These are not small sentences. They are sacred ones.

They are reminders that we are not alone. They are reminders that effort matters. They are reminders that God is still working. They are reminders that ordinary days are part of holy stories.

You do not need to carry the whole future in your hands. You do not need to become someone else to be loved. You do not need to rush your growth to be faithful. You are allowed to be where you are while trusting God with where you are going.

So if nothing else, hear this as you move through today:

Hello.

You are seen.

You are doing a good job.

Do not worry about everything all at once.

Today can be a good day.

Not because you control it, but because God walks with you in it.

And that is enough to keep going.

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)

#Faith #Encouragement #ChristianInspiration #Hope #TrustGod #DailyFaith #SpiritualGrowth #Motivation

12 January 2026

Flat light (working title): The light bulb in my flat, my flat in the light bulb. Have been looking at Artschwager's Intersect (1992) aquatint/drypoint work of a dog in a corner a lot this week. That monochrome approach to sitting at some essential point where vision both understands an essence and fails to differentiate between its constantly changing parts felt (and still feels) like something related to why I keep approaching light. And so I painted a corner of my room through an unilluminated light bulb. Mixed colors instinctually this time (as opposed to from a reference work), and while I did not intend this, it occurred to me after I finished working how the hues and tones seem to relate directly to the amalgam of sensations I've had in my room in the three plus weeks since I moved in.

10 January 2026

Visited Sebastián's studio, brought him one of the hand-drip coffee bags Yena's father makes. This one was an Ethiopia Geisha with a Manet on the packaging (Woman Reading, 1880-82). When I handed it over, Sebastián immediately placed it among the other objects on one of the still life surfaces in his space. I knew from researching his work and seeing his current show (Lustre at Interval Clerkenwell; if you're reading this you should go see it) that he paints master paintings into his compositions, but it hadn't occurred to me that I was literally handing him a mini master painting. So that was a lovely synchronicity. But I mention it because it speaks to what I feel is the main thing I learned from him, which is how to create a studio that is a self-regenerating ecosystem. If it comes into his space, it becomes part of its orbit and nourishment. I had the sense in there that everything in the space was vital, alive, able to be used at a moment's notice. Which aligns with how he described looking and working with attention and openness, which includes an openness to freely modulating his process through any number of variables including light, objects, and reference works. At risk of sounding dramatic, coming face to face with a world built out so fully altered my thinking around my own practice pretty significantly in that as soon as I left his space, I began to think more carefully about what it is that I don't have to think about at all (or what is lodged at my core). Into my head then popped William Eggleston's famous Greenwood, Mississippi work (1971, the one of the light bulb on a red ceiling). There's a similar bulb in the room at my new flat. It has always been about light (and looking democratically), I think.