Last night, as if on cue, the cicadas began their summer serenade. I love their mechanical, monotonous, lullaby-like whirring, welling up at dusk on a heat-laden summer evening. From my childhood it has been a sound bound tightly to all that is summer—a chorus signifying the return of stillness, an invocation to rest, rest, rest. After …

So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (2 Corinthians 5:9) What if you discovered (like the Pharisees did), that you had devoted your whole life to trying to please God, but all the while had been doing things that in God’s sight were abominations (Luke 16:14–15)? Someone …