We introduced the theme of “Unexpected” yesterday observing that Jesus’ death should NOT have been unexpected. Isaiah 53 is clear, and Jesus told the disciples what would happen. I confess, I started thinking about unexpected when I read a lovely essay by Amanda Jenkins, wife of Dallas Jenkins of The Chosen. Here’s the essay in its entirety:

We’re more than halfway through the Journey to Holy Week: our 40-day rewatch of all 40 episodes of the show. And at every turn, Jesus does something unexpected:

He sends out disciples to heal, exorcise demons, and share His message…and He creates unlikely duos in the process. Simon and Judas. Big James and Little James. Simon Z for “Zealot” and Matthew the ex-tax collector…Two men who, prior to following Jesus, were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. (I’ll bet you can imagine what that sort of pairing would look like today.)

He wields the power of God, but power goes out from Him when an outcast touches Him. A woman, no less. 

He preaches to thousands for hours on end, filling their hearts and minds and then their stomachs when He feeds 5,000-plus people with only five loaves and two fish…

He sends His disciples to Capernaum by boat, but doesn’t go with them. Instead, He walks on the water to meet them, unhindered by sea or storm or a seething Simon. 

Because time and again, Jesus works in unexpected ways.  

He doesn’t choose powerful or well-connected people; He chooses rebels, misfits, and those who are misunderstood and under-qualified by society’s standards. 

He could’ve healed the world’s wounds with a word. Instead, He calls the disciples to partner with Him (and each other) to change the world. 

He could’ve moved unencumbered through the crowds. Instead, He stops to heal people, including the bleeding woman, and He honors her by saying, “Your faith has made you well” (Matthew 9).

He could’ve fed the hungry crowd by raining down manna from Heaven—after all, He’d done it before (Exodus 16). Instead, He performs a miracle with a little boy’s lunch. 

He could’ve ensured smooth sailing. Instead, He walks on water, proving to His disciples (and to us!) that He is peace in the midst of chaos. 

Indeed, God accomplishes the impossible by way of the ordinary. He’s never overwhelmed by the odds or short on resources or frightened by rough waters. Instead, He turns scarcity into abundance, confusion into calling, and chaos into order. 

Which means, if you feel misplaced, overlooked, or underqualified, know that you are chosen and equipped by the One who repeatedly does the unexpected. 

…expect the unexpected, since that’s where Jesus likes to be. – Amanda Jenkins, wife of Dallas Jenkins, producer and co-writer of The Chosen

A good word: “chosen and equipped by the ONE who repeatedly does the unexpected.” Here’s what Jesus told the disciples in the Upper Room right before the crucifixion:

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15.16, ESV)

As we move through Holy Week, I’ll try to write some relevant blogs about this crucial period. Let’s begin with the unexpectedness of it all. Most of Jesus’ followers were expecting a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans. As late as after the resurrection, right before the ascension, the disciples were expecting as much:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1.6, ESV)

We’ve already seen how, in Isaiah 53, with breath-taking clarity, Isaiah predicted a suffering and dying Servant. Jesus himself tried to make it clear:

[Jesus and his disciples] went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him. (Mark 9.30 – 32, ESV)

So his death and resurrection shouldn’t have been unexpected, but it was. Moreover, the disciples should have been used to unexpected. As The Chosen has Jesus saying to Peter when Jesus chose Matthew the tax collector to be one of his followers: “Get used to different.“

Speaking of The Chosen, Amanda Jenkins has written a lovely essay on Unexpected, which I’ll share tomorrow. Stay tuned.

It might have looked something like this, as depicted in The Chosen, Season 5, Episode 1.

This is what the cheerers were thinking about:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9.9, ESV)

Jesus as king…having salvation. Matthew quotes it:

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’ ”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” (Matthew 21.1 – 11, ESV)

But Jesus doesn’t cleanse Jerusalem of Romans! Instead, he cleanses the Temple of “robbers” supporting a corrupt sacrificial system:

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21.12 – 13, ESV)

Then the “blind and the lame” who aren’t even allowed in the Temple come, and Jesus heals them. (See Matthew 21.14)

He’s then challenged (as usual) by the religious leaders:

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. (Matthew 21.15 – 17, ESV)

And that’s it. We enter into Holy Week.

This post might not mean what you think the title suggests. Sure, there is ugly behavior, but that’s not what this is about. I publish this blog daily. That’s every day! If I waited for perfection, I’d be lucky to crank out one blog a year.

My friend Pam Mashburn posted a piece on Facebook the other day. I don’t know if she wrote it or copied it, but it’s worth the reminder:

One of the biggest growth killers in business isn’t competition.

It’s hesitation.

The website that’s 90% done but never launched.

The ad campaign that sits in drafts for weeks.

The video you almost posted… but didn’t.

The new service you keep “refining.”

(and yes, I’ve been guilty of all these things!)

But meanwhile, someone else with half the polish is out there executing — learning, adjusting, winning.

Perfection feels productive.

Action actually is.

In business, momentum beats mastery.

Data beats opinions.

And progress compounds.

Launch it.

Post it.

Sell it.

Test it.

You can optimize once it’s moving. You can’t scale what doesn’t exist. [Or, as I’ve heard many times: “You can’t steer a parked car.”]

What’s one thing you’ve been “perfecting” that really just needs to go live?

I knew a guy who would have an idea for a software product. Then he would spend months…or years coding, refining, adding…but never shipping because it was never “finished.” The closing picture of Pam’s post says it all:

Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go… (Joshua 1.2, ESV)

That’s when Peter stood up and…spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight…” (Acts 2.14, MSG – Peter didn’t have time to polish a sermon!)

We need to catch some highlights from Isaiah 60, and that will be our last look at Isaiah until after Holy Week.

First is a prediction of light:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. (Isaiah 60.1 – 3, ESV)

The first sentence forms the lyrics for another marvelous number from Handel’s Messiah.

The rest is a litany of the Great Reversal. Israel will be persecuted, but the nation will rise. Here’s a sample:

The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you, and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet; they shall call you the City of the LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. (Isaiah 60.14 – 16, ESV)

And the last verse is another promise that Navigators have claimed for their ministries. We invest in people, help them grow to maturity, and send them out to do the same. The result is:

A little one shall become a thousand, And a small one a strong nation: I the LORD will hasten it in his time. (Isaiah 60.22, KJV)

I love this video demonstrating the power of small beginnings:

When I showed it to my Navigator mentor Skip Gray, his immediate response was to quote Isaiah 60.22 (above).

I’ve been relearning Psalm 103 in my scripture memory program, and I confess, I’ve never paused to think much about “slow to anger:”

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 103.8, ESV)

Slow to anger. On March 20, 2026, Christianity Today published an essay by Thomas Anderson: Urgency Is Not Faithfulness. It’s worth the read in its entirety, but here are a few snippets after he opens with the tendency for churches and Christian leaders to feel the need to say something about the issue of the day, whatever that issue might be.

One then begins to realize the clock is not really measuring time; it is measuring suspicion. I have watched thoughtful, Bible-reading, Spirit-seeking Christians reduce the work of discernment to the speed of a news cycle. I have done it myself. I have mistaken urgency for obedience, letting the clock tell me when to speak and the crowd tell me what to say. But one day, I opened my Bible to Exodus 34 and met a God whose behavior, by his own description, is slow...one of the first things God says about himself is that he is slow to anger.

…The Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama spent years sitting with that same realization and arrived at a conclusion I find disarming. “Love has its speed,” he wrote. “It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. … It goes on … at three miles an hour.”

I’ve written about the three mph ministry before. And, I’ve quoted Koyama before (but didn’t remember). Anderson continues:

Three miles an hour is the pace of a human being walking down a road. Nazareth to Capernaum is roughly 26 miles. At that pace, it takes a bit more than a full workday to make the trek. Jesus has walked that path. But he was rarely in a hurry in all his journeys. He stopped for interruptions. People reached out and touched his cloak. A stranger called his name from the roadside, and he healed. Koyama called this the three-mile-an-hour God

…Patience is a discipline. It should not be mistaken for passivity, cowardice, or the absence of conviction. It is simply the refusal to let the person who provokes determine the speed of the response. Said another way, it is the decision to burn at the right moment, in the right way, for the right reason. The hot take rewards immediacy and treats reaction as courage.

…Most of us know about the story of the woman who was caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus (John 8:1–11). The crowd had gathered. The religious leaders wanted a verdict from Jesus, and they wanted it quickly.

The urgency was manufactured, designed to force a quick answer under pressure. Condemn the woman and appear righteous, or show mercy and appear soft on sin. But Jesus just bent down and wrote in the dirt. The Gospel writer never tells us what he wrote. Commentators have wondered for centuries. But the silence may be the point. When Jesus finally spoke, the words were simple: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone” (v. 7).

It’s a good word…to churches, to ministry leaders, and to the rest of us. James was clear:

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1.19, 20, ESV)

Recall that Isaiah opened with a diatribe against empty ritual:

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. (Isaiah 1.11, ESV)

It goes on. Isaiah 58 picks up the theme using ritual fasting. The people are upset that God wasn’t paying attention to all their fasting sacrifices:

“Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” (Isaiah 58.3, ESV)

The problem is that by itself, fasting doesn’t “count:”

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD? (Isaiah 58.3 – 5, ESV)

What does God want?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58.6, 7, ESV)

Jesus echoed:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25.35 – 40, ESV)

I’m afraid this is part of our faith that some of us don’t practice very well. I’m proud that The Navigators now has a ministry to the poor, appropriately called “I-58 Ministry” for this section of Isaiah. Heidi Gleghorn is the poster lady for this ministry. But being a friend of Heidi doesn’t let me off the hook.

The promise is there…

If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. (Isaiah 58.10, 11, ESV)

There’s a very profound truth in Isaiah 57:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57.15, ESV)

Note what we have here:

• “I dwell in the high and holy place”: TRANSCENDENCE
• “…and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit”: IMMANENCE

I wanted to check the spelling of “transcendence” and “immanence,” and I found this paragraph on Wikipedia:

Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world. – Wikipedia

Guess what? the true God is both! He reigns over all (transcendence) and he is with us (immanence).

I want to do a follow up on Marvin Campbell’s letter to US Navigators. Part of it reminded us:

What we do as Navigators has never been about quick wins. We care about the ripple, not the splash. We walk closely with people—anchored in the Word and dependent on the Spirit—until truth becomes obedience and obedience becomes transformation.

In other words, I want to be part of a movement that generates fruit forever. Not one dependent on me. That’s why I invest in people. Jesus said,

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last… (John 15.16, NIV, emphasis mine)

“Investing in people…” is what Marvin Campbell is describing above. It’s not just preaching truth as important as that is. It’s not enough to know the truth. That truth must be translated into obedience, which ultimately results in transformation.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1.22, NIV)

As I was meditating on these thoughts, a story came to mind that, when I looked it up, comes from a quote attributed to Archbishop Desmund Tutu.

“We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

For example, there’s an article in Christianity Today that argues that gambling is a spiritual problem. I encourage you to read the article in its entirety. It opens with a brief description of the mammoth gambling problem we have in this country. Then he writes:

What do Americans want, exactly, when they gamble? I suspect the answer is spiritual. To me, at least, all this gambling sounds like wild, misdirected prayer. – Daniel Silliman

The solution is to walk with people, teaching them to love Jesus, so that they’re not seeking satisfaction in the wrong places. But there are A LOT of people! And therefore, we need A LOT of what Jesus called “workers:”

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 9.35 – 38, NIV)

I wrote yesterday about outward appearances, thinking about whiteboard markers that often are returned to the tray without any ink in them. We don’t want to be like the church at Sardis:

You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. (Revelation 3.1, ESV)

What ought we to be on the inside? What should our life look like? From time to time I identify myself as a Navigator, and there may be some readers who don’t know what that means. I can’t give a better answer than to share with you a letter I just received from Marvin Campbell, our US President. He described our lifestyle and work succinctly, answering the questions I opened this paragraph with. I’ll present it without interruption:

As we step into March, I’ve been praying a simple prayer: “Lord, bring us back to You.” Not back to busyness or ministry activity. Back to Jesus—His presence, His voice, His ways. If we move quickly without abiding deeply, we drift. And more than progress, we need attachment to the Vine.

What we do as Navigators has never been about quick wins. We care about the ripple, not the splash. We walk closely with people—anchored in the Word and dependent on the Spirit—until truth becomes obedience and obedience becomes transformation. Disciplemaking is personal, relational, and intentional.

§ It’s opening the Scriptures with a student searching for identity.

§ It’s sitting with a service member under unseen pressure.

§ It’s meeting a young professional before work and letting the Word shape faith, integrity and courage.

§ It’s loving a neighbor in ordinary moments until Jesus becomes tangible.

This isn’t a strategy. It’s a way of life. And it’s how God changes people—one life at a time. – Marvin Campbell, US President of The Navigators, writing to staff, March 10, 2026

“Lord, bring us back to Jesus…we care about the ripple, not the splash…anchored in the Word, dependent on the Spirit.” We want to see:

Truth -> Obedience -> Transformation

“…It’s loving a neighbor in ordinary moments until Jesus becomes tangible. It’s not a strategy. It’s a way of life.”

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life… (Philippians 2.12 – 16, ESV)