Digging into the book of James is rocking my world.

Does it date me to use that phrase? Maybe. But, this book is not at all what I thought it was and it’s making me incredibly excited to keep going, not to mention curious about the man who wrote it.

You see, as I look more closely at the Greek that James was writing in, I’m starting to think James was a writer. I’m amazed at the language — it’s beautiful — poetic, even. And over and over again, just in the first chapter alone, James uses two of my absolute favorite literary devices: parallelism and antithesis.

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For probably a month now, I’ve been feeling drawn to read James, but I’ve resisted a little. It’s a beautiful book, full of wisdom and memorization worthy verses, but it’s also a book that I’ve struggled with a little, if I’m honest.

Then two weeks ago I didn’t know what to do for yoga.

I teach a yoga class every Tuesday morning at a local church. I usually like to have some little thing prepared, a word we’re going to meditate on, a particular thing I want to invite us to pray for as we move, a poem, or a passage of scripture to consider, etc.

I had nothing… except this pull towards James.

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We were already late when we pulled up to the house. Not just a little late, we were more than thirty minutes late. Late enough to feel embarrassed, late enough to be the last ones to arrive. As I shifted the car into park, I realized we’d forgotten the one thing we really needed to bring. We didn’t have the wheelchair ramp.

“Sage, we’re gonna have to just carry you in and find a place for you to sit, ok?”

She started crying.

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There were already people praying in the room when we entered. The music from the sanctuary drifted through the walls in a muffled hum. There was conversation I didn’t fully absorb, hand shakes, and exchanged names, as the few people in the prayer room joined the five of us who had entered in forming a circle around my husband.

And then we prayed.

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