14.1 - In Me and Through Me
A Troubled Room
With clean feet, full stomachs, and troubled hearts, the eleven try to listen.
Jesus is speaking.
“Let not your heart be troubled” (14:1).
They want to understand him, but the room is heavy - too many words, too many wounds.
One friend gone. Another humbled. Fear thick in the air.
Of course, their hearts are troubled.
Mine would be too. Would yours?
For three years, they had followed this man through dust and storm, through the laughter of children and the scorn of crowds.
Now the night feels final, and, typically, finality clears the air. However, love, loss, and confusion are all tangled together.
Who can think of love at a time like this?
The Stillness Beneath Emotion
Yet Jesus speaks of peace.
“You have control over your hearts,” he says. “Don’t let your emotions trouble you” (14:1).
John wants us to notice the steadiness in that moment - how Jesus meets fear with calm.
He isn’t asking them to suppress their emotions, only to see them.
Modern neuroscience echoes that wisdom: emotions are fast, automatic messengers, but when named and noticed, they begin to loosen their hold.
Beneath them lies a deeper current - the stillness of spirit.
Beneath emotion lies the stillness of spirit.
Jesus had learned to live from that still place.
Having mastered his emotions, he could even trust while placing his fate in Judas’s hands.
Years of alignment had trained him to walk calmly into what Hebrews later called “the things not seen.”
This is faith in action—not belief shouted from rooftops, but practiced trust.
The kind that’s built day by day, choice by choice.
“Believe in God; believe also in me,” he says (14:1).
Or in our language: decide now where to place your confidence.
If our trust is aligned, we will never be apart.
The Slow Work of Faith
That kind of faith doesn’t appear overnight.
It grows like everything else in nature - quietly, over time.
Notice how the seed, once planted, springs forth as a plant.
How the tree grows from sapling to mighty oak.
How the sun rises each morning in the east, spring follows winter, and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
From sapling to oak—the slow architecture of the soul.
The same process unfolds in us.
Beneath our noise and striving, something steady is at work, shaping us into the person we were created to become (14:2–3).
That’s how transformation happens - not in leaps, but in layers.
James Clear might call it atomic habits.
Dallas Willard would call it renovation of the heart.
Jesus simply called it faithfulness.
To my grandchildren and their children: Pay attention to the thousand small choices that fill a day.
Each one is a tiny hinge of destiny.
When we pause before reacting, or choose patience over pride, we’re changing the pathways of the mind.
Psychology calls it neuroplasticity; the ancients called it renewal or, in Paul's words, "putting on the new man."It is there - in the moment between stimulus and response - that we generate ideas that become actions, which become habits, and ultimately shape our character (14:4–6).
The slow architecture of the soul.
Truth, as Jesus knew it, is not a concept to memorize but a way to embody.
When Thomas asked how to find it, Jesus didn’t point to a map; he pointed to himself.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6).
He lived what he taught - the seamless weaving of word and action, belief and behavior.
Richard Rohr might say he was living inside the Divine Dance - where everything belongs, and everything moves in relationship.
When we begin living from that same center - where our values, talents, and desires meet - we start to recognize that peace isn’t found; it’s formed.
It grows as truth moves from the page into the bloodstream.
And then we see how dangerous false identities can be - the ones the world hands us in the name of status, politics, or belonging.
We become who we think we are.
Know the truth.
Live the truth.
Become the truth.
Philip’s Longing
I picture Philip staring at Jesus across that dimly lit table, candlelight trembling between them.
His thoughts race faster than his restraint.
“Show us the Father,” he blurts, “and it will be enough” (14:8).
It’s such a human outburst - a collision of longing and confusion.
Maybe the others felt relief that he asked what they couldn’t voice.
Maybe some were embarrassed by his boldness.
Either way, Philip speaks for us all.
Every generation carries that same ache: Just show me. I want to see.
Not more sermons, not more symbols - give me something I can touch.
Perhaps Philip thought of Moses’s dinner on Sinai, when the elders ate and saw God.
Maybe he remembered the old stories where to see was to believe.
But Jesus was showing them a new way of knowing - not sight but participation.
He looks through the flame at Philip with both tenderness and truth:
“Have I been with you this long, and you still don’t see?” (14:9).
He isn’t scolding. He’s inviting.
To see him is to see the Father.
To love is to touch the Source.
John seats us at the table as the new twelfth guest.
John leaves Judas’ chair open beside them.
Close your eyes and know that we are seated at the table now, the new twelfth guest, trying to understand.
Jesus knows it’s too much, too deep, too soon, but it must be said, said now, and said directly to us (14:10–11).
The words will linger for centuries before we begin to grasp them.
“I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.
If you can’t yet believe that, then believe because of what you’ve seen me do.
Whoever grasps this oneness will do the same works, even greater.
Just ask, and I will do it.
Show your love for me by loving one another” (14:10–14).
Grasp? No.
Grapple, we must.
In Me and Through Me
Our minds whirl like roulette wheels, spinning through logic and doubt, until we remember to breathe.
Only when we step back and watch our thoughts do we see the wheel slow - until it comes to rest on what must be the meaning:
God is to be experienced (14:10–11).
Not analyzed, not proven - experienced.
God is experienced as breath—in us and through us.”
Think of love. It only becomes real in the exchange.
Think of breath. It becomes life only as it moves in and through us.
So it is with God - understood differently now, in the light that followed Millie’s absence.
We must trade “up there and for me” for “in me and through me.”
Not a deity to chase, but a presence to recognize.
Eugene Kennedy once wrote that to be human is to participate in the sacred.
John O’Donohue might add that to live beautifully is to live awake to that sacredness in every ordinary thing.
When we remember that, everything shifts. The ordinary becomes holy.
A conversation, a garden, a child’s laughter - each becomes a thin place between soil and spirit.
To my grandchildren, and to theirs:
Don’t hurry past wonder.
The mind will always try to figure things out, but the heart already knows how to rest in mystery.
Walk slowly.
Listen deeply.
Trust that something good is always growing inside you, even when you can’t yet see it.The truth isn’t hiding; it’s unfolding—
in breath, in love, in the slow unfurling of who you are becoming.
And the God you seek has been here all along,
in you and through you (14:10–11).
🧭 Key Takeaways
Trust can be trained. Emotions are automatic but manageable; naming them leads to peace.
Transformation is slow. Like seeds and stars, faith grows in steady rhythm.
Habits shape holiness. Daily repetition rewires the mind and spirit together.
Truth must be lived. Real peace happens when belief and behavior align.
God is within. The divine isn’t distant but alive - in us and through us.
