14.2 - In the Rhythm of What’s Real
Based on John 14:16-31
Stepping Outside the Room
I step outside for a moment. The oil lamps still flicker behind me; the air smells of smoke and worry. For two chapters now, my imagination and I have been picturing what it would be like to take Judas’ empty chair - to be the new 12th man. My mind is racing; my heart has gone silent. I need to catch my breath and gather my thoughts.
Even in the dim light, truth breathes beside us.
Inside, the room had grown thick with questions - Thomas, Peter, Philip - each of them trying to pin down what he meant. I can’t blame them. He spoke of going away, of preparing a place, of being the way itself. Each phrase felt like a door opening into some new light I wasn’t ready to walk through.
Out here, under the cool night sky, the noise inside my head starts to settle. I can still hear his voice: calm, specific, tender. I think about how patient he was with us. He never dodged the questions; he met each one with a deeper truth. Maybe that’s the rhythm beneath it all - the steady pulse of presence even when we don’t understand. I draw a deep breath, turn back toward the doorway, and step inside to listen again.
Love Woven Into Action
He looks around the table, eyes moving slowly from face to face. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”(14:15). The words sound simple, but I know they aren’t - love and obedience - two sides of the same coin. If I love someone, I consider what they ask of me; I do what they recommend because I trust their heart. What they ask will be in my long-term best interest.
When he speaks of commandments, he’s not stacking rules. He’s offering strands of truth - threads meant to be woven into the fabric of my days. They don’t confine; they connect. Woven deeply enough, they shape character and free me from the tug of impulse. The teacher’s words are like the lines of a song that tune me back to myself.
The Prodigy of Truth
I think of him as a prodigy of truth, much as Mozart was a prodigy of sound. Mozart could hear harmonies others couldn’t imagine. At five, he was composing; at thirty-five, he was gone, leaving the world echoing with what he’d heard. Maybe Jesus, from his earliest days, saw truth that way—heard it ringing inside him and couldn’t understand why others didn’t run toward it. The story of him in the temple at twelve hints at this: “Didn’t you know I had to be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). The wonder of a child who assumes everyone can hear the same music.
The breath that brings a child to life.
Now, on what he knows may be his final evening, he speaks as someone whose score is almost finished. Finality brings clarity. There’s no need to posture when time is short. He speaks plainly: truth is not a set of static facts but the living code by which all life holds together - the intelligence in the seed, the gravity that keeps the planets, the breath that brings a child to life. Truth is dynamic, relational, alive.
The Living Code of Reality
To my grandchildren, and their children: to live in truth, then, is to align with that rhythm, to cooperate with reality instead of resisting it. Truth uncovered and lived reshapes us from the inside out. It’s like allowing a trusted friend to open the overfilled closet of your soul and decide what stays and what goes. There’s vulnerability in that, but also relief.
Truth, in John’s language, must be relational. Logos was “in the beginning,” not as an idea but as presence - the same presence standing before us now, soon to be beside us in another form. The Spirit of Truth will stand with us, guide us, and remind us of what he’s taught. The same current that moved through him will move through us.
The Presence Beside Us
He teaches, but I must show up for class.
He calls this presence Paraclete - one called alongside. Not an abstract ghost, but a companion, an advocate, a steadying voice. A helper, not a servant. He won’t do the work for me, but he will strengthen my hands while I do it. He teaches, but I must show up for class. He brings things to remembrance, but only after I’ve tried to remember. The Spirit enhances effort, never replaces it. He is the quiet partner in every act of courage - the agent of grace working with me, not instead of me.
“The Spirit enhances effort, never replaces it.””
That’s how divine partnership seems to work. God doesn’t simply do things for me, as if I were a spectator, but through me, as if I were a living instrument. The Spirit moves in the same manner—doing things with me. Grace doesn’t cancel discipline; it animates it. Inspiration doesn’t bypass will; it cooperates with it.
The Spark That Moves Knowing into Action
The energy that flows from a single honest thought, the motivation that rises when inspiration turns into movement - that’s the current he’s describing. Thoughts have energy; inspiration carries a charge. When an idea is true, you can feel it in the body: warmth, calm, resolve. Maybe that’s what he meant by Spirit - the spark that turns knowing into movement.
Lao Tzu wrote, “Silence is a source of great strength.” In that silence, I can watch my thoughts drift by like clouds until one shines with quiet certainty. That is usually the one that holds truth’s energy, that charge, that spark. When I let it fill me, peace follows. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called it remembering that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human one.
Jesus tells us, “I will not leave you orphaned” (14:18). Whether he means physically or in consciousness hardly matters - the doorway is the same. When we live from spiritual awareness, we hear and see as he did. We act in congruence with the truth written within us. Judas still wrestles with the physical, but Jesus points us back to the inner connection - to hearing his words inwardly and practicing them outwardly. The proof, as always, is in the practice.
Practice, Muscle Memory, and Peace
The Spirit strengthens, never replaces.
He explains it like a master craftsman sending his apprentices to the workbench. We’ve watched his hands; now it’s time to feel the tools in ours. The Spirit stands beside us there - guiding, correcting, but never taking the chisel from our grip. Over time, the truth becomes muscle memory. The teacher lives on in the student’s rhythm.
And the result, he says, is peace. Not the transient calm of circumstances, but the deep equilibrium that comes when your life beats in time with what’s real. Sometimes, when I am sitting in silence, I notice that my heartbeat and breath are out of sync - two rhythms sharing the same body, one racing, one resting. Faith feels like that. The Spirit Jesus promised (14:17) is both the breath that steadies and the pulse that stirs. In one moment, I am anchored; in the next, I am reaching. The comforter and the disrupter seem to occupy the same space within me.
When Breath and Heart Align
To my grandchildren and their children: This is the paradox of living faith. We are asked to trust a presence that feels both near and elusive, to move while remaining still, to surrender and yet stay alert. The peace he offers is not the absence of motion but its harmony - a life where opposite currents somehow meet. When my breath and heartbeat finally fall into rhythm, I sense that same quiet reconciliation: body and spirit no longer compete, only listen. Perhaps that’s what it means to live “in the rhythm of what’s real.”
“Faith is like eyesight that comes and goes.”
The final verses feel like him drawing the last lines of a pattern we’ll spend a lifetime learning to follow. “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (14:31). He’s showing us what full alignment looks like: love expressed as action, obedience as resonance. The same code that orders the stars is written in our being. To live by it is to be whole.
And maybe that’s what we all want at the end: to know that we’ve tuned ourselves, again and again, to the rhythm of what’s real. We’ve made mistakes, yes - but we’ve corrected them. And by doing so, the truth has taken flesh within us.
“Peace isn’t forced; it’s remembered—when breath and heart move to the same rhythm.”
Still in the Room
The lamps are still burning low. I close my eyes and open my imagination. The night air drifts through the doorway, carrying the scent of dust and olive oil. I can hear him moving quietly among us, voice steady, presence unbroken. For a moment, every fear, every question, falls away. What remains is rhythm - his breath and mine in sync, the steady pulse of truth still alive in the room.
This is the glimpse I’ve been given, through John’s words and my own walk through loss and light—still listening, still learning to move in the rhythm of what’s real.
🪶 Key Takeaways
Love and obedience are not control—they’re trust in action.
The Spirit is a helper, not a servant; he joins our effort, not replaces it.
Truth is lived, not stored; it reshapes us through practice.
Peace is alignment, when our breath, heart, and choices move with reality.
God works through partnership, not puppetry—through us, not around us.
