6:17 PM on a Tuesday.

"Mr. Parker? We found something on Linda's mammogram."

Cancer. The word hangs like smoke from a fire already consuming everything Tom thought he knew about his life.

For fifteen years, they'd been good at managing life. But cancer doesn't care about competence. It demands the raw honesty their polite, efficient marriage was constructed to avoid.

The storm doesn't create problems—it reveals what's already there. Faith isn't the absence of fear. Faith is trusting that His presence in the storm is more powerful than His prevention of it.

The question isn't whether you'll survive the storm. The question is who you'll become because of it.

Two pink lines.

Chiara is calling from the doctor's office: "It's positive! After two years of trying, it's finally positive!"

Jessica grips the phone, forcing enthusiasm while her own three-year fertility struggle screams the question she's ashamed to think: Why her and not me?

The only deadly sin that provides no pleasure whatsoever. The emotion no Christian admits to having.

Learning to rejoice genuinely in others' good fortune might be the most transformative spiritual discipline of all. Someone else's blessing doesn't diminish your worth. God's love isn't rationed—it's abundance to be celebrated wherever it appears.

2:17 AM. The phone vibrates: "Marcus - Emergency."

"Sarah found the emails."

In eight years of accountability, Marcus had never called this late unless something was catastrophically wrong. Now he'd fallen off the cliff Jake had been trying to pull him back from.

Covenant friendship isn't about finding people you enjoy. It's about choosing people you're willing to bleed with. It's the love that shows up at 2:17 AM with no questions asked and six simple words:

"Tell me where you are. I'm coming."