Ryan's Ramblings

[I’m currently working on a new book called The Best Miles, a reflection on faithfulness, aging, and the ways God continues to use our lives for His glory. The book is still taking shape, but what follows is one “nudging” from that work. Thanks for reading.]

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
—2 Corinthians 4:16-17, NIV

I didn’t begin my walk with Jesus until I was fourteen. But long before that—before I knew what faith was or why it mattered—my praying grandmother would take me to church whenever she could.

She attended a small, run-down Pentecostal church—the kind you might drive past without noticing, the kind that didn’t try to impress anyone.

The pastor was Brother Baker. His wife was Sister Baker. Godly people. No polish. No pretense. Faithful. Loving.

Church felt foreign to me then—the rhythms, the language, the expectation that God was present and listening. It was all new, and it left impressions I didn’t yet know how to name.

When it came time for Sunday school, the kids were sent downstairs—down thin, narrow concrete steps into a dank, musty basement. A handful of us would sit on the floor while Sister Baker, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her gray hair pulled tight into a bun, kindly taught us about… the love of Jesus.

She used something I had never seen before.

A flannelgraph.

She would sit beside a felt-covered board, tell the story, then reach into a pile of paper figures—people dressed in Bible-time clothes, a donkey, a giant, a rock tomb, and a large plant that looked suspiciously like a coconut tree—and one by one press them onto the board until the story came to life.

She smoothed each figure with her fingers, gently but deliberately. And somehow, they stayed… most of the time.

Some figures didn’t stick very well.

Zacchaeus, for instance—we heard about him a lot—was worse for wear. The apostle Paul too. Even the figure of Jesus had seen better days.

These figures were wrinkled. Bent. Floppy. Worn thin. Some had been taped back together. They’d lost their crisp edges. Their corners curled. They slid slowly downward—or sometimes fell off altogether—no matter how carefully Sister Baker pressed them into place.

They were clearly used—and they told the best stories.

Paul was especially hard to keep in place—tattered, taped, unreliable. He leaned. He drooped. He sometimes fell.
Which I now see is fitting.

Because Paul was the one who wrote about being poured out like a drink offering. The one who spoke of being hard pressed on every side, but not crushed. The one who admitted plainly that outwardly we are wasting away, though inwardly something deeper is being renewed day by day.

Even as a child, I could feel it—not the theology, but the weight of it. These stories mattered. They carried gravity. They had been lived before they were ever told.

The figures that didn’t stick easily were the ones that had been handled the most—the ones that had been brought out again and again, the ones trusted to carry the weight of the story.

There is something about that image—about that childhood experience—that has stayed with me all these years.

Because it tells the truth.

The figures that are perfect and pristine don’t carry the same authority. The unused ones don’t hold the room. The stories that matter most are told by lives that have been handled, bent, repaired, and trusted again and again.

Age does that. So does faithfulness.

If you feel a little like one of those figures—creased by time, taped by grace, less likely to stand upright on your own—you are not diminished.

You are seasoned. Your edges tell a story. Your wear is evidence. Your weakness is not a liability—it is your credibility. You may not “stick” the way you once did. You may need a steadier hand. You may lean more than you stand.

But you carry the story.

And in the end, the ones that don’t stick easily are often the ones that stick with us—the ones that shape us, steady us, and quietly change the world.

They’ve been used.

And God is still using their lives to speak of… the love of Jesus.