# TheJkinz • Josh Kinney

> impractical daydreaming


## Posts

- [Sent & Seen: A Passage to India](https://thejkinz.com/2025/06/sent-seen-a-passage-to-india/): A reflection on fear, obedience, and rediscovering the Kingdom of God in India

- [Small Beginnings](https://thejkinz.com/2024/11/small-beginnings/): In Exodus 23:30, God tells the Israelites, “Little by little I will drive them [Israel’s enemies] out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.” Slow growth is a good thing. If something grows too fast, it may actually be detrimental. If Israel took out all their enemies at once with ease and took possession of the Promised Land, would they ever have had to exercise faith and rely on God? They would have become proud and boastful, taking the credit for subduing their enemies and capturing the land. They would have never grown or matured, nor would their faith be living and real. They would have also missed out on God’s glory, power, deliverances, might, majesty, and grace. God was more interested in the hearts of His people becoming more like His and less like themselves. God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6), and the same is true today. As believers, we have many enemies: The world, the flesh, and the devil, and all the effects of these: Fear, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, doubts, unbelief, negative thinking, to name a few. As we walk with Jesus and abide in Him, (John 15:4) His Spirit in us will subdue these enemies (Philippians 2:13), little by little, forming us more and more into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18). No baby goes from birth to adulthood overnight. When Christ is born in our hearts, the same is true (John 3:3). He is growing up in us, and as He does, we decrease as He increases (John 3:30), and we become more of our true selves, the selves we were created to be – children of The Most High God (1 John 3:1). There are two tragedies in life – not getting our heart’s desire and getting our heart’s desire. Why is that? Because the only thing that can truly fill and satisfy the human heart is God. In Zechariah 4:10, the scripture says, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” Every seed has everything it needs to become a tree or flower. Inside it is equipped with everything it needs, all the materials necessary to form that finished product. In a sense, the seed already is that tree or flower, it just has to grow up into what it already is, in the same way a baby grows into an adult. If a baby is shown an image of who he or she will be in 30 years, the baby would certainly not understand what they were looking at, they would not have the capacity for it. In John 16:12, Jesus says, “I have much more to say to you, but you can’t bear it now.” And in John 13:7, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” A baby can’t bear the weight of being a full-grown adult, nor can an acorn see or understand the oak tree that it will one day become. Back in 2020, when I first started serving dinner at the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore, I could have never known at the time that the Lord was forging in me a heart that reflected what He was interested in. “The day of small things” was a seed planted in my heart that would eventually lead to a Bible Study after our dinner service, that would then lead to me being the one who fell into leading it, and eventually grow and blossom into having such a heart for the ministry that the Lord would open the door for me to work at Central Union Mission in 2024. If I saw the future back then I wouldn’t have been able to bear or understand it, I had to grow up into it and walk with God the whole way. Does a parent ever sit down with a toddler and tell them all about the responsibilities they will have in college or about all they will be tasked with at their first job, or the trials they will face with loss, heartbreak, disappointment, failures and successes? Of course not. The child is not able to comprehend what will be. Everything we need to become the fullness of Christ in us is already there. It is not something we have to work for or attain. The wind, the rain, the storms, the cold, the heat, and the sunshine all grow the seed into the tree or the flower. These are circumstances we cannot control, but the Lord knows just how many storms, how much rain, how much sunshine is necessary for each individual seed to grow up into the image of Himself. With each external condition and pressure, we must rely on God, exercise faith, believe that “little by little” He is moving us forward, closer to Him, subduing our enemies, helping our roots to go down deeper (Jeremiah 17:8). This is nothing we can work for or attain. In the same way, there is nothing a child must do to earn a parent’s love. The child, by simply being who he or she already is, a son or daughter, is loved unconditionally by the parent. We are children of the King, heirs, a royal priesthood, a chosen people (1 Peter 2:9). Everything the King has is ours, as we are His family. If we keep on recognizing who and whose we are and keep reminding ourselves to simply be who He says we are, our identity is going to be more secure, we are going to look more and more like Him, grow up more and more into that flower or tree, and He will be the one in us doing all the work (Philippians 2:13) just like the seed that has everything inside it to become the tree. The work was finished once and for all on the cross (John 19:30), now we live into and grow up into that finished work. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Are we the ones doing the work and growing ourselves from seed to tree? No, rather God is the one who has done all the work, for there is no one good except Him (Romans 3:10). Therefore, any good that we do is Him in us, and that seed is growing into the tree: the fullness and likeness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). Because we are His and He has been born in us, a seed that will become a tree, our motivations change, our desires change, and we are convicted and continually look in His direction. His sheep hear His voice (John 10:27) and not one of them will be lost (John 6:39). If you are born you can’t become unborn. In the same way, when we become believers and Christ is born in our hearts, we cannot be lost. What incredible eternal security! “Beloved, we are [even here and] now children of God, and it is not yet made clear what we will be [after His coming]. We know that when He comes and is revealed, we will [as His children] be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is [in all His glory]” – 1 John 3:2 “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” – Philippians 1:6
- [Chosen](https://thejkinz.com/2024/10/chosen/): “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of The One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” – 1 Peter 2:9 Her clothes were filthy. It was clear she’d been living on the streets for quite some time. Disheveled, leaving a trail of foul stench, she made her way through the church doors, empty-handed. Bright, warm lights of chandeliers against old brick walls glowed as a beacon on that rainy night in Baltimore. The close-knit neighborhood had never seen this particular woman, and of all nights for her to show up it was the evening of the church’s semi-annual Thrift Market. Inside, donated and unwanted items and clothes were on display for sale, all proceeds supporting the church’s city ministries which included provision for the homeless. That night, a would-be recipient of those funds unknowingly made an appearance. “I don’t have any money,” the woman said, “But can I just go ahead and take a few things?” Her shameless audacity was humbling. She was not trying to cover up her homelessness, but she also wasn’t proud of it. She expressed a need and a willingness to admit it. “Please, go ahead. Take whatever you’d like.” For a while, the woman meandered around the tables, pausing every so often to mumble out loud to herself. Customers came and went as the evening bustled with a flurry of activity. The woman slowly walked around each table and rack, gathering handfuls of clothing, stuffing whatever she found useful into a duffle bag. Eventually she sat down and scooped a cookie from the refreshment table. I approached and asked her name. “Emily,” she replied. “Can you fix me a cup of coffee?” Originally from New York, she had been living on the streets for over 20 years; Baltimore for the last nine months. “Do you know of any shelters around here I can stay for the night?” she asked. “The Helping Up Mission has a woman’s shelter. I can call them and let them know you need a place, and get you an Uber,” I replied. “That would be great. If you don’t mind, I’m going to get changed before I leave.” Emily gathered her bag and shuffled to the bathroom. The Uber was on its way and the Mission was informed that a guest would be arriving shortly. When she emerged from the bathroom it had become apparent that she had thrown out her old clothes. Her filthy garments were hanging out of the garbage can next to the toilet. She now wore a fresh pair of pajama pants and a crisp white T-shirt with the word ‘Chosen’ emblazoned across it. In small lettering beneath was the reference: 1 Peter 2:9. Emily was beaming. She looked new. There was a difference in her walk. The white clean clothes shimmered on her in contrast to the black filthy clothes now disposed of. She thanked us, made her way out the door where the Uber waited, a chariot to whisk this chosen one off to safe shelter, a hot shower, meal, and warm bed. What an image. That night she was led through the doors to the very place that would provide her everything she needed, in the name of Jesus. Emily could have kept her dirty clothes, been too proud to admit her need, kept away from the church, acted like she could afford the items and try to run out with them, but instead she was open, honest, transparent; not entitled but able to freely express her need. She was exactly what God was looking for. The world looked at Emily as a burden on society, someone useless, hopeless, and unable to contribute. Mumbling to herself, it was clear that a mental impairment kept her on the streets. There was no place for her, and yet God’s ways, being the opposite of the world, saw her as His dearly beloved, useful, valued, given a seat at His table. While the world looked upon the outward appearance, He saw the heart, His desire was towards her, He sought her, guided her, picked her out, and chose her. What the world considers foolish the Lord saw as wisdom. And there it was, on display before our eyes. Like Joshua in Zechariah 3, the filthy garments of sin were exchanged for clean garments of righteousness. This was a free gift. In the parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22) Jesus teaches that being properly dressed is essential to attend the feast (the Kingdom of Heaven). Everyone, from every tribe, tongue, nation, and background, regardless of their moral standing, is invited – both those the world considers ‘righteous’ and ‘sinful.’ Only those who accept the invitation find themselves to be the chosen ones. These chosen guests are given wedding garments, representing the perfection and sinlessness required to enter the Kingdom, which comes through Christ, not from their own actions. Whether someone was considered morally good or bad before attending was of absolutely no matter, all were clothed, shrouded, covered up in these garments, leveling the playing field. However, receiving the wedding garment, accepting the invitation, and finding oneself to be ‘chosen’ required something from the individual: the acknowledgement of their own need – Much like Emily, who humbly came through the doors of the church, coming to Jesus just as she was, weary and burdened by her own efforts, recognizing her filthy garments. This contrasts with Adam and Eve, who tried to cover their shame by themselves. Jesus told the Pharisees that He came for the sick, not the healthy. By this, He meant that He came to save those who recognized their need for help, knowing they couldn’t reach God on their own. The Pharisees, however, believed they were “healthy” and didn’t see themselves as helpless or sinful. They clothed themselves in their own morality and thought it was enough to make them right with God. In reality, their self-reliance made them even more spiritually sick, because they couldn’t see their need for God’s grace. (Romans 3:10, 23). In the parable, Jesus notices a guest at the banquet who isn’t wearing the provided wedding clothes. The guest is speechless because there’s no valid excuse – no one can stand before God based on their own righteousness. Isaiah was speechless and covered his mouth when he saw himself in light of the Lord. Even Job, who was considered by the society, a ‘righteous’ man, covered his mouth and was speechless when contrasted with the almighty God. The point is, even if a person tried to clean up their own garments (their life), they would still be stained with sin. Mankind is born once, clothed in a tainted flesh and a broken, sinful heart that cannot be repaired or made presentable. What’s needed is not patching up of old clothes, or a repairing of a new heart, but an entirely new set – a new birth, new clothes, a new heart. The guest without the proper garment symbolized someone who tried to rely on their own efforts, and perhaps thought either too high or too low of themselves, (pride, instead of humility) rather than accepting the new life and righteousness that only God alone, through Christ, can provide. What becomes of this person? They are removed from the banquet, because there is only one valid way in, through the Way, the Truth, and the Life: that is Jesus. I pictured Emily in the bathroom, clothed in filth. She had been invited to the Wedding Feast. She had accepted the invitation. Jesus stood there wearing the bright, clean clothes. He took them off of Himself and handed them to her. As she reached for them, He took her filthy clothes from off of her, and put them on Himself. She wore His clean garment that declared her “chosen.” She had put off the old self and put on the new. Paul writes about it in Ephesians. This Greek tense “to put off and put on” refers to a single past finished action. He is reminding these believers that by knowing their need and trusting Jesus, they had put off and put on, and were chosen. I could hear Jesus say, “Emily, you have been changed, given new clothes, a new heart, an entirely new birth. You are a new self now. Don’t look back, don’t rummage in the garbage bin for what’s no longer your identity, that which serves no purpose, that which separated you from Me. Live into, lean into, look to what is now yours, and remember who I say you are: beloved, desired, valued, chosen.” In other cultures, religions, and philosophies, people are directed to put on new behaviors to become better. Jesus says to put on the new self that He is offering, and from that entirely new being will flow new motives, new and good behaviors. The Pharisees put on behaviors, but they were not new beings. Jesus called them whitewashed tombs. They looked good on the outside, but inside they were dead. They were in need of a new birth, a new heart, clean garments. They had to first be something before they could do something. They had to shed one identity put on a new one. “For I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Just like in marriage, where a decision is made and a new life begins, so it is in our relationship with Christ. You don’t live as you did before, but as someone made new. Paul urges us to “be renewed”—to receive and embrace this new life, to recognize that we are chosen and clothed in Christ’s righteousness. It’s not about learning new behaviors; it’s about getting to know The One who chose and clothed us. We don’t simply learn principles, values, or systems—we learn a Person, Jesus Christ. We become more like Christ not by mastering rules, but by deepening our relationship with Him. We are called to “put on” the new self because He put on Himself what we put off—our sin. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become His righteousness.” The more we grasp this truth and let it dwell in our hearts, the more our motivations change, and we are transformed from the inside out. As Emily’s Uber faded into the night, I took a moment to look around at the scene. To the world, none of it made sense—a Thrift Market more focused on building relationships, creating a welcoming and fun environment for the neighborhood, and sharing the love of Jesus than on making a profit. We were practically giving things away. The costs of marketing barely broke even with what we earned. But none of that mattered. If God had set everything up just for Emily, for her story to be part of something bigger, revealing His glory, then that was the true purpose. Something that would matter for eternity. At first, I was discouraged, not motivated to set up for the market. I couldn’t seem to get the church interested, unified, or wanting to be involved. But then, as the chapel filled with people, and I witnessed the divine appointment with Emily unfold before my eyes, the Lord spoke to my heart. He settled me with these words: “It’s about Me, right? And didn’t I choose you?” In that moment, my heart filled with awe. What an incredible privilege to be chosen by Him, to do even the smallest tasks for His sake, and to be seen by Him. I realized how blessed I was to be counted not among the outcasts, the sinners, the broken, the lonely. I felt the weight of that truth. I put on my new self with its new motives—to please Him alone. All I had to do was remember that He did the opposite for...
- [nameless](https://thejkinz.com/2024/09/nameless/): The dream I had nearly a year ago came to the forefront of my mind. In it, the Lord handed me a stone and with His fingers, wrote a new name on my forehead. There was no mirror so I couldn’t read it. Only He knew the name. At the meeting behind the church, I held a pebble and smoothed in around in my palm. “On this rock I will build My church,” Jesus said to Peter. I zoned out, the discussion muffled by my own thoughts and memories. I remembered all the stones I threw in the river with a prayer written on them, as a means of symbolically surrendering them to God. None of them answered. The pebble was light in the center of my hand, but the weight in my heart extravagant. No one around me could know. They would never understand. I was a friend without a name. Nothing but a tool from the past, once used, picked up by the Lord, employed, and discarded by the recipient. My purpose was served, I was no longer of use or meaning. My name was all but forgotten. Some of the last words spoken before the severance are imprinted on my heart. They haunt me and come out of nowhere sometimes, exploiting me when I’m down on myself.“You’re unbuildable. I can’t build a future with you.” But then, Lord, I thought of what You said to Peter… ‘upon this rock I will build my church.’ Did You not use me to do exactly that? To build. You brought one soul from death to life. You added one more priceless and absolutely necessary brick to the lavish building of which You are the Cornerstone. You built hope and a future indeed. Plans to prosper and love, never to harm. All glory is Yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever. Not to us, but to Your name be the glory. What is my name? It does not matter much. If I decrease and You increase, if I was once a river with a name that flowed into a bay… and not just any bay, a bay in which the love and memories were built that showcased who You were to the lost soul now found… and then what began as a river with a name led out into an ocean, the name has been lost, and You are the sea. I had a name once, and was called by it, but then I lost it to gain You. I am not my own. Now I am nothing more than a past friend, my name erased. I can’t be thanked for being part of the saved one’s story, for I didn’t choose to be used. I only chose the later thing – love without conditions. As my name disappeared from the river, and into the sea, I am swept away by stormy waters, gnashing waves, lightning and thunder, fog and darkness. I miss the tranquil river, when I had a name. Now I am lost beneath the water, nameless, in the fellowship of Your sufferings. King Jesus, is there anything worse than being abandoned by the one You love? You whisper back to me a ‘No’ and I remember that You were abandoned by The One You loved most, and that He, Your Father, didn’t want to abandon You, and had all the power in existence to stop You from dying, but allowed it, because that’s how much You love me. You were abandoned so I’d never have to be. You grieved and sorrowed like I do, except what I have experienced is just a minute taste, a mere droplet of that raging sea. It’s nothing in comparison, yet a taste nonetheless, not to be diminished. A weight, a rock, a stone that sinks to the bottom. I and my family had to, for some reason I will not get answers to or grasp this side of eternity, be cast off and away so the one I love could live and flourish. The cost of being used by You, Lord, is exorbitant. It can be enough to decimate a person, and perhaps that’s the state You can best use them further. A place where they are not their own, bought at a price indeed, and striped of their name. That searing, endless pain of loss is one I never knew possible. But You gave me a new name, and only You can see it. All I know myself to be is a former friend. Nameless.
- [The Divine Preference](https://thejkinz.com/2023/11/the-divine-preference/): He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity Job 36:15 ‘If need be.‘ That is how Peter describes being grieved by various trials. Sometimes, if not often, God thinks it is good, right, and needed, to endure such stretching, to work out His Son in us who believe. This ‘chastening‘ can be painful, yet wounds that break us down, crucify, expose us, and bring us closer to Christ become wounds we are paradoxically thankful for. I have been mulling over the line between grace and tolerance, hurt and pride… what I perceive to be complicated in my adult mind has a simple childlike answer: to have Christ’s mind, to be in fellowship with Him. Unconditional love does not lay a charge against another person, or even ourselves. Jesus said to the woman caught in the act of adultery, “Neither do I condemn you.” And then He tells her to turn away from sin and towards Him. We lay many charges against ourselves or each other to try to correct thinking or behavior. Yet, do we get angry at a lame man who cannot walk because he won’t attempt to walk or does so improperly? Of course not. We would never expect him to walk well, or hold him to our standard of walking, but we’d instead consider the man’s condition, a helpless one that we too have, and only through God’s grace, power, and life living within us makes us able to walk right ourselves. Instead of reacting to ourselves or people, which we do endlessly, we have the opportunity to love over and beyond the knowledge of shortcomings and inadequacies. We have the opportunity to think and see with God, who looks not upon those things, but past them to His reality: the new creation. Is this thinking delusion? I prefer to call it ‘Divine Preference.’ This divine vantage point, which if Christ lives in us we all have access to, looks beyond ourselves or the person to the ‘glory self’; who we / they are in Jesus. The Smoky Mountains surrounding Gatlinburg, TN have always been my favorite. The personal connection of visiting every Fall during my college years in Kentucky has made it a sacred space in my heart. On one occasion I walked to the top of Clingman’s Dome during a thick fog just before dusk. The mountains were shrouded but every once in awhile the light would break through and I could see the tops of bright, golden foliage. I fumbled for my camera to capture the breathtaking shot, but not fast enough. The fog was back, but I was awed at what I saw. This is what it’s like to get to know another Christian. We catch these matchless glimpses of the glory self, the new creation, the person in Christ in whom we are and are becoming. We see in each other these brilliant moments of what we would look like outside of a sinful, fallen world and flesh. In that great block of marble we see past it to the finished sculpture within. And then, sometimes we become committed to that — the glory self in one another, and we fall in love with God in the other person, and want to be the one that signs up for the journey to see that person all the way through to who they are and are becoming in Him: their true self. This is what I have had the privilege of coming to know as truly what it means to fall in love. When we allow His Spirit within us to love, we express Christ in us, the hope of glory. We do not need to be regulated by what our senses tell us in various circumstances and situations or in how we feel about ourselves. We defend, hide, withdraw, get upset, take things personally, weep, engage our self pity, when instead we can deliberately choose to walk by faith instead of by sight and be regulated by the Spirit, albeit, imperfectly, as we are humans and not God. But we do have God residing in us, growing in us like Christ grew in His earthly mother. We don’t have to spend so much time comparing the spirituality of others or holding them to our standards, but instead we can live in absolute love towards people and even towards ourselves, despite the pressures. It sounds idealistic and impossible, and it is, it will always be flawed, but with God it is possible. Don’t cut off the opportunity for God’s mind to be expressed because your life is regulated by standards towards others. And don’t be surprised if God surrounds you with people where you will have to exercise this opportunity. He wants us to grow in grace and love, and see people and ourselves and the world the way He does, little by little. How often though is our life regulated by our own standards of how people should act or behave because what seems normal, good, kind, right is not being exhibited. We deny many opportunities for God’s mind to be expressed. Every disappointment, shortcoming, betrayal, offense we experience is an opportunity to express God’s mind rather than succumb to being hurt, offended, or bothered, as is so often the case in our humanity. We choose the practical delusion, which is the reality of our experience, instead of the Divine Preference, which seems like impractical fantasy, but is God’s reality — the only reality that matters. Only an unconditional love can be the basis for the will of God to be executed. God’s thoughts are not ours. We get so moved and affected on our horizontal plain by the little picture while God lives in the bigger picture, and invites us up to catch a glimpse, just enough, to think and see with Him, like the fog lifting off the top of the mountain, like seeing into the block of marble to the glorious finished sculpture. There it is, the glory self! That person is perfect in Jesus. I am perfect in Jesus. How can I not love no matter? This is our finiteness touching the infinite — living in faith, forsaking our interpretations of what we think should be. We think we need to react in our flesh or be certain ways to make a point, administer justice, get someone to understand us, condemn ourselves for our thoughts and actions, trace back our roots, figure out our problems and why we are the way we are, but we must forsake all of that to fix our gaze upon Him, and allow Christ to transform us and exhibit Himself in us, even if, to some degree perhaps, we are continually crushed. It’s He in us who takes the hits. When people do certain things, behave certain ways, or when circumstances come into our lives that are unpleasant or devastating or challenging, do we question sovereignty? All things come about by God’s hand and foreknowledge, yet we often panic, get frustrated, live by sight. Grief is that space between what we hoped would happen and what actually happened, and it is in that space where God wants to meet us. He wants our heart’s reliance. His sovereignty is something we cannot understand because His thoughts and ways are higher than ours, and we are not in control. Our standards fall flat on their face in light of sovereignty, and our heart and mind must surrender, submit, and succumb to it, and allow circumstances and or a person, including ourselves, to grow in the grace of life. Let’s think about it, what would be more beneficial, to be ministered to with unconditional love, receiving grace for weakness, or to be confronted with the knowledge of inadequacy without any means of escape to the life of grace? In so many instances I have confronted with the knowledge of inadequacy, trying to shed light or correct a behavior in myself or another, to reach a standard of what I know to be right and true, instead of ministering with unconditional love towards a person, and towards myself. When we let others and ourselves receive grace for our weaknesses, shortcomings, lameness, inabilities, and disabilities and recognize we’re all children growing in grace, we become agents of His character, subduing the self-consumed flesh that bites at the bit to react. We fret so much over our own lives and the lives of those we love, yet what we need is to see as He sees and allow Him to work in and out, in us and in others, what is pleasing in His sight. It is because of our afflictions that we don’t readily part with God’s word and time spent with Him in prayer. Without being grieved by these various trials where would we be, and where would our relationship with God be? We can’t have intimacy with God without first losing our independence, and self-discovery comes during trials and temptations. Why is it that we ‘need’ these things, “if need be” to bring us to these places? Our tear-stained Bibles and journals record our thoughts, our conversations with the Lord, and our experiences as we perceive them, and if we allow, through the revealing light of how God sees them. If we are to receive benefit from being grieved by our trials we must radically accept situations and choose the Divine Preference, as ‘delusional’ as it may seem. Fretting does not make anything better, but prevents us from improving. The impatient horse which will not quietly endure his halter only strangles himself in his stall. Fleeing for refuge under the shadow of God’s wings we find Him, more of Him than we had previously known or seen. It’s through our afflictions that God gives us a fresh revelation of Himself, leading us to a place where, like Job, we ‘see Him.’
- [The Hope of Glory](https://thejkinz.com/2023/10/the-hope-of-glory/): “… Christ in you, the hope of glory” – Colossians 1:27 The thatched roof crackled under the weight of the men who clawed about furiously to create an opening. Inside, Jesus stood surrounded with barely any space to move. The crowds encompassed the house, peering through windows, listening from nearby walls. The men were determined, they needed their paralyzed friend to get to Jesus, and they stopped at nothing. Soon, a portion of the roof collapsed in a heap of dust, and the men lowered their friend on a stretcher directly in front of Jesus. What they knew in their mind about Jesus had gone to their heart. When faith is tested, a gap is bridged between the head and the heart. Jesus shows us that true love empties itself, waives its rights, and comes to serve, not to be served, and gives its very life. He, who was humiliated for the selfish, says that the greatest in God’s Kingdom are the least. On our own we are filled with self-interest and have no capacity to love or look upon the needs of others, but He in us is not only well able, but more than able, and actually yearns to do so. His nature in us longs to satisfy itself. If Jesus could serve us while we were still helpless and knew Him not, surely He in us can do the same for those who do not reciprocate.  Rather than making things about us and our needs, true freedom, privilege, and honor comes from laying down one’s rights and needs in love. In a strange, paradoxical, and ironic sense, our deepest need is actually met in doing so. Needs deeper than the needs we think we have. That need is the very life and nature of Christ in us. Slowly we learn we actually possesses faith that’s very much alive, because He is, having conquered death, and it’s His faith in us that is held and kept. As we go through the journey and trials of life we see that even though we can at times feel slain, defeated, destroyed, and in agony, we’re still praising God, seeking Him, looking to Him, choosing Him, running to Him for shelter and help even when we don’t feel like it, or feel like He’s not there or not listening or providing what we need or want, because we know there’s nowhere else to go. We keep putting our hope in Him and choosing Him regardless of our intellectualizing, overthinking, and tumultuous emotions. But do we, or does His Spirit in us keep choosing Him in and through us? If what He says about us is true, we are dead and no longer live if we are in Him, and it’s He who lives in us. Is this not the evidence that it’s all Him and not us? This faith, this kind of love, this capacity has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Him. It defies our logic and reason and leaves us in no other position to think and be, except that of a child. It’s not even that we’ve got Him, but He’s got us! Christ in us is well able to take all the hits, to love onward, to forgive and serve without reciprocity because it’s all done as unto Him. His nature in us has the divine ability to look past a person and their offenses to Christ in them.  What a relief. He in me can choose compassion instead of reacting. If I do react, I am living out of something dead, not alive, and it’s my choice to live out of His abundant life. We can look past offenses to the desperate unmet need in others, and He in us can offer the grace to meet it. Then we are astounded by His power, His capacity to love over and past our own hurts, to know there’s a deeper wound in the one who hurt us, and we don’t have to take things so personally. He in us is well able to absorb the hurt, and we can then rest securely in Him and address with love the one who is hurting. This is profound, maybe the most profound element of being ‘free’ in Christ, without rights, crucified, knowing we don’t live anymore but ‘He in us’ is a thing of beauty of liberation. When we let go of our lives and our rights and let God’s nature exhibit itself in and through us, it can voluntarily die and suffer for the unlovely, the selfish, the arrogant, the proud, because we are all those things and exhibit all those characteristics apart from Him. When those characteristics are exhibited in ourselves or in others, what we / they need is Christ. Whoever is first to recognize this has the advantage of turning to face Him.  Sometimes we sympathize with ourselves out of self-pity; a wretched form of our own pride, and we tell ourselves we don’t deserve something. The hard truth is that implies entitlement. A person’s behavior may very well be inappropriate, unkind, unjust, unloving, disrespectful, but who are we to think we don’t deserve? Christ in us can take it in stride and has already taken it. He is not moved. A weakness of mine was allowing my flesh to be constantly hurt and moved, but when I finally realized He in me can take anything, I saw clearer and regretted being so offended and hurt. This is why Paul must have said that he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him because he was tapping into and living out of the very real and living person of Christ who is not dead. Paul was expressing freedom from the bondage of self by a ‘new and living way.’  What if the next time we are hurt we allow ourselves to let Christ take the hit on our behalf and instead of reacting, be like Jesus and meet the person where they’re at, showing them love without conditions, meeting them with grace instead of defense or sadness? This is what Jesus is teaching me, drilling into me, forging through a bridge between the head and the heart. Christ in us is more than able if we will let Him. A punch can be met with an embrace, a harsh word with a gentle word instead of allowing our flesh to screech in pain and pity. It takes time, we all must learn love from The One who is love Himself, and allow Him to be our teacher. When we do, our bad memories get hid by His Gospel and turned to gold. Past hurts, failures, and troubles are bathed in agape, forgiveness, covered over, redeemed – transformed into compassion, empathy, love, care, healing, humility, grace, wisdom, and skill in us. Because of Jesus, that is how we can look past our problems and our hurts, and even each other – with the laughter of grace. Hardships can provide opportunities for God to peel back His glory in ways never before seen or experienced, exposing just how powerful He really is in us. When God brings us to a place where, by His Spirit and nature being forged in us, we become committed to another person’s new creation, to desiring and learning how to become a caregiver, healer, someone safe, to love like Jesus, we have already received our reward, the greatest gift, Christ in us, the hope of glory. Yes, He can love us that much to purposely bring us into these spheres where we must learn to lay down our rights to ourselves for love’s sake. This is the cross life, but what an honor and joy it is when God brings us there and births in us that aspiration for Him in another person. If the ultimate lesson — learning to love like Him — is being learned, then is it not well worth it? What a profound opportunity when God puts you in a situation, friendship, relationship, or marriage, where He serves up sanctification on a silver platter. It may take awhile to see from His perspective, but once we do, we can’t help but be awestruck. All those things we thought were problems, obstacles, challenges, difficulties too hard to overcome, get transformed into the very opposite. While others experience trials, joys, sufferings, and life events to grow and become more like Him, He sets aside certain people for the benefit of loving and caring for one another who may hurt, trigger, expose, and not meet all earthly needs, so they actually get to learn to love and care like Christ through and with each other, every day, all the time, with no breaks or distractions or room for apathy. The world would say that is foolishness, to try to find the most compatible person, which is to say someone you need to change the very least for and in whom needs little changing, for a more safe, shallow, and apathetic life. But Christ says otherwise. Who pushes you closer to Him, through good and bad? Who will provide for you a lifetime of needing to draw on His strength, wisdom, love, ways, behaviors, reactions, compassion, gentleness, selflessness? He gives us new eyes to see the beauty in any and every challenge. He gives us the favored opportunity to turn off our flesh, choose Him, realize it’s not about us, and we can freely love like Him into oblivion with an endless supply of His grace, over and over and over again. We’ll fail, of course. It’ll never be perfect, but when the motivation and intent is there, He is faithful to see it through and finish what He starts if after every shortcoming we take it as an opportunity to keep turning to Him to do so. Is there a greater gift, a greater liberty, a more profound opportunity? Often, we see debilitations as bad things, but it doesn’t have to be that way. They can be the very opportunities we need to show and be agape love. It was the faith of the friends of the paralyzed man that stopped at nothing to get their friend in front of Jesus by lowering him through the roof that most impressed Jesus. God was honored by their faithfulness. May we be like them for each other, since we are all debilitated in one way or another. Christ is the healing answer, His love is the cure. When love passes from a feeling to a conscious choice, there is so much freedom: the supreme liberation – self-giving love that becomes more like Him in His death and exhibits the abundance of His resurrection life. We lose ourselves to gain Him, and in so doing He is revealed in us: the brightest beauty in the ashes of pain – Christ in me the hope of glory. 
- [Unto Him](https://thejkinz.com/2023/09/unto-him/): Not my will, but Thine… the result? All our hurts and pains leading us to a place of service and love, to enter realms where we don’t need to think of ourselves but upon the needs of others, putting our lives into a much-needed perspective. 
- [Let's Make a Name](https://thejkinz.com/2023/09/lets-make-a-name/): What's in a name? An identity, a purpose, an ideology... People long for a name to rally around, come under, and find belonging. 
- [On Grace & Truth](https://thejkinz.com/2023/08/on-grace-truth/): Are we willing to fall for truth over fantasy? 
- ["Does God have wings?"](https://thejkinz.com/2023/08/does-god-have-wings/): The prophet Jeremiah writes that the person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is not in themselves but in Him, is blessed. 
- [Faithfulness & Praise](https://thejkinz.com/2023/08/faithfulness-praise/): My praise and reverence is a weapon that can take down the walls and strongholds of fear and all of my enemies. Faithfulness and praise. Those two things gave Joshua  and his army the victory at Jericho
- [Hindsight is 2020](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/hindsight-is-2020/): The best summer of my life had concluded. God only knew if there would be another even remotely like it. The world had changed, and so had my life.
- [The Father's Heart](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/the-fathers-heart/): It is a dangerous prayer to pray to experience and know the Father’s heart. He will show you His heart, and it will come at a high cost. 
- [Delivered Unto Death](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/delivered-unto-death/): All through my journey with God, He must continually show me my utter sinfulness and desperate need before He is able to lead me on into realms of grace where I catch glimpses of His glory.
- [Her Race](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/her-race/): She has confidence in Him to do and be and go above and beyond all you can ask or imagine, and she never ever gives up
- [The Family](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/the-family/): The deepest longing of his heart was completely met in one singular instance. It was not loud and grandiose, it was quiet, subtle, and unexpected; much like God. 
- [Well Able](https://thejkinz.com/2023/07/well-able/): For Joshua and Caleb, their confidence came from the Lord. They knew God had led them this far, that it was He who led them out of Egypt to lead them in to the promised land of Canaan. 
- [The Gardener's Heart](https://thejkinz.com/2023/06/the-gardeners-heart/): I chose the seedling because I liked what it would become. 
- [Grounded](https://thejkinz.com/2023/05/grounded/): When Joshua comes face to face with God, he does not know it immediately. The impressive figure stands before him with a sword drawn as Joshua and his army contemplate how they can take the walled city of Jericho, the first obstacle upon their entrance into the land of promise
- [Kept](https://thejkinz.com/2023/05/kept/): I haven't written a poem in a very long time. So here it goes... 
- [Eden in the Wilderness](https://thejkinz.com/2023/04/eden-in-the-wilderness/): The Saturday between Friday, the day He bridged the chasm between mankind and Himself, and Sunday, the day He swallowed and defeated death, is the day we now live in. This is the age between Gethsemane and the New Eden, the time between His first coming and His second.
- [Meekness & Might: A Return to Asbury, 11 Years Later](https://thejkinz.com/2023/02/meekness-might-a-return-to-asbury-11-years-later/): The moment I walked through the doors of Hughes I broke. I simply couldn’t stop the flow of joyful, awestruck tears. Eleven years had passed since I stepped foot inside that chapel auditorium on the campus of my alma mater, Asbury University.
- [On the Death of Free Speech, Expression, and Thought](https://thejkinz.com/2020/05/on-the-death-of-free-speech-expression-and-thought/): But I certainly look forward to the time I’ll save and the newfound freedom. A freedom we all once had many years ago, and I am so ready to enjoy again. 
- [Moments in Montenegro](https://thejkinz.com/2019/11/moments-in-montenegro/): I was almost sure we were lost. To make matters worse, daylight was quickly diminishing and we didn't have an ounce of phone service to keep the GPS functioning. The gas tank was nearly empty, and I was sitting next to a woman I cared deeply about and felt responsible for protecting, who only spoke about 85% of my language, on a wooded backroad along steep cliffs and outcroppings. 
- [Subtitles](https://thejkinz.com/2019/03/subtitles/): If I ever wanted a haunted, romantic epic, I sure got my wish. Here we are, from two different worlds, societies, cultures and languages, thousands of miles apart, incurably ill-suited to be together in the same place at the same time for long
- [The Unplanned Plan](https://thejkinz.com/2019/01/the-unplanned-plan/): Nothing about their story was normal, so it shouldn't have surprised him that the next time he'd see her wasn't going to be in New York as a normal story would have it, but rather somewhere more exotic, mysterious, challenging, and enchanting
- [Space Love](https://thejkinz.com/2018/10/space-love/): Once upon a time they probably passed each other one morning on the boardwalk. She ran in one direction as he biked in the other. They walked the same beaches, ate at the same restaurants, waited in the same lines for the same ice cream and rode the same amusements that one summer, only they didn’t know each other. At some point, he probably heard her laugh and the hint of matchless accent among warm, sunny bustle of chatter and ocean splashes.
- [The Will](https://thejkinz.com/2018/10/the-will/): I’ve never been one to want something enough to force destiny to bend to my will. I’ve never wanted to power through and command my way and fight tooth and nail until I got it. I’ve never cared to have it exactly ‘my way’ despite loving when Frank Sinatra sang it. Rather, I’ve always figured that God, destiny knew me better than I knew myself; that if I trusted The Author to lead me I’d be led right, that I didn’t need ‘my way’ if it meant perhaps there was a better way I didn’t see or even know I wanted. I’ve seen it proven time and time again, but maybe I’ve also forgotten that I too, have power. That God, destiny entrusted me to make bold decisions, to have courage and faith and confidence and to go forward and let the chips fall where they may and let God, destiny take it from there. Perhaps I’ve grown too complacent, even fearful to power through and ever fight for what I want. My worry overtakes me, my lack of confidence subdues me, I stay stagnant instead of moving forward, I wait around for destiny instead of sucking up the courage taking the leap, casting off the bowlines, taking the plunge and giving destiny a little push. Honestly, that’s probably what God, destiny want to see from me, anyway. But will it?   (originally written on paper in a journal days before my trip to Russia) 
- [Regardless](https://thejkinz.com/2018/10/regardless/):   No matter what happens, this is a story for the books, a tale I’ll never forget, a turning point and a life-altering experience that I’ll pass down to the children and grandchildren I hope to someday have if I’m blessed enough to have them. This story, regardless of what happens, is an extraordinary one, and just goes to prove the lengths one goes to for love, or to find out if it’s love; a hopefulness and a curiosity that surpasses anything else before it. Regardless of what happens, my life is about to change. I’ll never be the same after this experience; an experience I never saw coming years ago and one in which I needed to go see for myself in order to ever move on with my life, in order to ever take another risk, in order to love again. Regardless of what happens, it was meant to be. I cannot put the weight of all I want and hope and fantasize about on it because that wouldn’t be right, it would be unfair to both parties. I fear I’m looking for some big revelation, like some kind of unveiling, like some kind of divine understanding will suddenly come together for me, for us, regardless of what happens. I can tell you though, that it had to happen. It would be a sin if it didn’t; a sorry shame, a tormented unknown, an unfulfilled potential. Regardless.   (originally written on paper in a journal just days before my trip to Russia) 
- [May's Possibility](https://thejkinz.com/2018/05/mays-possibility/): This light-spirited feeling of relief and giddiness can't be contained, and I'm taking it all in, soaking up every second
- [Lost Time](https://thejkinz.com/2018/03/lost-time/): Last weekend I had a revelation in the most unexpected place. It was during 90s night on Saturday when a bunch of millennials in my coastal New Jersey city of Asbury Park
- [Gen Z](https://thejkinz.com/2018/03/gen-z/): What concerns me most about their generation is how they view people as disposable
- [The Red Scare](https://thejkinz.com/2018/03/the-red-scare/): This is a poem about a great, impossible, and forbidden love. In the realist’s sense of the world, it’s impractical and never meant to be. Oceans, countries, and continents stand in the way, along with complicated politics and frustrating attempts to obtain visas. Access to one another is, for the most part, blocked by financial differences due to politically affected economies, and a mountain of bureaucracy, yet for some reason unknown, there remains all the patience in the world. And although they don’t always understand each other, somehow they always do, perhaps in a way that surpasses language itself. Society demonizes such a collusion, seeing them as enemy nations conspiring, their homelands labeling, blacklisting, and surveilling them as potential traitors, defectors, dissenters. Maybe it’s the gargantuan challenge, impossibility, and forbiddenness of it that makes it all the more thrilling; fueling them to persevere, which, in a sense perhaps, turns the impossible scenario on its head in mockery, making it, well, indeed quite possible.
- [Alternate Reality](https://thejkinz.com/2018/03/alternate-reality/): I still don't know why the memories drudge back to the forefront of my mind over two years later.
- [All You Wanted](https://thejkinz.com/2018/02/all-you-wanted/): I was thinking about my first kiss in the middle of a root canal. The dentist and his colleague stood over me, overhead light beaming in my face, tubes and tools cluttering my mouth. It was their conversation that brought me back to the fateful day. “Who sings this song?” my dentist asked his colleague. “It’s really good.” Michelle Branch’s ‘All You Wanted’ played faintly over the room’s sound system. “Uh, I think it’s Christina Aguilera,” the other man replied. I wanted to chime in and correct them but wasn’t in the proper physical state. Instead I relived that evening a few days after my 14th birthday when I saw Michelle in concert at the Electric Factory in Philly. Back then she was my biggest crush; I was completely enamored with her. After the show I stood in a short line clenching her debut album, waiting to meet the then 18-year-old girl with the guitar. I remember being surprised at how small she was. She made me feel like we were somewhat equal, despite 18 seeming so old. Brave, bold, courageous me had it all planned out. I knew it was now or never. As she smiled and signed my disc I quickly leaned in and kissed her cheek. Not a peck but a smooch, and to this day I still remember that first feeling of my lips against a woman’s flesh. Michelle smiled even bigger and turned to me with blazing chestnut eyes and exclaimed, “Aww, you’re so sweet” drawing me in for a hug. Now this was a time long before such an instance might be labeled assault, before Me Too hashtags and social media, and well, the Internet as we know it, really. Things were different, and looking back on it, Michelle and I really weren’t that far apart in age, except at the time it seemed like decades to me. That night I went home having kissed a girl for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t just anyone. I felt like I was living a miracle. The song ended and my tooth surgery wrapped up. I drove back to my apartment and replayed the song, reliving it all over again for the hell of it. Besides, it had been awhile since I listened to her music. Later that day I got a text notifying me my cousin had another baby. A family thread materialized and pictures of the child began blowing up my phone along with the Ooos and Aaaas. I congratulated her and muted the thread. A few minutes later I powered up my laptop and began searching flights to Vegas for my best friends upcoming bachelor party. What a strange feeling knowing my best friend of over 15 years was soon to be married, and to a woman who loved him unconditionally. What a rarity. I was happy for him but I wanted to be more happy. Instead my happiness was accompanied by a ping of emptiness for myself. Later that night I took a walk around my little beach town. From my apartment I trekked two blocks to the boardwalk and walked its length, taking in the salt air on an exceptionally mild day in January. I passed by restaurant windows and downtown lights, watching couples and friend groups dine. Afterward I began unwinding at my apartment and booked another trip. Nashville sounded good. It’d been awhile and I had so many friends there. I liked spending my weekends going on affordable adventures, whether that be local, domestic, or even international if possible. It had always been a central part of me, but lately I felt like it was perhaps a little escapism. A few weekends prior I met up with friends in Washington, D.C. We were dancing at a club in DuPont Circle when my friend caught me scoping out these two cute girls across the room. “Go dance with them,” she said to me. “Oh yeah right,” I fired back, blowing her off. Jen had been married for a few years now and was completely out of the loop. Despite us being around the same age, having graduated from college together, the dating world had drastically changed in just a few short years, leaving what honestly felt like an approximately 65-year gap for Jen to attempt grappling with. Jen was a loyal friend, sister of one of my best friends, and wife of another great friend. She always had my back in college, giving me the inside scoop, coaching me at the dating game. Now the tables had turned because Jen knew nothing of the modern era and I lamented knowing, well, observing an awful lot of it. I had been trying to explain to her how the rules were insane now, and this new generation only a few years younger than us seemed like decades. “What do you have to lose?” she asked. I set my drink down on the bar and turned to her. “It doesn’t work that way,” I replied. “Just watch.” The two girls backed away and all but shunned a guy who started dancing somewhat near them. We saw the whole thing unfold. The girls seemed a bit out of his league but he was polite, perhaps a bit awkward, but it was clear the girls were visibly creeped out by his presence. “Jen, you should go ask those girls if it’d be creepy if a guy just randomly came over and started dancing with them or if he were to ask,” I said, jokingly. “Okay, I will,” she replied and walked through the dancing throng over to the girls. I didn’t expect her to actually go over there. A few minutes later she came back smirking. “So, what’d they say?” I asked. “They said if a guy just randomly starts dancing with them it’s creepy. So I said what if he were to ask and they said that was creepy, too,” she laughed. “So then I asked what wouldn’t be creepy to them, and they said they didn’t know.” I took a gulp of my drink before responding. “It’s simple. You’re either attractive or you’re not. If you’re not, you’re a creep, and if you are, well, then it doesn’t matter.” Literally moments later the case in point came to fruition right before our eyes. A much taller, more attractive gentlemen approached the girls. They were completely engaged and receptive. Soon they disappeared with him into the crowd. “Case closed,” I said, finishing my drink. Jen couldn’t stop laughing. Later that night at a more quiet bar I tried catching her up on some of the things I’d learned about the sickly modern dating scene in America. “They’re called finstas, or spam accounts,” I said, describing the multiple Instagram accounts a present-day college girl might have. “One is their public face or professional social account which kind of showcases how they want to be perceived by the world,” I said. “And then there’s these deep, private accounts where they screenshot texts and direct messages and put their friends on blast and post nudes or scandalous pics and speak their super raunchy minds.” Jen was baffled. We didn’t have Instagram in college, let alone smartphones. Back then I was roaming the South and the Midwest in my 89 Plymouth with roll-windows and a bench seat, running out of minutes on my T-mobile flip-phone and living free of social media’s burden. To give her some insight, I shared one particular story from quite some time ago about a girl who lived in my general area I came across on Instagram through mutual followers. She was cute, a photographer, roughly around my age, perhaps a bit younger. The friends we had in common I actually knew in person, and we seemed to have the same interests and frequent the same coffee shops. I took a liking to her and sent a casual, polite message. Typically they don’t garner a response. There’s an immediate guard of judgement and skepticism, unless, of course, you’re extremely attractive, in which I am pretty average. But to my surprise, this girl seemed interested in my life, too. So we chatted back and forth for several days here and there, sharing our favorite restaurants, photo tips and getting a glimpse into one another’s life. At one point I suggested we meet up for coffee. Her response kind of threw me. “But that would be weird since I don’t really know you,” she said. For a moment I really didn’t know how to respond. In my mind I was thinking, isn’t that the point? “That’s why I asked,” I responded, with a laughing-cry emoji. It was awkward, and someone reading this will say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that you should have said this..” My God there are way too many rules, I can’t keep up. I was just trying to be me. The comment was “read” by her but never responded. I didn’t want to press her so I let it go. A few days later she unfollowed me. And that was that. If you’re like me you probably think I must be leaving out a part of the story here, only I’m not. That’s exactly how it went down. This isn’t uncommon, in fact this is typical. No matter what you do or say, you’re never going to do or say it right, unless that is, the person is very much attracted to you. Respect, dignity, manners, getting to know someone slowly over time spent together are all but tossed out the window when people have become disposable commodities due to social media – an endless surface-level-only catalog of humans and lives making us falsely believe there’s always something or someone better out there we’re missing out on or haven’t met yet. “I certainly don’t envy you,” my best friend said to me over dinner as I complained about how brutal the scene is. His fiance went on to share with me that her good friend thought I was very handsome and liked being around me but there was something superficial I was missing, and therefore I was disqualified. I laughed at the impossibility of all of it and wondered how we got to this point as humans. I could’ve named several superficial things about this friend of hers that I thought she was missing, too. The difference was I would be more than willing to overlook all of them for the possibility of what could be. She, however, could not. And that has increasingly been my experience, but I feel like it wasn’t always this way. When these dating apps first emerged, I was getting matched all the time. I’d go on dates every week and most of them were with people who actually wanted to go on dates. Some even put away their phones to keep from distraction. Others became incredible friends, one a colleague I’d work with for over a year, and one – an actual girlfriend. Flash forward just about five years and it’s not even remotely close to the way it was. Today I get no matches, hardly ever, and I’ve absolutely mastered the art of starting a conversation and getting no response. I look back at my photos from the past and I definitely feel like I’ve gotten much better looking with age. I’m established with a well-paying job that I love, a nice apartment by the beach, and more travel experiences and stories under my belt than ever. I’m much more interesting now than I was then, except I’ve never been more lonely; completely unable to communicate with this rapidly changing society in which everything is creepy, weird, awkward, a nuisance, and a rash judgement. While it is important for parents to prioritize fostering a healthy and loving relationship, it is also crucial to remember that a happy family environment and a child’s happiness are not solely dependent on the romance between parents. Factors such as open communication, trust, respect, and providing a...
- [A Destined Chance](https://thejkinz.com/2018/02/a-destined-chance/): Our stories start long before we do. We ourselves are just one small fragment in a gargantuan mosaic, a mere paint speck in an epic mural. Although we can only see from our particular place in the picture, sometimes we catch a glimpse of the entire masterpiece. Had the wind shifted just slightly in Pompeii on the day Mount Vesuvius’ erupted in 79 AD, my ancestors wouldn’t have survived. Instead, they managed to escape the smoldering city that had been their home, continuing our lineage for countless generations, eventually leading to my great grandmother’s family departing Italy for America and ultimately, my own existence. When my family arrived on Ellis Island, they quickly bypassed New York and headed for the city our country was born in – Philadelphia. From Kensington to South Philly, the family took up residence building their future, pursuing their dreams and starting their own families. My grandmother, Elizabeth, remembers riding the open-air trolleys. City Hall towered above the entire metropolis like a mammoth stronghold with William Penn as the guardian of the sky. My great grandmother’s suffering was my grandmother’s redemption when it came to relationships. As a beautiful, young Italian woman, my Mom Mom had a long list of pursuers but was disinterested in all of them, seeing through to their character and intentions. Unlike our present age, back then her mentality sought only a genuine, caring man, not just an attractive fling. But it was her mother’s first failed marriage that helped shape her outlook, making it so she wouldn’t miss out on the man who would be my grandfather, leading to my mom and then myself. Nothing is wasted. All things seem to work together in the grand masterpiece, many times turning bad around for good, even if we only seen in retrospect. As a poor orphan child sweeping stoops and smoking cigarettes at 12, James was Irish and grew up in Philly’s Fishtown, which looked a lot different compared to today. December of 1950 left him frustrated when a leg injury (check out construction accident lawyers here) at work slowed him down and put him in a cast. He didn’t know it at the time, but that temporary wound was the best thing that ever happened to him. Humbled, sitting and watching his friends having a good time roller-skating at Circus Gardens on Frankford Ave, his eye caught a beautiful young Italian girl, Elizabeth. Then and there in his romantic childlike enchantment, he knew that he was going to marry her. There wasn’t a doubt or question in his mind. And so he did. In May of 1954, the two were wed. Elizabeth was 18 and James was 23. Their adventure officially kicked off and went on to last for 55 years. “Life never happens the way you expect it,” my grandmother told me, “But that’s the beauty of it.” With only $800 between the two of them, they bought their first house and went on to have their first of five children. The couple brought in almost $100 a week in the late 50s, early 60s. And then, just when things were going great, my grandfather found himself out of work at a time when they needed money the most. He was discouraged but had he not been laid off, he would’ve missed the incredible blessing of the opportunity to approach Ronald A. Ramos helps with workers compensation that was right around the corner. With strong faith and perseverance, the couple pressed on, praying for guidance. It was then in 1966 that a man reached out and took a chance on my Pop Pop, bringing him to work as the facilities manager of an apartment complex he owned in the Philly suburb of Glenolden. Along with their five children, my grandparents turned several of the bottom floor units into one big apartment, making it their permanent home. They lived rent-free and raised their kids in a fun-loving environment during a golden era of American history. My mom told me that her mom and dad were both always at her fingertips. They didn’t go away to work, because work was right there where they lived. She and her brothers and sisters, along with their dog, Tippy, could always find their dad somewhere within the complex whenever they needed him.You can read his last post to know about dog training and its details. Whistling, singing, crafting and inventing, my Pop Pop was a natural leader and a self-starter constantly needing multiple projects to take on at once, for both work and play. He was extremely affectionate with hugs and wet smoky kisses. My grandparent’s relationship was by no means perfect, but their family meant everything to them, and for 55 loyal years they never once went to bed angry or upset with each other. (Although, their bickering was always hilarious and entertaining to us grandkids). Without a doubt I knew my grandfather looked at my grandmother the same way at 65, as he must have when she was 20. His love for her so vividly bubbled over and he believed he was the richest, luckiest man in the world to have her and the family they made together. Never would he hesitate to let us know. Through feast and famine, uncertainty, grief, and the horrendous loss of one of their children, they held on tightly to each other with everything they had, facing all that life brought their way, focused and reminded of what truly mattered. They were selfless and lived for their children and for each other. Their testimony and example has left a profound impact on all of us. A true Philadelphian to his last day, my grandfather requested a cheese steak for his last meal. He passed away certain he was the richest man to ever live. Rich in what mattered. But the story doesn’t end there with loss and sadness. In fact, it was exactly those emotions that prompted my grandmother to approach another man who was hurting deeply. When she saw him alone and crying, her own personal pain and compassion brought her to meet Donald. He too had a one true love, Mary Jane. After their 39-year marriage, she grew ill and passed away. In their grieving, my Mom Mom and Donald started to care for each other and fell in love, continuing their stories, knowing it was what their spouses would have wanted. “You had not one but two men love you unconditionally,” Donald said to my grandmother. Taking a step back, I can’t help but see things fall into place. Through good and bad, pain and sorrow, gain and loss, an epic masterpiece continues unfolding. In some strange sense, a volcano in Italy, a failed marriage and an injured leg are among just a few things I can thank God for because if they hadn’t happened, the greatest things wouldn’t have either, and I wouldn’t be here writing this today.        
- [On Writing](https://thejkinz.com/2017/12/on-writing/): Turns out, we're not at odds, I just thought we were. You wanted me to make the first move. All this time you've actually loved me enough not to enable me but to push me and challenge me to make a decision for you, to love on you, and to once again make you mine.
- [Glimpse](https://thejkinz.com/2017/09/glimpse/): We came from different backgrounds, races, stories, and seasons in our lives. We each lived in different places, had different experiences, opinions, and politics. 
- [The Beautiful Contradiction](https://thejkinz.com/2017/04/beautiful-contradiction/): The Red Sea was parted right before my eyes, and still disbelief? Me of little faith and anxious human nature, when will I see past it and transcend these limitations to true reality? 
- [The View Forward](https://thejkinz.com/2017/02/view/): Another nightmare. This time we were setting up a Christmas tree and afterwards I held her but she kept squirming to break away and kept looking elsewhere, and then in one abrupt move she was gone, the tree was smashed and distorted, bent like the aftermath of a hurricane, and she was nowhere to be found.
- [Impracticality](https://thejkinz.com/2017/02/impracticality/): Could it be that even at this very moment, someone is praying for me who will someday join forces and do life with me? 
- [4:02 a.m. ](https://thejkinz.com/2017/01/402/): She might as well have looked me straight in the eyes and said word for word, “This is how little I care about you” before she left me in that cold Albany parking lot on that gray evening in March and got into her car and drove forever out of my life. But she didn’t. She let me wait for her for a month before vaguely telling me over the phone that she was out, done, giving up on me for no apparent reason, and only after my emotionally confused state desperately yanked the truth out of her. I remember so clearly her saying at one point, “It shouldn’t be this difficult.” As if relationships were supposed to be easy and require no self sacrifices or work. By no means was ours hard, no, at least not for her. I poured the lifeblood of my soul into her and lived to please her, only you see, I never could. Every now and then I’d catch a moment, but nothing more. I was never, ever enough. And despite months of a growing feeling of dejectedness, the thought of the relationship being “difficult” never once crossed my mind. You see, this is the part I’ve been struggling to write. It’ll be almost a year now since I last saw the girl I loved in that haunting parking lot in that oppressive gray city I’ll never go back to. But last night I awoke from another nightmare about her. And this time it brought more than a shaking sweat and a dizzying anxiety. This one brought revelation. In the dream, I exhausted myself trying to please her, to meet her needs, to make her happy, to make myself feel wanted. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I reworked, revamped or reinvented the ways, she kept slipping away, packing her things, putting her clothes back on, driving away. Sometimes she’d look back as I begged her not to go and she would return, only slightly, if not her feet certainly her mind already halfway out the door. She would say nothing, but her silence said it all. It was one last chance to rework, revamp, reinvent myself to be a person she would want and desire. There I would try again a new technique, over and over, until I realized ever too late that she was already gone.
- [The American Tragedy ](https://thejkinz.com/2017/01/american-tragedy/): Let not arrogance blind us into becoming judgmental, narrow-minded and intolerant of people who think differently than us. 
- [The Growth Year](https://thejkinz.com/2016/12/growth-year/): A few nights ago I found myself sitting across from someone I've admired for years but hadn't until that night met. In a quiet, dimly lit bar in Manhattan's East Village, we sat over New York sours and caught up on each other's life. The conversation quickly moved toward the area of both our struggles: relationships.
- [Signs](https://thejkinz.com/2016/11/signs/): It was the ultimate foreshadowing, since it was a jetty where the veil was at last lifted, the wind blew her hair across the corner of her smile and I fell madly in love. The forever kind.
- [A Better Ending ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/09/a-better-ending/): I can’t wait for the day when, with no hesitation or reluctance, a woman at long last, chooses me. Fully and completely. Picks me and decides to stick with me, choosing and wanting to take on life together. But “someday” seems like it slips further away from me every day. On Monday I’ll be 28. And my track record of slow, selective pursuits and twice choosing to go “all in” and give of myself in love has left me in ruins. 
- [Pandemic ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/09/pandemic/): You never know who might be infected. Everyone seems completely normal at first; totally capable of having fundamental human respect, dignity, and decency. You know, the elementary basics. But the infected unknowingly lurk within our midst, and they’ve become increasingly harder to identify. 
- [Work and Passion](https://thejkinz.com/2016/09/work-passion/): “As soon as your passions are turned into careers, you risk turning love into work” I watched her pace the room, tweaking and re-positioning the photos we helped her hang inside the art gallery. She stood back, studied the images from a couple vantage points and made a few more adjustments. The gallery was the culmination of a year’s work and the following week the show would be open to the public. This was her baby, and she was preparing for her moment. Kerri had become a close friend over the last few years ever since I first interviewed her for a magazine article about her inclusive, growing state-wide project ‘Jersey Collective.’ Each week, a different person in New Jersey takes over her Instagram account and shares their slice of the state. Kerri had no idea how big her brainchild would grow, or the mass amount of participation, wide-ranging diversity, and ways in which it would bring together countless people from all different backgrounds and walks of life under the unified banner of the state they live in and love.
- [Waves](https://thejkinz.com/2016/09/waves/): It comes in waves, but they’re painful and smothering. Sometimes I have really good days and feel happy, but a part of me feels irreparably damaged no matter what I do to try to feel otherwise. It would be nice to wake up and feel relief, but it does not happen. Why was I so foolish to let people into my life, to give them my heart? What made me think that was at last a good idea to let my guard down? Shouldn’t I have known it would leave me even more crippling lonely than I was previously? I went from a fun, confident, extrovert to a timid introvert and haven’t been able to figure out a way to bounce back. I feel good around people, especially close friends, but it’s when I am alone, which has been and continues to be a large portion of my life, when things get really bad and I descend again. One punch in the heart after another, after another, after another. I feel so discarded, so unworthy of love, a person not worth being talked about or shared, and made out to be someone who is dull and boring. What was it about me? What was so wrong with me that I couldn’t be loved or celebrated? How many more months or years will have to go by like this? I lean heavily on my faith, but sometimes I cannot help these big waves that overpower me. I am naturally a naive, trusting and loving person who is overly affectionate and romantic. And it has destroyed me. Every time I feel the waves of heaviness in my chest and my back I try to remind myself that I am fun and funny and an enjoyable person to be around. That there might be a time when I have a large group of friends again and won’t feel so alone. I hate having to do everything alone, go everywhere alone, eat alone, and never have someone to text or spend time with aside from the occasional weekends with my friends. I hold on to the hope of renewal, of things turning around on the inside as on the outside my circumstances have so drastically. I just want to be around people who enjoy my company, who I can connect with and let down my guard. I would love to find a church community with people my age but it’s been hard. I’m not one to show my hurt publicly, but sometimes I wish people would just reach out to me because I could really use it.
- [Exasperating Recollections ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/09/exasperating-recollections/): Sometimes our smallest decisions hold the greatest power. Unbeknownst to us, they can change our own lives or the lives of someone else forever
- [Angels and Intricacies ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/08/angels-intricacies/): A few months back, during a dark, dark season in my life, I sat with my parents at one of their favorite restaurants in North East, Maryland. My depression was rampant, my personality unrecognizable. A shell of myself, I stared out the window and felt the pressure inside my head build.
- [Circumstances ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/08/circumstances/): I wake up in a pool of sweat, mind reeling, room spinning, clutching my chest. Blood soaks the sheets and my fingertips I pull from a gaping hole where my heart once was. I try to take a breath but I can’t, it won’t let me. I shake again, now I’m actually awake. There’s no blood, just a thumping coupled with an uneasiness I hadn’t felt in days and thought I wouldn’t have to feel again, at least for awhile.
- [The Beautiful Letdown](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/beautiful-letdown/): If hurting me was truly one of the hardest things she ever had to do in her life, surely she wouldn’t be with someone else so quickly. There would be no possible way her heart could be in that place. It must not have been hard at all. I wish I had been worth an in-person breakup, and a time of healing, but I wasn’t. Yet she doesn’t ask, she demands that I believe her. I want to. But I don’t.
- [Perspective ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/perspective/): "I have an important question for you," I said as I took a bite of my salad. She winced with curiosity. "Do you believe in free will or destiny?"
- [To The Girls Who "Aren't Ready"](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/girls-ready/): This article originally appeared on Thought Catalog and was written by Yeniffer Pang-Chung. For the below posting, the gender has been modified. The thrill of that moment when you meet someone that you can finally connect with is amazing. It feels like that aha moment I have been waiting for. When both the mental and physical collide in such a glorious fashion that it makes me thirst for more. When days turn into nights and when nights turn into mornings. Everything suddenly appears to be so seamless between you two and your steps become lighter and your smile is brighter.
- [I am the reason](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/reason/): Sometimes I think I love too hard, and it freaks people out and drives them away. Am I the reason for the agonizing pain and heartache in my life? Should I try my hardest to remain detached and elusive and show distance if I ever eventually, someday,  start becoming interested in someone, so I will be desired?  Should I withhold fun dates and surprises and subdue my creative and romantic energy? Will anyone ever enjoy and want me for me and every aspect of who I am and what I have to offer? Will someone ever walk into my life and decide to never leave? Is it all wishful thinking? A fantasy? Is something wrong with me that it took me seven years to be in a relationship with someone, and several months to make it official while others can move on and start new relationships with new people within weeks? Am I the only one who grieves and loves this hard? Am I wrong for being so profoundly hurt, shocked, and bothered? Will I ever get my confidence back and feel comfortable trusting people again? Will I be able to look back on this post in a couple of years and marvel at how far I’ve come from this tormented pain? “Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future” – Vladmir Nabokov
- [Manipulated ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/manipulated/): 41 days after I poured my heart out in a letter, I finally received a response. “I needed to put myself back together again,” she wrote, “and jumping into a relationship was not the way to do it. If I regret anything, it’s that. I should have known I wasn’t ready.”
- [The Agony of Compassion](https://thejkinz.com/2016/07/agony-compassion/): Life, even amid the absurdity of human suffering, still has meaning. Suffering, as absurd as it seems, points to a greater story in which, if one will only construe himself as a character within, he can find fulfillment in his tragic role, knowing the plot is heading toward redemption.
- [My Bright Abyss ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/06/bright-abyss/): Tonight I sat on the same jetty where one year ago around this time, my heart was forever changed. I remember, in one sudden instance I spun around quickly as a wave splashed against the rocks, and she stood there a few steps away, barefoot and smiling, listening to me rant as my job fell apart. My comfort was disrupted, but I was entering a story. Then and there, a veil was lifted and I was overwhelmed with the blazing agony of something fierce and infinite.
- [Full Circle ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/05/full-circle/): For over a month I waited patiently for a response. Every day I checked my email, refreshed it over and over hoping this would be the day I would finally hear something from her. But soon I realized in the depths of my heart, it would never come. The longer I waited, I slowly started to gain back my once diminished self confidence, and it was then I finally realized I was worthy of a response, even if I didn’t get one. What should have been an exciting time of celebration in my life, moving to a new town in a new apartment with a new job, was met with anguish, lack of sleep, a heaviness in my chest and in my back, pent up anxiety, fear, and depression. A year later it all came full circle, I was back in the same place in which she found me: completely alone, all to myself, in my own life, my own apartment, my own job, my own town, always hoping and praying for someone to share it with.
- [The (Last) Day ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/04/day-2/): And as I sit here behind this screen, letting my hemorrhaging heart do the typing, I think about her and write about what could have been so that I might not feel so alone.
- [The Way to Permanent Faith](https://thejkinz.com/2016/04/permanent-faith/): My interest has been solely focused on the betterment of my circumstances, hoping and praying for blessings so my life can get right again 
- [Death with no Funeral](https://thejkinz.com/2016/04/death-funeral/): To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken
- [Not Worthy of Love](https://thejkinz.com/2016/04/worthy-love/): I'm only saying these things so I can protect myself from your inevitable disregard for me
- [The Hemorrhaging Heart](https://thejkinz.com/2016/04/humanitys-darkness/): And in that moment, if it ever comes, I'll have a petrifying decision to make on what to do with what's left of my hemorrhaged heart. 
- [to the one who loves her next](https://thejkinz.com/2016/03/loves/): She’s incredibly low-maintenance and simplistic. Sure, she likes “things” but they aren’t all that important to her in the grand scheme. This is a beautiful trait that I hope you realize and admire.
- [When Fears Fulfilled ](https://thejkinz.com/2016/03/fears-fulfilled/): My biggest fear wasn’t that you’d lie to me one day or that you’d cheat on me. My biggest fear was that you’d wake up before me one late winter weekend and instead of leaning in and kissing me or attempting to snuggle up close to me, you would keep to your side of the bed and ignore my presence. I feared you would look at me sleeping and suddenly, or gradually, feel indifference. My biggest fear was that you no longer wanted to be around me and would rather be by yourself or with someone else. I feared I would become a burden, that I wouldn’t be worth fighting for or keeping around, that you would unexpectedly and for no particular reason, fall out of love with me and leave me alone. My biggest fear was that I would finally embrace a companion and a best friend, build a loving relationship where my heart was 100% invested and given over, grow together and share adventures and plans, and then suddenly have it all vanish leaving me to face a dark, unstable, and cruel world all by myself. I feared my hopes and dreams would be smashed and shredded, that I’d lose my chance forever. I feared having to go back to my life before her, where my days and nights were spent alone, empty, unfulfilled, hollow, and sad. I feared being invited out to bars and restaurants to meet new women, because I didn’t want to meet anyone again. My biggest fear was watching as my friends around me met people who stuck with them no matter what, but I was unable to meet someone who would stick with me. I feared someone wouldn’t find me worth it to do everything they could to make it work with me, even though I wouldn’t ever think twice to do so with them. I feared stepping back out into the darkness and having to live there, where my heart screamed with a writhing pain that wished to die, and I feared being unwanted. And my ultimate fear was that one day, these fears would be fulfilled.  
- [Epiphany at Coney Island](https://thejkinz.com/2015/12/epiphany-coney-island/): Things are never gonna be the way you want. Where's it going to get you acting serious? Things are never going to be quite what you want. Even at twenty five you got to start sometime. 
- [Things that keep me up at night](https://thejkinz.com/2015/11/night/): My biggest fear 
- [A Simpler Time](https://thejkinz.com/2015/11/simpler-time/): In 2008 I sat in my college dorm room texting “Cha Cha” questions on my red T-Mobile flip-phone. Although the global economy was about to collapse, something bigger than the industrial revolution had already started.
- [The Day](https://thejkinz.com/2015/09/day/): If I could relive it a million times over I would. There’s nothing about this day that stands out as a pivotal, life changing or even an exciting, adventurous moment in my life, but to me it was everything. The Day came subtly, humbly, quietly and unexpectedly. And it wasn’t until it was over when I realized that this was The Day I’d wish I could relive for the rest of my life.
- [MSG Sent](https://thejkinz.com/2015/08/msg/): A new life began with one message sent.
- [But God](https://thejkinz.com/2015/07/god/): But in the midst, with a broken heart, my eyes were opened, suddenly made aware of so many things I hadn't seen clearly before because I had been blinded by own comfort zone
- [(not) knowing our Desires ](https://thejkinz.com/2015/05/knowing-desires/): How can you see the same thing again and again and still feel as if it's the first time you've ever seen it? 
- [Deserted ](https://thejkinz.com/2015/04/deserted/): "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned" - Antony & Cleopatra
- [The Unintended Story](https://thejkinz.com/2015/03/unintended-story/): I was completely bewitched by the sheer terror of the words I could barely believe I was actually reading until my cell phone suddenly buzzed with an incoming call
- [Postcard from the Coast ](https://thejkinz.com/2015/03/postcards-coast/): It’s the kind of place you could write about forever and experience again and again.
- [To The Love I Do Not Yet Have](https://thejkinz.com/2015/02/love/): In your physical absence, these public and private letters, this very language has become another way to have you 
- [Work & Travel](https://thejkinz.com/2015/01/work-travel/): Mark Twain wrote that travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. It's when we're on our adventures where we find ourselves, trust strangers, embrace the unfamiliar and search for better questions, not answers
- [Retrospective Reminiscing  ](https://thejkinz.com/2015/01/gorgeous-disrepair/):   Winter came fiercely to Kentucky, skeletal branches with leaves dead and curling on the ground. In some places, like the abandoned bourbon distillery outside Frankfort, the death rattle creaked against window glass a century old. Snapping one last photo, I switched my camera off and stepped out from the crumbling plaster and peeled paint into the frost-bitten desolation. The temperature had plummeted and the sun was disappearing beneath the rolling, isolated hills of the Blue Grass State. Another adventure for the books, another exploration conquered and documented.  It had been awhile since I spent an extended period of time in Kentucky. Having graduated in 2011 from a liberal arts college less than an hour from the distillery, I was disappointed in myself for having never known about this grand treasure of gorgeous disrepair.
- [The Great Experiment by the Sea](https://thejkinz.com/2014/10/great-experiment-sea/): Calling all self-driven, motivated entrepreneurs and creative self-starters to the opportunity of a lifetime 
- [Midnight in the Garden (State)](https://thejkinz.com/2014/10/midnight-garden-state/): Some nights I can almost re-create it when I listen to her album alone in my car, cruising the Parkway
- [Msg Unsent ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/10/message-unsent/): We met on Tinder and I cherished every moment spent with her
- [The Case for Atlantic City](https://thejkinz.com/2014/09/case-atlantic-city/): A proposition to millennials: historic east coast city for the taking. Incredible opportunity to re-brand historic seaside metropolis 
- [Thankful for F.O.M.O.](https://thejkinz.com/2014/09/thankful-fomo/): I imagine my life there, what it would be like, what I’d do for a job, where I would live, who I would potentially be dating, what we would do and where we would go on those dates.
- [Characters ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/09/characters/): Suddenly at least one of my unfinished stories had a new, divinely placed character
- [Unsatisfied Satisfaction ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/06/unsatisfied-satisfaction/): Sometimes my soul feels trapped and contained by this physical body and its bursting at the seams to break free of it
- [Destiny ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/05/destiny/): At twelve years old I started to create a massive collage with the walls that would eventually take up every inch of space covering multiple layers that lasted until the day I moved out on my own
- [An Appointment With The Divine](https://thejkinz.com/2014/04/divine/): The days of elegance and grandeur have passed away beneath the tomb of her hollow arches only to re-emerge with an even more distinct majesty and allure
- [Fear](https://thejkinz.com/2014/04/fear/): The other night I had this horrible nightmare that I truly believe exposed my deepest fear
- [en amour avec Montréal](https://thejkinz.com/2014/04/en-amour-avec-montral/): The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun
- [Africa Archive 2014](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/2014-africa-archives/): From start to finish, to the origins that led to the journey, to the many lessons I learned and re-learned throughout, here is the complete archive in one blog post
- [The Front Lines](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/front-lines/): An apathetic comfortable conformity to the society in which one lives is the most subtle form of  unconscious slavery. It's nothing short of a suppression of the truth and of the abundant life
- [Stable Instability ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/katherine-moresby/): Sometimes I too find myself struggling between stability and instability, wanting one whenever I have too much of the other
- [The Burden of Self](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/burden/): My advice to every person living in this false freedom of western culture would be to go, book a ticket, make the trip, and just do it
- [The Inevitable Sadness ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/inevitable-sadness/): I saw all those people at the bus stops in London waiting to go to work. I'd rather take my chance in Africa again than have to go to work every day by bus
- [My Lover (Pt. II)](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/lover-pt-ii/): On my last night in Ghana, I reunited with my lover for the first time somewhere other than the east coast of the U.S. 
- [Tourists and Travelers ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/traveler-tourist/): The important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking
- [The Grand Portrait ](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/sheltering-sky/): Life is amazing. Nothing ever happens the way one imagines it is going to. One realizes that most clearly here; all your philosophic systems crumble. At every turn one finds the unexpected
- [Lake Bosomtwe](https://thejkinz.com/2014/03/lake-bosomtwe/): “Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or a future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious – to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves” – Pico Iyer, Salon  Standing in the calm of that warm shallow lake, my feet sinking beneath its soft sand, I had to admire exactly where I was. Just outside the bustling city of smog and dust, weathered “roads”, crumbling concrete infrastructure and mud-walled homes with rusty tin rooftops was a quiet serene lake surrounded by tropical mountains. Free from the threat of Crocodiles, there was no better place to contemplate life than the shores of Ghana’s Lake Bosomtwe. 

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- [Articles](https://thejkinz.com/articles/):   Xaverian Brothers Generalate & Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools (XBSS)  Concordia Magazine, April 2020- present: writing, editing, and curating seasonal magazine for the Xaverian Brothers Generalate. Click here to view archives. From April 2020-present: writing, editing, and curating weekly e-newsletter for the Xaverian Brothers Generalate and the Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools (XBSS). Xaverian Brothers Generalate blog. Click here for archives. XBSS blog. Click here for archives. Education Development Center (EDC) Celebrating Courage on International Women’s Day EDC Lebanon Project Partners with Five Higher Ed Institutions  Translating Research Into Practice in MENA Region Greater New Jersey United Methodist Conference (GNJ) From May 2016 to April 2019, I wrote, edited, and curated the weekly e-newsletter for the United Methodist Conference of Greater New Jersey. Click here to view the archives. From May 2016 to April 2019, I wrote, edited, curated, and managed the monthly newspaper for the United Methodist Conference of Greater New Jersey. Click here to view the archives. Bishop Young Jin Cho Appointed to Calvary Korean UMC in GNJ Rising Against Hunger Becomes GNJ Tradition  Diaper Party Draws Community, Spotlights The Maker’s Place  Latino Task Force Launches SSL Classes, Children Reading Program  $40K in Grants Awarded to GNJ and Next Generation  GNJ Special Session Paves Way Forward  Sherise Alleyne to Lead Camp YDP  IGNITE Youth Leader’s Day Builds Connections, Stretches Reach  General Conference Passes Traditional Plan  Interfaith Collaboration Makes God Visible in Hightstown  Connectional Goals Enrich Church, Community, and World  New Leadership at A Future With Hope  New District Superintendents Appointed  A Future With Hope Engages Teens, Builds Connections  The Maker’s Place Making Moves with 87K Diapers  Stigma Free Church Series Tackles Tough Topics, Welcomes Community  Convocation Offers Powerful Application, Meaningful Fellowship  Eric Drew to Lead Next Gen Ministries  State Supreme Court Affirms GNJ Property Rights  Team Vital Action Plan Engages Community  $100K UMCOR Grant and GNJ Volunteers Restores Brick Community  IGNITE Youth Take Faith Public as World Changers  GNJ Collectively Commits to Prayer  Generous $10,000 Gift Helps Launch ‘Makers Place’ in Trenton  Finding Miracles Amid Tragedy in Frenchtown  Clergy to Discover Anatomy of Peace at Convocation  Young Justice Leaders Begin Sacred Journey  DJ Vow to Return to IGNITE, Inspire Youth for God  Youth Make a Splash at GNJ Camps  Preston to Inspire IGNITE World Changers  Helping Churches Go Deeper in Faith at Laity Leadership Academy Welcome Newly Commissioned and Ordained! Go Deeper and Wider at the Laity Leadership Academy Confirmands Celebrated at Mission and Resource Center Laity Recognized for Stepping out in Faith, Transforming Communities GNJ Called to Make Disciples and Eliminate Poverty, Topics at Annual Conference Ground Breaking and Historic Annual Conference Miracles Everywhere Sermon Series Launched New Partnership with Tanzania, Puerto Rico Foster Cultural Opportunities GNJ Takes Historic Step in Desegregating New Jersey Schools GNJ Leaders to Address N.J. School Segregation at 2018 Annual Conference Session Puerto Rican and Tanzanian Bishops to Address Annual Conference Who are GNJ's Vital Mission Partners? New Hispanic Faith Community Launches in Palisades Park Superintendent Frank Davis to Return to Pastoral Ministry Dr. Cain Hope Felder Celebrates Black History Month at Camden Church Laity Take the Lead in Day of Learning GNJ Co-Hosts Communicators Conference, Podcast Recognized as Denominational Leader IGNITE 2018 Unveils 'World Changers' Theme Using Our Biggest Asset: Changing Communities by Re-purposing Buildings Cross-Cultural, Racial Training an 'Eye-Opening' Experience Church and Society Hosts Young Clergy Leadership Forum Miracles Everywhere: The Unvoiced Prayer Stepping Up in Faith: Results of Generosity and Stewardship Campaigns Mysteries Revealed Through Baptism Reaffirmation GNJ Podcast Reaches Across Denomination Church Leaders Invited to 'Take the Lead' Camping Connects Youth to Go Deeper in Faith and Leadership Seeking Stories for 'Miracles Everywhere' Series Annual Conference to Create Space for Spirit Movement Next Gen Camp Partner Advances Mission GNJ Heeds Call to Puerto Rico Recovery Organizing Church at the Center of Harry Potter's 'Diagon Alley' Wesleyan Covenant Association Holds Meetings in GNJ 2019-2023 Strategic Planning Feedback Water & Roots Sermon Series Begins, Facebook Group Formed IGNITE Leaders Day to Engage 21st Century Leadership C.A.M.P. YDP Fundraiser Maps Future Possibilities Learning Continues on the Journey In Mercer County, Hunger Knows No Religion All People Conference Unlocks Transformative Potential Making a Joyful Noise for Special Needs Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Charles Perez and Nueva Esperanza  #GivingTuesday to Transform Lives This Advent  Pastor Hits the Streets for Homeless Youth  Native American UMC Designated Historic Site  Stories Emerge, Esperanza for Puerto Rico Launched in Wake of Disasters  Five Years Later, Hope is on the Move  Mary Pat Christie Meets with A Future With Hope, Recovery Groups United Methodist #1 Soccer Player in New Jersey  Laity Bring Energy, Hopefulness to Leadership Academy  Hearts Ignited, Memories Forged, Lives Changed  SENT Conference to Pursue Great Commission  Reclaiming Baptism Through Remembrance  Christian Rapper Tedashii to Headline IGNITE 2017 Traditional and Contemporary Unison at Night of Worship  Peace Vigil Brings Out Hope in Hopewell  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. William M. Williams, III and Asbury UMC, Atlantic City Equipping Laity for Leadership  Mission and Resource Center Receives 'Good Neighbor Award'  Safe Sanctuaries Certification Quick, Easy, Required  Students Reflect on A Future With Hope Mission Trip  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Dr. Brandon Cho and Morristown UMC Grant Boosts Next Generation Initiative  Syrian Refugee Feature for Interpreter Magazine  Syrian Refugee Receives Visit from 'Jesus Himself'  IGNITE Through the Lens of Mission, Outreach  Juel Nelson's Leadership Legacy Comes Full Circle  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Erica Munoz and Aldersgate UMC, East Brunswick  Evaluations Assess and Grow Leadership  Methodist Connection Partners Relay with Printer  100th Birthday Celebration for Park Ave. St. John's UMC, East Orange  Annual Conference Rejoices in GNJ's Next Generation  GNJ Challenged to Become Inter-Cultural Bridge-Builders  Shared Ministry Formula Passes, Enhances Church Mission GNJ Rises Against Hunger  AmeriCorps and Two Future's With Hope Second Year Arts Fest Defies Weather, Draws Crowd  United Methodists to Celebrate in Ocean Grove  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Frank Fowler and Trinity UMC Hackettstown  GNJ Receives Ranch Hope Christian Partner Award  Annual Conference 2017 Wrap-Up New Wesleyan Album Funds Mission, Creative Projects  UM Communities at Francis Asbury Sold to Sage Healthcare Partners  Next Gen Proposal to Come Before Annual Conference  Mission U Returns for Summer 2017 Task Force to Present Legislation on Inter-Cultural Competency  Moving Stories of Hope Emerge from Bishop's Prayer Ministry  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Jeff Bills and Hope UMC, Voorhees  OUTBOUND Conference Motivates Evangelism  Proposed Budget Decreases Shared Ministry Apportioned to Church and Changes Formula  Brigantine Family Kept Together, Given A Future With Hope  GNJ's Work Recognized by Denomination  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Zach Wooten and First UMC of Mt. Holly  New Changes, New Possibilities for CUMAC  Listening and Conversation Unites GNJ in Midst of Denominational Controversy  Church Community Responds to Ocean Grove Fire Evacuees  Nelson, Brash Fill Key Roles  A New Sound for Wesleyans in the Works  Rise Against Hunger in Wildwood  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Alberts and Christ UMC Jersey City Churches Express Concern Over Immigration  Soul Tending Convocation Inspires Clergy  Jersey City Church Makes Bold Move for Future of Mission  GNJ Moves to Church Mutual for Property Insurance  Davis to Serve as Capital District Superintendent  Apostles in our Midst: Rev. Sang-Won Doh and Calvary Korean UMC Regional Stewardship Meetings Garner Church Support  Grant Boosts A Future With Hope Collaboration  Communities of Hope Teams Prepare to Step out in Faith  Clergy Bless Badges of First Responders  Rev. Al Sharpton Pays Visit to Parkside UMC  PaCE Group Formed on Healing, Wholeness, and Health  Free Meals for Children at First UMC in Bridgeton's Christmas Celebration  Malaga UMC Bring Thanksgiving to Homeless  West Grove Memorial UMC Sets Bar for Live Nativity  Clergy Hold Justice Prayer Vigil at State Capital  Conaway to Serve as Superintendent of Delaware Bay  Capital District Superintendent Varlyna Wright to Retire  Music Paradigm to Bring Unique Experience to Clergy Convocation  Clergy Convocation to Feature Susan Beaumont  Worship Conference Benefits Range of Churches  NEJC Stands with Standing Rock  Bishop Fred Corson Remembered Through Scholarship  Rebuilding Continues Four Years After Sandy  Revitalized Camp YDP Reaches Paterson Youth  Ministry Offers New Model to Service Churches, Nurture Youth  Chungdong First Methodist Church, Drew and GNJ Remember Appenzeller Press Release: Rebuilding Continues 4 Years After Sandy  Hearts Ablaze at Largest IGNITE to Date  GNJ Teen Brings Faith to 'Survivor'  Leaders Equip for Ministry at Laity Leadership Academy  GNJ to Launch First Ministry Podcast  GNJ Deacons Sign Sacramental Covenant  Haddonfield UMC and Respond Inc. Celebrate 50 Years of Partnership  Over 1,000 Youth Receive Communion at IGNITE on World Communion Sunday  VanderWaal Wins it All A Future With Hope Races to Rebuild  Socially Responsible Investing with Stewardship Foundation  Blanca Brings Energy, Passion to IGNITE 2016 Derek Minor's 'Empire' to Invade IGNITE 2016 Basketball Ministry a Slam Dunk at Hightstown  MARCHA Elects GNJ Pastor as New President  Small Group Symposium to Explore Approaches, Address Challenges  New District Superintendent Celebrates Every Day From the NFL to IGNITE, William Green has a Message for Youth  Centuolo Unifies Youth at IGNITE  Team Vital Brings Camden to Cape May  GNJ Plays Key Role at 2016 General Conference  Entrepreneurship Summit Re-imagines Mission  CROP Hunger Walk a Success  Grace VanderWaal Sings a Story of Talent  Bellarive Ignites a Movement  Finding Faith in Life's Darkness at IGNITE  God in Many Faces: Ramadan with Trinity UMC Mt. Holly Draws Neighbors, Community Recycled Furniture Moves Mission, Meets Needs  Annual Conference Imagine's New Possibilities  History Live's on Through Pastor's Mission   The Daily Caller Anonymous hacker group takes aim at Yemen  No paychecks for Congress or President if government shutdown Hacker group threatens judgement day on Westboro Baptist Church Who is 'Anonymous'? A look at the hacktivists aiding revolution in the Middle East Sexually suggestive Nintendo game 'We Dare' Anonymous targets U.S. government over incarceration of WikiLeaker Bradley Manning Tea Party Nation claims attacks by Anonymous?  Hackers post Bank of America documents  Ex-C.I.A. operative to release spy novel series Miley not taking 'trips' in New York as state Senate bans salvia sale No chance of 'Men' return for Charlie Sheen The world's best journalism job ad George Clooney to testify in Italian prostitution trial?  Obama to hold Facebook Town Hall meeting with Mark Zuckerberg Anonymous hackers declare war on Sony Tiger Beat founder dies Mitt Romney's good looks vs. Conan's hair envy The Washington Times Comedian Chris Rock debuts on Broadway Sheen says Men return 85 percent chance Anderson Cooper's "RidicuList" Tiger Beat founder passes Lady Gaga charged in cat mutilation death Conan and Romney Obama has 'not been loyal' to an old friend Jane Bond Real World D.C. The Washington Journalism Center Ink Tank Blog Iranian threats overlooked? Radicals inciting radicals Confined or locked Boehner: define the mission An average night in Washington A new stroke of enthusiasm The Seven Mile Times Mysterious Ghost Ship appears on Morey's Piers Summer time screen doors When the sun goes down: Seven Mile Nights An event for the whole town The new Cape May Brewery The Sea Isle Times Summer nights in Sea Isle A fresh start every Tuesday The Sun by the Sea Wildwood The Dog Days of Summer A Dairy that hasn't spoiled over time The Boardwalk Report 2010 Wally's Cafe The Boardwalk Report 2011 Moore than just a bartender The First New Jersey State crab festival A Day-trip aboard 'The Adventurer' Casey's on Third The Old Walnut House The Super Tully Nut of North Wildwood My Wildwood was theirs Bennies... Antlers...Owens Atlantic City Weekly Occupy South Jersey How Boardwalk Empire found Nelson Johnson Occupy Atlantic City meets at Brighton Park Occupy Atlantic City lays groundwork for encampment Occupy Atlantic City marches the Boardwalk Occupy Atlantic City creates Declaration of Occupation Resorts, Atlantic City Ballet present Duet of free shows Interview with Lars Ulrich of Metallica Atlantic City's Jersey Rhythm Devils on the Lower East Side New direction for Occupy Atlantic City Occupy AC Geoff's Page Occupy the Sand lot Occupy AC live coverage of N19 The Weekend Hot Tub Party pt. 1 The Weekend Hot Tub Party pt. 2 - 11/11/11 The Weekend Hot Tub Party - Protest Edition The Weekend Hot Tub Party - Best and...
- [Résumé](https://thejkinz.com/resume/): Click here to view LinkedIn Profile
- [About](https://thejkinz.com/about/): “He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less” – John 3:30  My name is Joshua and I live in Baltimore, MD. My life is built on Jesus, and my activities include church services several days a week, Bible studies, ministries to a nursing home and those recovering from addictions, mission trips, and various church-related events. I enjoy boating, swimming, kayaking, paddle-boarding, hiking, long walks, being outside, reading, writing, photography, staying physically active, and studying the Bible. I am a Communications Director at Central Union Mission, a homeless ministry based in Washington, D.C., and a part-time Bible College student. Relationships are the most important thing to me, and what I value most in my life above everything else. My friendships are lifelong and unconditional. I love the city I live in, its architecture, layout, harbor, and unique neighborhoods. It is a blessing and privilege to live in a city I love and be in a community built on Christ, with so many connections, opportunities, and love. Hospitality is very important to me. I am a gatherer who is all about inviting anyone and everyone, and branching out to speak with, spend time, and invest in all different kinds of people from different backgrounds and ages. I am blessed with a very fun and loving family. My parents live one hour north on the Upper Chesapeake Bay, where I like to go for overnight retreats, rest, and to get away and enjoy the beauty of nature and the water. I am a loyal, fun-loving, easy-going man with a heart of commitment, who is always up for a good adventure and can find humor in anything. God has blessed me so much and I am pursuing Him hard, hoping that He will add to me someone to enjoy all of these blessings with, who will want to come alongside me and be led by me and do life together in a season without end.


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