Today I am sharing something written by my husband, G. Wray. I think you’ll find, as I do, that he has a gift for bringing ancient truth home in the most grounded and human way. I hope this blesses your Monday.
———
During my school years, I was an athlete.
It began with wrestling in elementary school. Later I added cross country in the fall and track in the spring. Looking back, it seems I was in school from eight in the morning until five or six every evening until graduation.
Sports became a large part of my life, and coaches became some of my most formative teachers.
One phrase seemed to follow me everywhere.
I heard it from wrestling coaches.
I heard it from track coaches.
I heard it from cross country coaches.
Growing up near Pittsburgh, I also watched a lot of football.
The Steelers were my team then, and they still are today.
In the 1970s, under Coach Chuck Noll, they became one of those teams that seemed to prove what every coach had been telling us all along. Talent mattered. Strategy mattered. But great teams were built on fundamentals.
Even watching interviews after difficult games, I would hear the same familiar language from coaches at every level:
“We need to get back to the basics.”
In wrestling practice, we always began with fundamentals. We drilled the same movements over and over. Then we learned new techniques and practiced more advanced strategies.
But when a real match became difficult—when I was behind on points and things weren’t going according to plan—I can still hear my coach shouting from the corner of the mat:
“Get back to the basics!”
More often than not, he was right.
The fundamentals were not flashy.
They were not exciting.
They were simply dependable.
Recently I have been spending a great deal of time reading the Septuagint, comparing translations, studying theological concepts, and learning from deeply educated writers.
I love that kind of study.
There is something wonderful about discovering patterns in Scripture and seeing connections that were hidden from view before.
Knowledge is a gift.
Learning is a gift.
Yet after spending weeks immersed in some rather heady material, my eyes landed once again on a simple sentence from Jesus:
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
And suddenly I felt as though I could hear another Coach speaking.
Not from the corner of a wrestling mat.
But from somewhere deeper.
“Get back to the basics.”
As I sat with that thought, I realized something.
On the night before His crucifixion, knowing that the cross stood only hours away, Jesus gathered His disciples and spoke at length.
He spoke of abiding.
He spoke of the coming Helper.
He spoke of peace.
He spoke of joy.
Yet throughout those final conversations He kept returning to one simple command:
“Love one another as I have loved you.”
Not once.
Not twice.
But again and again.
As though He knew how easily we would become distracted by other things.
As though He knew we would need reminding.
Get back to the basics.
When Peter became distracted by questions about another disciple, Jesus gently brought him back to a simpler concern:
“You follow Me.”
Even after the resurrection, Jesus did not ask Peter whether he had mastered every theological question.
He asked,
“Do you love Me?”
And then He said,
“Feed My sheep.”
The basics.
Love.
Follow.
Feed.
Remain.
Forgive.
Abide in Christ.
These are not elementary truths that we outgrow.
They are foundational truths that carry us for a lifetime.
The writer of Hebrews encourages us to press on toward maturity, and we should.
We should study.
We should learn.
We should grow in our understanding.
But maturity is not moving beyond love.
Maturity is becoming more faithful in it.
We do not graduate from love.
We grow deeper into it.
Getting back to the basics does not mean abandoning study.
Quite the opposite.
Sometimes it means returning to the simple delight of Scripture itself.
Not reading to prepare.
Not reading to prove.
Not reading to solve every mystery.
Just reading.
Sitting with the Word.
Letting the familiar stories breathe again.
The creation story.
The journeys of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The songs of David.
The wisdom of Proverbs.
The adventures and struggles of the early church in Acts.
The tender poetry of the Song of Solomon.
Letting a psalm slow our pulse.
Letting a proverb search us gently.
Letting the voice of Jesus become familiar in our ears again.
And perhaps getting back to the basics also means rediscovering the simple joy of talking with God.
Not every conversation needs an agenda.
Not every prayer needs to be a crisis.
Sometimes it is enough to sit quietly in His presence and speak with Him as one speaks with a trusted friend over coffee.
To tell Him what made us laugh.
What troubled us.
What we noticed on the way to work.
What we are grateful for.
What we cannot quite make sense of.
And then simply enjoy His company for a while.
There is a kind of holy delight that comes when we stop trying to master Scripture for a moment and simply allow it to meet us.
Like opening a window we had forgotten was there.
Stories we have read dozens of times suddenly become new again.
Not because the text has changed.
But because we have.
Some of my sweetest moments with God have not come while wrestling with a difficult theological question, but while sitting quietly with a familiar passage and allowing it to speak again.
Like an old friend who still has more stories to tell.
The Apostle Paul arrives at much the same place.
After discussing spiritual gifts, knowledge, mysteries, prophecy, and many of the deepest matters of the Christian life, he brings everything back to a simple foundation:
“And now remain faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
What a remarkable statement.
Not knowledge.
Not giftedness.
Not achievement.
Love.
The very thing Jesus had been teaching all along.
The basics.
The things that remain.
Study deeply.
Learn eagerly.
Explore widely.
But never lose the childlike wonder that first drew you to the story, and never forget the love toward which the story is leading you.
After all these years, I still hear coaches calling from the sidelines.
And lately, I think I hear the Holy Spirit saying the same thing.
Get back to the basics.
Love one another as I have loved you.
So perhaps this week I’ll spend a little less time trying to discover something new and a little more time practicing what I already know.
Perhaps I’ll return to the old stories.
The old paths.
The old commandment.
The prophet Jeremiah once spoke of asking for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walking in them.
Perhaps that is what the Spirit has been whispering all along.
Not a call backward.
A call deeper.
For the basics are not where we begin because they are shallow.
They are where we return because they are deep.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
— John 15:12
———
Thank you for reading.
May we return again to the things that remain.
———
©️ G. Wray. All rights reserved.