So, It's kind of emotional around here for the last week. I mean emotional on two different levels.

One in my life with my family. The girls got all dressed up for prom and the little guy had his end of year tournament for sports and my parents are

celebrating big occasions in their lives.

There's a lot of stuff going on.

I'm feeling a lot of things right now.

And it just happens to coincide

with what we got going on in Nehemiah,

which is a really squishy-hearted passage here

in Nehemiah 8, where even if you don't think there's a God behind any of this stuff in the Bible or not

quite sure what to make of it, even at the most basic human level, this is a powerful part of the story. It's a redemption part of the story where people

who have got a lot wrong over the course of their journey are sensing that and they're soft-hearted, broken-hearted

about it and they're doing something about it.

They have a historical anchor point and they're coming out of their wandering.

They're coming into a place of clarity and they're doing it in a unified fashion with open

hearts and it just feels like something really meaningful is occurring.

And I've been enjoying these conversations, however, I've also missed the fart jokes and I think

it's a pity that this passage really hasn't lent itself to the normal requisite number of fart jokes that I think are really the heart and soul of this entire podcast, but regrettably, it's just how it's going to have to be.

There's a prayer back at the beginning here of

Nehemiah 1 that the more I look at this I've never noticed it on any other trip through

Nehemiah I'm just catching it this time through with you guys but this prayer at the beginning of Nehemiah 1, it's a big deal. It isn't just

there to help us get a sense of who Nehemiah is. It's there to set up a lot of the

thematic payoffs of the entire book and the speed with which them at the the

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