I think you’re reading my 1,000th WORLD column on this back page, so it’s time to reveal one trade secret in column-writing: Give readers a sense of security by being in the same place each issue, but give them a bit of insecurity by not necessarily signaling at the beginning how the column will end.

I mentioned last year how pathetic a hitter I was in Little League. I could mention that I was also poor in dodgeball, rope-climbing, or anything else that required agility or strength. But this column is not a search for sympathy.

He appeared to have it all: youth, wealth, standing, pedigree. Sincere and pious, too: a credit to his nation. Still, he came looking and asking, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

My God, my King, my Emperor,
    My all-designing Engineer,
My Rider through the skies, with roar
    And speed and help, my Charioteer,

My Judge, my Advocate, Release,
    My Doom Averted and my Ransom Met,
My Execution and my Peace,
    My Friend, my willing Surrogate,

My wind-borne Life, my Health, my Death,
    My Door to Paradise, my Gain,
My everlasting Lungs, my Breath,
    My final Thorn, my End of pain,

In 2007 I went to work as usual at the seminary café I’d been managing since after my husband died in 1999. I was prepping for the lunch crowd while listening to the radio when suddenly two men came through the door and said I had to leave—right away. The 1898 former gatehouse, former classroom building, former study lounge was not strong enough to support the weight of the bookstore above the kitchen, said the urgent building inspectors. So my meats and cheeses sliced, and my chili and kielbasa underway, I was unceremoniously out on the curb.

I never returned.

Got patience? I know you got milk. And toilet paper.

You will have patience by the time this is all over. Or you won’t, and will have wasted a perfectly good crisis, the word crisis being related to “opportunity” in the Chinese language (which is ironic enough under the circumstances). 

A 1944 French play titled No Exit deals with a crisis, but one sans opportunity. A crisis without opportunity is one with no hope of a good ending. God-rejectors have no hope of a good ending, and Sartre at least got that right.

One cross saves. But there were three on the hill, and whenever the One is depicted at Golgotha, artists’ renderings show three. For 2,000 years of Christian art, it is put in our faces: two brigands crucified with Christ, one on the left and another on the right.

Calvin College professor James K.A. Smith, 49, grew up in Canada and recently became a U.S. citizen. He is the author of numerous books, including You Are What You Love, Awaiting the King, and (in 2019) On the Road With Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts. Here are edited excerpts of our discussion. 

You’ve written that you’ve been estranged from your dad since you were 13, and haven’t seen him for 28 years. Your stepfather also disappeared. What effect did that have on you?