“The Paradise King” with Blaine Eldredge
Looking for a good book to curl up with this winter? Dan and Rachael both highly recommend the new book by today’s guest, Blaine Eldredge: The Paradise King.
The book is a unique exploration of Jesus through the Old Testament and into the New, blending historical fiction with a deep engagement with the biblical text.
Blaine joins us today to discuss the inspiration behind the book, sharing a personal journey marked by challenges and loss. The book and our discussion serve as an open invitation to embark on an exploration of wonder, curiosity, and the transformative power of storytelling.
About our guest:
Blaine Eldredge is a writer and teacher from Peyton, Colorado. For the past ten years he has built teaching platforms to help the Church thrive in late modernity.
He likes to read, write, and talk about culture, history, and theology. In particular, he loves to contemplate the Gospel of Jesus and make resources to convey its astonishing beauty.
He is a part of Kindred Church in Colorado Springs and holds a Master’s degree in Language from the University of British Columbia. Mainly he loves to read and follow Jesus in community as he makes it on earth as it is in heaven.
He also likes bowhunting, chopping wood, and poetry readings.
His new book, The Paradise King, is available wherever books are sold.
Episode Transcript:
Dan: Alright, we’re an Advent and it is such a complex and rich season as we’ve been talking about Rachael, and we wanted to do an episode on what we most want people to buy for Christmas. And I had the privilege of reading a book this summer in manuscript form, and as soon as I read the book, it was like, oh, I know what I want people to buy for Christmas. Normally what I say is provide people experience. Instead of just buying a sweater, buy your adult daughter three meals where you get to engage her regarding her life or something you read together. And when Becky and I had the privilege of reading a new book, and I’ll tell you the author in the book in a moment, we had conversations that were so rich. In one sense, here’s a purchase that opens the door to an experience and that is conversations about scripture, about ourselves, about Jesus that were some of the richest we’ve had. So let me introduce a dear friend, Blaine Eldredge and Blaine, welcome to our podcast.
Blaine: Dan, Rachael. Thank you. That is one of the most generous introductions I ever received, so it’s good to be here. Thank you both.
Dan: Well, I have said and will say again, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life, if not the best, certainly in the top two or three. And that experience of reading a book that is extraordinary and then to have known you since you were knee high to some insect, it’s just an incredible privilege to know you love you and also now be able to talk about a labor that is just remarkable. So Rachael, I’d love to get your experience of reading what is called the Paradise King, and I love the subtitle. The subtitle goes on beautifully, the Tragic History and Spectacular Future of Everything According to Jesus of Nazareth. Isn’t that just a stunning title?
Rachael: I love it. And what’s funny, Blaine, I have to confess because I know enough of Dan’s fondness for you and your brothers and your family. So he came back from time with your parents, but also we were pondering and he said, I know a podcast I want to do and it’s about this book that Blaine’s written. And he said to me, I honestly think I would put it in the top two of five of favorite books of all time. And I thought that is really high praise coming from Dan Allender. Because I know this man is a voracious reader. Is that the right word? Voracious? Is that a word?
Dan: I think I eat a lot of books.
Rachael: Okay, so no, not the right word, but I think you know what I mean.
Blaine: Beyond voracious into the pathological.
Rachael: Yeah. So I’m like, a part of me was like, okay, okay, do you feel this way because I know how much you love this person. It’s like when you think your child is the most beautiful child in the world, or do you feel this way because something really stunning has been written? I took Dan seriously. So I was very excited to spend time with your book in anticipation of this time with you. And I just want to say I think it’s going to go in my top five favorite books. So I actually have a biblical studies degree. I have a master of divinity. I love the Bible, hate the Bible, wrestle with the Bible, but I grew up Southern Baptist in the text. I would just say rich deposits of the word live in my bones. And so I have had a lot of experience getting to see the text opened and understand that Genesis was written in an ancient near East culture. Just all the things. So I’ve had a lot of privilege for the text to become open and the stories to capture me. I don’t know if I’ve ever been captured by what’s happening in Genesis in quite the way I’m captured by how you wrote. And I am a lover of all things fantasy and scifi and really getting into the textures and a scene. And I just want to say thank you because I feel like the… obviously you’re an incredible storyteller, but the, what’s the word I’m looking for, the seriousness. And yet imagine the marriage of the left and the right brain and how you have written this. I know I’m going to spend more time with this and move through it even more slowly. On one hand, I could keep reading all night long and on the other hand I had to be like, no, I’m going to stop. I really want to take this in. I want to spend time with the different scenes. And I find myself both curious, even more curious about the history, but mostly more curious about God and more curious about my own heart. So I can wholeheartedly, highly recommend this book. I think it would be an incredible gift to the people in your life and I think it would be something really powerful to read together out loud with the people in your world. So thank you Blaine.
Dan: Absolutely. And Blaine, honestly, we’re going to eventually let you talk, but just bear with us. I want to read a little section and it’s from Genesis 1:26 through 30. Adam and Eve were naked as daffodils. That alone freaked me out. It’s like I love daffodils and it couldn’t have been a better flower to have picked naked and to one another. “They seem like shaded pavilions or the cool shady places corn provides when it outstretched leaves, make cathedrals. Intrigue they held yet no secrets. Mystery, yet no fear. They were what they seemed to be and they worked in the garden with God, discovering together what every plant and animal and even stone should be.” Look, I’m a writer and this is so just one paragraph brings me to a point of going, glory to God. Glory to God naked as daffodils.
Blaine: I hope you hear yourself and you hear God Loves Sex and some of your other work. Because to get to naked as daffodils required a lot of contemplating John Paul II. a lot of reading you and your boy Tremper. A lot of trying to imagine what it would be like to have bodies that were transparent windows to the inner self and the kind of erotic intimacy, even intellectually, of passing through one another. And yet what it would be like relationally to still hold unknown reserves, trying to put words to the reality of transparency and mystery can somehow go together in the human future. So all of that got distilled over time into a couple lines that were really fun to write.
Dan: We’re going to come back. As I said, this is a bizarre beginning because literally we usually let a guest talk, but it’s almost like we cannot talk about you. But hold off anything. Rachael, you want to read?
Rachael: Yeah, and it’s going to… just bear with me, Dan, because I’m not one to have brevity. Okay? So…
Dan: This may be one of the podcasts that goes on for 90 minutes. I know.
Rachael: I’m going to read a section that might be slightly longer than what you read, but I just want to give people a taste of what’s in here. So it won’t be like forever. Just bear with me. Okay.
Dan: Thank you for the warning.
Rachael: Yes. So Blaine is writing about the story of Moses. So the setup is this is the second visit to Pharaoh of Moses and Aaron. And so I’m just going to read this little section, “Knock, knock, knock. Its tread was conspicuous from behind the throne ranking magicians appeared Egypt’s gods you can be sure leaned in to hear what Moses and Aaron would say. They didn’t say anything. Instead, Aaron held out his staff, he said it upright on the paving stones. Then he stepped back. The staff fell slowly and did not bounce. One ignorant spectator laughed, but he didn’t laugh long because all at once a sound rang out and the sound was a roar and the roar came from the staff. Go back a bit several months before when Moses was still incognito in the Arabian desert, he saw a shrub on fire. He went over to look and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the midst of the flames they spoke and the angel told Moses, throw down his staff. He did. And it became a… how do you say that?
Blaine: Nakash is how I say it.
Rachael: Nakash. Okay, Nakash. A remembrance of the snake in the garden of Eden. Moses fled, not so this time Moses and Aaron were still, when the staff roared again, they were quiet. When wonder entered the room, the staff twisted and swelled and grew. At last in the presence of Pharaoh, a dragon appeared a dragon. I know what you’re thinking, that it was a snake, a cobra with a cool pattern hood. That’s possible. It could be a venomous snake face-to-face with Pharaoh who was dressed like one such thing. But that’s not what the story says or what it implies. The word is tannin, which is usually translated sea monster. In Job it is the monster who swims in the deep. In Psalms 74:13 it is the creature whose head got crushed before the creation of the world. It is a very particular snake, a manifestation of chaotic darkness. There was a hush in the presence of Pharaoh, a darting of eyes. Everyone with a half-decent cosmology knew what it meant. The gauntlet was down. A unique God had come a God who could summon the monster that swam in the murk of the unmade world and turn it into a twig again. What for? For more than harsh labor and even for more than a land and a people, the tannin was a relic from the beginning of time. It signaled a contest for the end of time. It was like an old champion signing up for a tournament or a stranger buying into high stakes poker game or an old nation going to war. You want the world Yahweh in effect said, very well. Let’s see who can win it. But of course no empire falls easily.
Blaine: Oh, that was so good. Thank you, Rachael.
Dan: So let’s just summarize, this is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary author who’s talking about an extraordinary presence, Jesus through the Old Testament and into the New. But what I would say is the glimpse that you give is an interplay between the biblical text and the imagination of how these stories can be engaged and almost behind the scenes the word is there, but also you’re taking us into the context, the ancient near East, but also into your imagination as to how things might have played out. So it is this rich historical fiction, but also built on the beloved word of God. So Blaine now talk. Tell us how are you’re reacting to what we’re saying first of all. And also we want to know how you came to write this.
Blaine: Thank you both. I’m a little uncomfortable and very pleased. So I’m so happy though, given honestly the amount of prayer predominantly from my wife that went into the writing of this book, that it would display the beauty of Jesus. So to have that happening is pretty incredible. A little backstory might be helpful because what this story is, is Jesus knowing the particular language of my heart and knowing how to get through to one ordinary person. I tell a bit of the story and introduction, but you get the truncated version. So here’s the full version. Several years ago I’m at my kitchen table. It’s actually my parents’ kitchen table because at that point, and still now a lot of my furniture is borrowed. So I have their kitchen table in my house and I’m reading Daniel 2. Daniel is an incredible story. Daniel two starts, this is an approximation, something like 2:1 in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. His spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. It’s pretty good beginning to his story, but you have to add on, it just happened at this time that I had been reading because I like that kind of thing. A little bit about the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which is an incredibly human story. If you had to design an antagonist for one of the world’s great conquerors, you would pick (inaudible) the Mead, and you would oppose these two diabolical personalities. Even the clothes they wear are fascinating. So something in my heart comes alive when I’m looking at the Sokka people in the region of Kazakhstan, kind of on the border of Mesopotamia and the fabric and the patterns and the textiles. So I’d been reading about that and all of a sudden, here’s Nebuchadnezzar in a story/on a throne. He’s sitting there and Daniel too, and something happened, okay? There was another intriguing character, early 1800’s Cardinal, John Henry Newman. And he, by the time this guy is 14, okay, he’s reading Hume and disagreeing and he can see the flaws in the argument of the Scottish philosopher. So can we say an genius, not a pretend genius. And by the time he starts writing books to help people on their way to directly encountering Jesus, he thinks that humans have what he, the illative sense, I-L-L-A-T-I-V-E, the illative sense. And it’s our ability baked into us to perceive when we’re in the presence of something holy. And it actually goes beyond that. It’s our ability to stand in the presence of beauty and perceive the fabric of reality to perceive the grain and momentum of the universe that gets through to us in moments of peace, of moments, of rapture, honor, even grief and tragedy, it turns on. Well, I can say is for reasons I do not know why several years ago reading a story, I knew story, the Illative sense turned on to 11 and there was such a strong sense of momentum and power in the biblical story. It blew my hair back. Now the other thing is that was one of the worst seasons of my life, and you have to know that the flip side is that was the season we’ve had six miscarriages. Two were particularly brutal. One was this year and one was about six years ago. And the brutal ones happened late. And our first late one was around 20 weeks. Oh goodness. And it was one of those things where we started to think it was happening because Emily was just reporting something’s wrong. Well, the day before the bleeding started, we were in the bathroom and my two-year-old came in and grabbed Emily’s hand and said, mom, baby, bye-bye. And we knew then what was coming and then later that year was the death of my best friend and who we had a weekly phone call. One week I knew he wasn’t doing well. I came up from the call and told Sam, every time I get off the phone with Garrett, I’m afraid the next call is going to be something terrible has happened. Three days later I got the second call and that season was so brutal, but I hadn’t really tended to my internal world, which is a thing that I’m only now learning how to do. But the cost was there in the background. So it surfaced almost at the exact same time in the book of John and very similar story. And it might’ve been a week later, I’m sitting at the same table reading John, John has speeches in it. You may know it’s organized around a series of miracles and long dialogues. And I’m in the middle of one of those speeches and then all of a sudden I stop and the rage has turned on and the only thing that I can bring myself to say is I don’t get you. And you don’t come off very well in your own story, but underneath those words was a reservoir, a dam breaking, of fury and pain. And you know what? Screw you man, I think I’m done with this and Frederick Buechner and the gospel is tragedy, comedy and fairy tale is like great line. If you’re our father in heaven, would you please be our father in hell because hell is where the action is. So I’m at the table, men one of the most painful seasons just in terms of ruined dreams to that time today, this unexpected confession comes out. And then hopefully our friends listening know these moments where you realize God is listening these moments, lace the biblical story. And whenever they happen I get kind of electricity on my skin. Hannah weeping and the priest rebuking her and then noticing, wait a second, God is listening is one of those moments. God was listening and I’ll tell you what I felt. It wasn’t I get it or I love you my son, or I know this is hard. There are a lot of kind things that Jesus could have said. What I felt was “go look” and for me and the way that I am wired, there could not have been a better dare from God. You’re wondering who I’m and what this story is. Well at precisely the right time, this sense of curiosity regarding the biblical story as a portrait of reality has emerged and I’m pretty done, pretty done. So I took Jesus up on the dare and the great thing about it was it’s the language of my heart, which is: I love reading old stuff. As I said, I really like the Bible and I hate the Bible like you said Rachel, but I like that it serves the goal of revealing Jesus who’s the main character of reality. And in the process of reading for this book, I didn’t know what I was going to write. I was just reading for myself and to try to stay alive in that season. And the experience was one of being blown back in my chair over the psychological drama, the intelligence. I think that when you tell most people Old Testament complex portrait of the supernatural intellectual sophistication is not the first thing you think. When you say Plato. people think great human mind. But when you say the peculiar professor who gets to be the narrator Ecclesiastes who names the problem of evil, I think much more poetically hundreds of years before Plato is the same Republic. It just doesn’t come up so I’ll say this. I was shocked that it was smart and also that it was moving. And the dragon scene that you read, it’s not that much harder with the miraculous, for a staff to turn into a dragon versus a snake or for a stroy to make a point that makes sense. This isn’t a magician’s contest. This is a competitive move over the destiny of humanity and it signaled by a God who loves the dramatic. You can think there are so many different things that could have been done to initiate the war with the gods of Egypt. And instead you’re watching and as this swelling thing happens if you are an ancient person or a person who reads ancient people, you know that the Tiamat, that ancient chaos dragon features quite prominently in the imagination of the ancient world, including the audience, the contemporary audience of that story. So all of a sudden Tiamat shows up in the story and some kind of character has arrived who evidently has the power to make that thing appear at will. You must be dealing with a being of another order of existence. It just must be something else is happening because anyone can do a miracle. But to summon the chaos monster is pretty special.
Dan: Amazing as you talk just to underscore the tragedy and drama and it’s a heartbreaking story and I know your good friend, I had the privilege of being in the van with him on the way to your wedding. So it is not a mere figure. It is someone whom I had the privilege of being with for at least a number of hours. So your own heartache prompts Jesus to create a dare. You do have a sense, as you have put it, that the drama you are exploring is a drama that originated because of your own willingness to join that drama. Is that a fair way of putting it?
Blaine: Yeah, I would say the interplay of the kindness of God and there being enough to respond. And one thing I love reading Pope John Paul is when he takes swings at total depravity. Those of us who grew up in what I call the splash zone of the Protestant Reformation, Rachael knows, we know all about that. And then you get a mind, you get a soul like Nicholas (inaudible) explaining how is it friends, that humans departing the garden are portrayed as totally depraved? And have you noticed that the curses relate to the creation panels of one to six structure the world and fill it with life that the mandate has not been removed? It’s simply difficult and that the ability to create life remains in people even to see and speak to God. There is so much that remains often in a better ruined state that is accessible to God, that desires him, is for him. So some of that stuff I think being intact, what is it in the person? We see so many people make so many bad decisions, but what is it in the person when you see that friend of yours make a really great decision to end the relationship or stay in the relationship, to leave the job to move that you go, wow, God is still living in there. And that was a great thing. So I think in the pain there’s at least a little of that left to respond to an invitation to look at the offer of Jesus, look at the picture of Jesus and try to make a fair decision on John who I like very much, now. You guys know you’re biblical scholars, so you know that the gospel comes quite late and John is quite old when he writes it and that he has you and me Rachael. We’re friends and we’re not brevity people. So it takes me like 1200 words to begin to know what I want to say.
Rachael: I’m here for it keep going.
Blaine: John is not like that. John is the witty king. And when he says in him was life and that life was the light of humanity and then he has the restraint, not to say anything else drops one line in there. He’s fully capable of unpacking but knows that it’ll be better to let you go. What do you mean? You’re saying there’s something about this person, that sense of the human condition. What is it he doesn’t tell you? He just starts telling you stories and invites you to come see what that is. So Jesus really is that incredible, guys. He is better than we think, more active, more beautiful, and then just more intelligent than we think, which is the main point of this book, an invitation to come and see who Jesus is in terms of the story that has been tasked with revealing him and just see whether or not his character stands up to scrutiny.
Dan: Well, there’s always a place for a mic drop. This just happens to be one. Rachael, where are your thoughts?
Rachael: Yeah, I mean I think I find myself, it’s a rare person, to again, love going in deep dives in history, but also loving to paint pictures with language and imagination to make the colors more vibrant, to pull forth what’s there. Because again, I’ve already said this, but I’ll just say it again. It’s like I’ve read these stories my whole life and I’ve loved them. I’ve found them compelling. After reading how you wrote them, I feel like, oh man, they were so flat. There was so much I was missing, which I’ve known. There’s that. I don’t know if you’ve seen this funny meme and Andrew, if we have to edit this out because it puts an explicit on the podcast, but there’s a funny meme going around that’s basically like 2000 years from now, people are not going to know the difference between a butt dial and a booty call. And that’s why reading scripture is hard. The sense of there’s so much cultural meaning held in language, the way you talk about it would have been in this dragon would’ve been in the cultural imagination. And it does feel like so much is lost, but I still find myself marveling like I hear you in that there was a gauntlet thrown down for you to explore, to put, to test in many ways the character of Jesus for you, for your family, for your friends. But I guess I still find myself, when did you fall in love with stories, ancient stories, complex histories? How did this come to be? And I don’t know if you have an answer to that, but that’s where I find myself just still like you do know, this is strange, right? There are a lot of historians, but very few who want to take the history and allow it to really mean something.
Blaine: Wow, thank you. Well, I’ll just say back that given the art and the essential oils and the book titles that are behind your head right now, Rachael, you’re a fairly unusual, intriguing person yourself, what kind of person could be shot right back? So fortunately the body of Christ is non-competitive. But there are two things that might be helpful because my friend and editor Josh took a point from our boy Dan when he said, after releasing this book, you should write some essays telling people how to be curious about story in general and then how to be curious about their story, how to cultivate the faculty of wonder. And one of the first things that I’ll say is that these are faculties that can be cultivated or diminished. I mean if you’ve looked at any, it’s really half-dead fascinating, but of the research on the neurobiology of joy and that you can destroy the center, the reflection of joy in the human body or you can cultivate it and grow it or happiness Louis (inaudible) or Hader. These people who say man an incredible amount, emotions are morally significant because we can do so much to change them. Well, wonder is a thing that can be cultivated or starved. Part of the tragedy of late modernities that is the assassination of wonder, the ridicule of joy and the numinous. So is task one with liking the Bible or ancient history is having a heart that’s alive. Then task two, I would say come back in history and look at two trends. One is I have unusual parents who I love who are so bizarre and they love theater and writing. And my mom was the chair of the feminist club at her southern California state university back in the day, shared offices with black student union, passionate person. So growing up there are advantages guys, and to grow up in a culture that really loves stories in general. I read quite a bit about parenting right now I have a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. And I’m so struck by the fact that what children can detect the unspoken value system of the family in a way that’s disturbing. So I to ask my seven-year-old, what does our family care about? Because I think you probably know better than me and what do we love? And what you love as parents will do far more to shape your children than anything else. So, I did have a family that really loved story and doing Shakespeare and memorizing the monologues and giving them to each other and then as also one of those people who seems to be born with just a profound sense of inadequacy and for decades the solution is perform or die. The interesting thing about this is that my theory on this right now is the wounds of Christ. I love what Christianity has to say about evil, that it’s bad, it’s not an illusion, it’s bad, and the presence of God has a miracle working power to bring resurrection in something that is utterly awful. So there is a sense in which profound sense of inadequacy being behind something wrong, which leads to kind of driven not quite perfectionism, but which is different as performances and performances. Just read what’s valued in the community and the culture and get good at that, whatever it is. Well, I happened to be in a place that really liked reading philosophy and old books and I was in and out of homeschool culture, and so I started reading the Iliad really early, I started reading Greek mythology in the first grade and also loved it so that over time as God through many channels, marriage, counseling, church has addressed some of the inadequacy, there is still a lot of time spent with Seneca spent with Cicero and my brothers and I would act out the history of the Roman Empire on the street on Chokecherry Drive and we would start Romulus and Remus and we would play our way through to the end and my younger brother and I would be the emperors, the co-regents and then we’d start over. So back in the stories, the weirdness and is the attraction and then just a love of story. C.S. Lewis has so much good stuff on making people love story, make kids love reading by forbidding them to read and then giving them lots of opportunities to disobey. One of my ideas, I think one of the ways to make the Bible interesting is I want an untranslated edition of Daniel on a shelf somewhere. And when my kids find it, and that’s what it’s I’ll look at that, don’t go that. They’ll see these odd ancient characters that in the middle of that book switch languages and then change back and they’ll be like, what is this? And maybe offhandedly mention, it’s an ancient work of prophecy. It doesn’t matter. It’s nested inside a story about some deportees in Babylon. Don’t worry about, oh, it happens to be a prophecy that is used by Jesus of Nazarath to interpret his life and mission but just don’t mess with it. You see in the story that I do love stories, again to Lewis. He says that he would prefer on the bus seeing people reading cheap science fiction than grinding their way through the classics, hating them because the first person has a spark of delight that can eventually spread to other things. So I’ll say ancient stuff is weird guys. So one of my metaphors, I haven’t used this very much, so we’ll see how it goes, but I was trying to explain ancient Jewish commentary and I said it would be kind of learning, seeing a superhero movie and then learning that there was this giant canon of things called comic books and going back to look at them and seeing how labyrinthian and insane they are and confusing and oftentimes just utterly esoteric and bizarre. A lot of second temple literature is like that. It takes a while to get oriented to how do these things work exactly what’s the genre, what are we using to communicate, but enough time back in ancient world and the lights do start to come on. And then when Nkaidu is giving the speech to Gilgamesh when he’s dying, I was reading it to my wife crying and she wasn’t quite getting it, but she tries. I was like, listen how this, listen how beautiful this is. “And Kaidu or Inkadu, however you want to say it, wakes up and he’s going to die and Gilgamesh is there and he says, listen my friend, hear the dream I dreamed last night. I was in the realm of the dead and all the crowns of the world were gathered in heaps here and there. Scurrying were those who used to wear them. Now they bring the dead, their food. And I saw the eyes of the two-headed, manbird and Arishkigal. She looked at me and asked, who is this? And I awoke.” Now you don’t feel anything reading that. I mean, do what I did and get into counseling Wonders, there for the taking.
Dan: Now, Rachael, just as a quick aside, before we end, is there any question why I have had such a privilege of watching Blaine grow up? Because even as a fifth, sixth, seventh grader, he far exceeded my capacity to hold the illative with the imaginative and how they bring both in tragedy and heartache and yet in glory and beauty, how the heart begins to draw and be drawn to imagination, which always is ultimately about the Paradise King. So to be able to say all things, all things, all things of heartache, all things of beauty move toward and in and through and completed by the Paradise King. So when we say to you, I think as an audience you know us well enough, we don’t sell many books and we certainly do not sell any book that we have not read. But this happens again to be one or I would say you will have conversations that are rich, are compelling, but indeed draw you to the one that this season and our lives are all about. So to say to you, Blaine, it seems, shall we say, very inadequate, but thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing a war of your soul at your parents’ table to take us to the glory of the King. It is a labor of such love that if you love those whom you gift, I will say again, this will be a gift that you’ll want to give because of that love. So Blaine, we will have you back because I do need to explore with Rachael and you, the interplay between the illative and imagination. Just saying at some point.
Blaine: I’ll look forward to it. Thank you. I’m going to give you, because I have been well-trained by the likes of Dan Allender, a serious, you’re welcome Dan. It felt like such a privilege to write. Remember watching you at the Restoration Conference would say back and forth, thank you for your book and then you say, thank you, you took it with you and you wrote a story and you brought into your life’s. And then there is this reciprocity that is additive. And so thank you Dan for reading it. Thank you Rachael. Also, thank you for reading. I wish you had been available when I was doing the audiobook. That was so good.
Rachael: I did. I did have a lot of fun reading that. But you wrote it so it was very easy to feel it.
Blaine: So thank you both for the honor of this conversation.