When I was a kid, whenever my room got too overrun with piles of dirty laundry and half-read books, my Mom would ask me to clean it. I'd moan, "Not now, it doesn't need it, why are you making my life so hard?" Imagine following Jesus with a small group of friends who are overjoyed to know Jesus and eager to love one another. Now add one member to the group who is always complaining about studying the Bible or getting frustrated that his Saturday is being wasted on a service project. Just a few heavy sighs and the energy is drained out of the room. Or what if we opt out of following Jesus? Paul says the world is skolios — curved — and twisted. It's like a moral scoliosis. Instead of living upright lives, we're hiding in the shadows. When we organize life around ourselves, we pull all the light in, and nothing goes back out. We've become like black holes. Paul shatters these expectations with uninhibited joy. He just sang about Christ descending to death. Now he speaks of himself like a drink offering, poured out over an altar, gone. He speaks about running a race at full speed. Writing from prison, he's aware that he may soon become a martyr. Yet he's not white-knuckling obedience. He's holding on to the word of life, who fills his life with joy. He's not dreading death, but eagerly anticipating the day of Christ, when God graciously rewards us for what we did by his strength. He's not throwing a pity party by himself, but drawing closer to his friends. One of the reasons I love to go camping is it gets me away from all the lights of Atlanta, and I can see the stars. As the fourth century preacher Chrysostom once observed, "For the stars too shine in darkness yet suffer no diminution of their own beauty, but instead they shine all the brighter." We live in a crooked world, weighed down by grumbling. But the light of Jesus is still shining through his beloved disciples.