When the Walls Stop Working

Nineveh repented under Jonah and was spared, from the king down to the cattle. A century and a half later the same city, its walls reportedly a hundred feet high and broad enough for chariots, had forgotten why it ever wore sackcloth. Then the river it had so carefully engineered came through the gates.

Nobody repealed the sackcloth. A generation simply looked at walls that had always held and drew the obvious conclusion. That is how a family gets from mercy to false security too: one reasonable decision at a time, with no villain required.

The book follows that arc out of ancient Assyria and into living rooms, marriages, and congregations, through the stories of families who built walls out of love and the moment those walls stopped working. Each chapter closes with three questions to carry into your week, one of them always pointed back at yourself.

Two visits. Two sequences. The distance between them is the subject of the book.