THE ALTAR AND THE LAB

I am well acquainted with the hard work necessary to bring something back to life.

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Breathing new life into neglected spaces.
I love the sound of that. Before cancer this was my mission. Reading it now, nothing has changed.

From the beginning of our forty-five year marriage, Ron and I knew that we were stewards of place. And we shared this relentless compelling to caress the tired and underloved spaces into something revived and adored.

Life, these places taught us, is a feat of endurance, a level of perseverance that reveals a kind of beauty on an entirely different scale. In and through the hard, relentless work of recovery, we discover what is possible. In and through it we learn just how far we are able to go.

Has your journey expanded the boundaries of your life?

This kind of beauty is not decoration, but devotion.
This belief honors our spaces as mirrors of what we make of ourselves.

When my own body began to exhibit signs of deep needfulness, it felt…not foreign…but strangely familiar. I recognized the cries for help, but this time they came from within.

Instead of looking away I leaned closer. And what I found wasn’t brokenness,
but invitation.
To rebuild. Transform. Rise again.

Fascination, not fear — that’s the invitation. It steadies me when data feels louder than prayer.

I keep waiting for the moment when the two worlds will separate cleanly — when I’ll know which belongs to science and which belongs to faith. It never happens. They continue to merge and mingle, like two dialects of the same divine language.

I am learning to hold both: the beaker and the Bible, the chart and the psalm.
I am learning that curiosity can be worship when it begins with wonder.

Every time I study the body’s intelligence, something holy stirs. I think of how life renews itself quietly — through apoptosis and repair, through systems that know when to release and when to rebuild. Science names it process. I call it grace.

I don’t always understand the mechanisms, but I know this:

the same Intelligence that crafted the body also authored its renewal.
And I am watching, in real time, as Spirit collaborates with design.

Most times, as the medicine enters my bloodstream, I pray over it — not for it to do something supernatural, but for it to do what it was created to do.

And that, I think, is the miracle — not the spectacle of defying nature, but the quiet obedience of it.
The body knows how to mend.
The cell knows how to listen.
The design itself leans toward repair.
What science calls mechanism is really memory — the body remembering the instruction it was given from the beginning: Live

Maybe that’s what’s changing in me.
Once, I spent my strength learning how to release.
Now, I find myself learning how to receive — how to collaborate with what’s already at work inside me.

This isn’t about surviving anymore.
It’s about seeing.
About watching the invisible begin to take shape —
faith building form, spirit translating itself into matter.

I used to think healing was what happened after surrender.
Now I’m beginning to see it might be the same act —
the unseen animating the seen,
the eternal breathing through the ordinary,
the Holy making itself known in every living thing that still remembers how to begin again.

There is an alchemy to this —
a divine chemistry where design, healing, and holiness are one continuum.
A living conversation between God and the created world,
each responding to the other in real time,
each remembering what was spoken in the beginning: Let there be…still reverberating through matter.

Healing is not an exception to creation.
It is creation continuing on.

This is where I live now — between altar and lab.
I bring the work of healing to both.
I study, and I surrender.
I research and receive.
I am not certain where one ends and the other begins — maybe that’s the point of it.

Here, we do not worship the discovery but the Designer.
We listen to what He has already written—the choreography of repair, the poetry of renewal and restoration that happens in secret places.
The lab is not where we leave God behind; it is where we realize He never left.

NOTES

The Altar and the Lab marks the beginning of a living series exploring the sacred conversation between the measurable and the mysterious.
It began, not as theory, but as survival — a personal wrestle to see God in both the medicine and the miracle.

In the Sanctuary Living ecosystem, the Altar is the space of offering and remembrance — where what is surrendered becomes holy.
The Lab is the space of participation — where we study the intelligence of creation and bear witness to how the body mirrors divine design.

These are not two destinations. They are one woven tapestry: prayer, scripture, and cellular mechanism entwined.

Here, healing is not divided into parts — spiritual, emotional, biological — but experienced as one integrated act of devotion.

These essays will wander through the many rooms of that conversation—red light and oxygen, fasting and infusion, prayer and frequency—and show how each is both miracle and mechanism. They will also express my deeply personal journey with the therapies that have saved my life.

Think of this as a map in motion.
Each piece will begin as story and end as study, revealing that the sacred is not limited to mystery alone but is also written in molecules.

This first entry lays the foundation: defining The Altar, defining The Lab, and inviting you to live between them—to see that what happens in the body is never separate from what is happening in the soul.

Each entry will invite you to look deeper into the mechanisms of healing written within you—
for the ones standing between hospital bed and holy ground,
for the ones who pray and research in the same breath,
for those who refuse to separate the divine from the design.

This series will unfold as a bridge between worlds:
- where mechanism meets mystery,
- where vials become chalices,
- where the Word still speaks through the body’s design.

Each entry will explore how science bows and Spirit breathes — how the same God who authored Scripture also wrote the laws of regeneration, renewal, and repair.

This is not a merger of disciplines, but a marriage of languages.
The altar and the lab — different dialects, same truth.

What’s to Come in the Series: Mechanism Prayer Points [a sampling]

Cellular Repair — “He restores my soul.” (Psalm 23:3)
As cells recognize damage and rebuild, may every act of molecular repair echo the promise of restoration.

Apoptosis — “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
As the body releases what no longer serves life, may grace guide every letting go.

Image: We all go through things. Some journeys more obvious than others. But that first sentence, “We all…” This is where my heart lies, in the common ground and in the moments that make us cry tears of sorrow, tears of joy. The Altar and the Lab, where scripture meets science is where my passion currently lies. Let’s explore it together.