Scattered Moments
Brief reflections on faith, adversity, and the quiet places where grace appears.
Each episode of Scattered Moments is a brief journey through the unexpected classrooms where God does His deepest work — hospital rooms and sanctuaries, seasons of grief and flashes of joy, the ordinary moments where grace shows up and changes everything.
Drawing from over forty years of writing, ministry, and life in the trenches, Matt Tullos weaves together original poetry, hymn stories, Scripture, and honest reflection to remind you that even adversity, you are not alone.
Three Types of Episodes:
Scattered Moments: Brief Reflections on Faith, Adversity and the Quiet Places
Guided Meditations: Opportunities to Encounter God through Meditation
Moments Almanac: Released Every Morning, Reflecting on the Meaning of Each Day,
Take heart, notice the scattered moments, and share the grace.
Scattered Moments
June 2, 2026 Moments Almanac | Kingdom
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this June 2 edition of Scattered Moments Almanac, we remember the quiet courage of Blandina of Lyons, a young believer whose faith endured in the shadow of the Roman Empire. Through scripture, the words of theologian Greg Boyd, and the mystical poetry of Francis Thompson, this episode reflects on the hidden Kingdom of God — a counterkingdom of radical love, mercy, and enduring grace.
Featuring:
• Luke 17:21 — “The kingdom of God is within you.”
• A reflection on Blandina and the persecuted church
• A quote from Greg Boyd on the “counterkingdom of radical love”
• Selections from Francis Thompson’s poem “In No Strange Land”
The Kingdom often arrives quietly… and outlives them all.
Take care, notice the scattered moments, and share the grace.
Hello and welcome back to Moments Almanac, a place where we remember people, places, and events that left fingerprints on the church and our souls as well. June is often a month where the church remembers pilgrims and martyrs, and today we remember a young woman named Blandina. In the year 177, during fierce persecution in the city of Lyons, the Roman Empire attempted to crush a small community of Christians through imprisonment, torture, and death. Among them was Blandina, a servant girl, physically frail and socially insignificant in the eyes of the world, but history remembers her name. Again and again witnesses said she endured suffering with quiet courage, repeating only these legendary words I am a Christian. Rome possessed power, armies, spectacle, and fear, Blandina possessed something else the kingdom of God. Jesus once said, The kingdom of God is within you. Luke 17, 21. The kingdom of God rarely arrives the way earthly kingdoms do. It doesn't force itself through violence and domination. It often appears quietly in endurance, mercy, forgiveness, and stubborn love. Today is the birthday of Greg Boyd, a theologian and neo Anabaptist, and I love these words that he wrote. He came to ultimately put the kingdom of the world out of business by establishing a counter-kingdom of radical love that would eventually render it obsolete. I love that. A counter-kingdom. What a phrase. Not a kingdom built on fear, but on grace, not sustained by revenge, but by mercy, not preserved through power, but through sacrificial love, and perhaps that is why the kingdom can sometimes feel well hidden from us, not because it is absent, but because we keep looking for it in the wrong places. The poet Francis Thompson wrote this O world invisible we view thee, O world intangible we touch thee, in world unknowable we know thee. Inapprehensible we clutch thee. Does the fish soar to find the ocean? The eagle plunge to find the air, that we ask the stars in motion if they have rumor of thee there. The fish does not search for the ocean, it already lives in it, and perhaps we too are more surrounded by the presence of God than we realize. Perhaps the kingdom is already near in quiet acts of faithfulness, in hidden courage, in prayers whispered through tears in ordinary people who refuse to surrender love to bitterness. Empires rise loudly, but the kingdom often arrives quietly and outlives them all. That's the moment almanac for June the second, twenty twenty six. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take care. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.
