SamuelJon Media

05/14/2026

Eric Church

One of the most effective commencement speeches I’ve heard in a long time.

Thoughtful. Disarming. Honest. And quietly rooted in faith without forcing the room to pretend.

Eric Church's six-string metaphor shook me more than I expected.

I wrote about why.

Read the full article by clicking photo link below or click here: https://lnkd.in/gMDy_9kv
Watch the speech here: https://lnkd.in/gQkayaz7

05/14/2026

One of the most effective commencement speeches I’ve heard in a long time.

Thoughtful. Disarming. Honest. And quietly rooted in faith without forcing the room to pretend.

Eric Church's six-string metaphor shook me more than I expected.

I wrote about why.

Read the full article by clicking photo link below or click here: https://lnkd.in/gMDy_9kv
Watch the speech here: https://lnkd.in/gQkayaz7

05/04/2026

There is a clip I keep coming back to.

Alistair Begg. Three minutes. It has a way of cutting through everything I have accumulated and reminding me what this has always actually been about.

The thief on the cross had no Bible study. No baptism. No church membership. No theology. No track record. No resume of any kind.

And he made it.

The angel asked how. And the only answer he had was the only answer that has ever actually worked.

The man on the middle cross said I can come.

That is the whole story. That has always been the whole story. And the part of me that keeps coming back to this clip is the part that knows how easy it is to drift from that story into one where I am a more active participant in my own salvation than the text supports.

I wrote the full piece on what that drift looks like, why it happens, and why that one sentence from a dying thief is still the most liberating thing ever spoken.

To watch the Begg clip and read my full article, click here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/man-middle-cross-samuel-rodriguez--wxpgc.

Written for the executives, the leaders, the quietly faithful, and the honestly uncertain. You are welcome here exactly as you are.

Sam Rodriguez
The Still Small Voice
samueljonmedia.com

04/24/2026

There is a moment I will never forget.

We finished the first episode of and showed it to the family it was made for.

I watched them move through something I did not fully anticipate. Pride first. The kind that rises when you see someone you love treated with care on screen. Then a quiet that settled in the room as the hardest parts of their story played back. Then something else entirely at the end. Hope, maybe. Relief. Joy that had tears in it.

The first words spoken after it ended: "This is absolutely perfect."

That moment is why this series exists.

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A Seat at the Table is a filmed conversation series produced through 's Fund in partnership with media that gives bereaved families a seat, a camera, and an unhurried hour to introduce the child the world never got to meet. Each episode runs 3 to 5 minutes. The work behind it is significant. The result is something a family can carry for the rest of their lives.

We are looking for more families who want that. And we are looking for sponsors and partners who want to make it possible.

If either of those is you, or if you know someone they might be, we would love to hear from you.

Every child deserves to be introduced. We are here to make the room.
mannysfund.org

04/15/2026

Help me blow up this video for this family's beautiful Son and maybe fund some more episodes for Manny's Fund so even more families can get the same chance.

mannysfund.org
James Jerome Po***ck

04/13/2026

04/12/2026

Recently I bought a reMarkable Months of research. Finally pulled the trigger.

The marker did not work out of the box.

I did not go straight to the store. I did not complain. I contacted customer support specifically because I was trying to find a way to keep the product. I was already extending grace before anyone asked me to.

Two interactions followed. An online agent and a store associate. Both kind. Both professional. Both doing exactly what their systems trained them to do.
Neither one asked me if I wanted to try again.

I did not leave angry. I did not even leave disappointed. I left with confirmation. Quiet. Clean. A crumpled return receipt and months of research behind me.

That is the most expensive kind of exit a brand never sees coming. It does not register as a failure. It closes clean and disappears into a normal afternoon.
And here is the humility in all of this. This is not about one company. This is happening in every organization at every size right now. It is probably already showing up in your feedback. In the complaints that come in poorly worded and repetitive and easy to dismiss.

If you slow down long enough to find the pattern underneath the noise you will almost always find the same thing.

Nobody did anything wrong. The system just never asked them to fight for the relationship.

Full piece in this week's Long Frame.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moment-matters-most-samuel-rodriguez--wrnyc

04/03/2026

Good Friday.

Not a symbol softened by distance, but the brutal cost of love in full view.

The cross was not poetic in the moment. It was bloody, humiliating, violent, and real. And yet this is where mercy stood its ground. This is where justice and grace met. This is where Christ did not turn away.

Today, we remember that Jesus did not merely speak about love. He endured the full weight of suffering to secure what we could never earn on our own.

It is finished was not the cry of defeat. It was the declaration that sin had been answered, the debt had been paid, and the way to the Father had been opened.

We do not rush past Good Friday. We stand here, grateful, sober, and undone by the cost.

04/03/2026

Good Friday.

Not a symbol softened by distance, but the brutal cost of love in full view.

The cross was not poetic in the moment. It was bloody, humiliating, violent, and real. And yet this is where mercy stood its ground. This is where justice and grace met. This is where Christ did not turn away.

Today, we remember that Jesus did not merely speak about love. He endured the full weight of suffering to secure what we could never earn on our own.

It is finished was not the cry of defeat. It was the declaration that sin had been answered, the debt had been paid, and the way to the Father had been opened.

We do not rush past Good Friday. We stand here, grateful, sober, and undone by the cost.

Grace Church