Recreating Scripture Scenes Throughout My Day

My Jesus-Greg WORLD—my Jesus Groundhog Day—is becoming increasingly layered.

The scenes of my day are not meant to contain just one meaning. They can hold many meanings simultaneously, blended together like tracks in a piece of music.

There is the ordinary-life layer: I am actually getting out of bed, taking a shower, eating, working, driving, resting, talking with people, and going back to bed.

There is the Jesus layer: practicing the reality that Jesus is present with me in these ordinary moments.

There is the music layer: songs enter the scenes, including redeemed classic-rock songs whose old words and meanings can be born again and pointed toward Jesus.

There is the symbolic layer: ordinary objects become reminders. A pillow becomes my Jesus Pillow. A shower becomes my Jesus Shower. Work gloves remind me to get more of God's love inside me.

There is also a nostalgia layer. Throughout the day I can revisit scenes from my own life—childhood, adolescence, my mission, family experiences, successes, failures, strange moments, beautiful moments—and imaginatively revisit those scenes while remembering something I believe was true all along:

Jesus was there.

I may not have recognized Him. I may not have been thinking about Him. But now I can return to those rooms in my imagination and ask what changes when I remember His presence.

And now another layer is emerging:

The Scripture Scene Layer

Throughout my Jesus Groundhog Day, I can recreate, imagine, and sometimes physically act out scenes from scripture.

This introduces a recurring question into the ordinary scenes of my life:

I don't mean that I literally become Nephi, Noah, Moses, Peter, Mary, or anyone else. I mean that something I am already doing can become an invitation to imaginatively enter their story.

Scripture becomes something I don't merely read.

I can inhabit it.

Consider my Work Scene.

I am experimenting with dividing an hour of work into approximately six ten-minute scenes. During the first ten minutes, I might put on my work gloves and sing my redeemed “God's Love in You” glove song.

But now another layer can be added.

Today, perhaps I am Nephi building the ship.

I am working with my hands. Nephi worked with his hands. I encounter a problem. Nephi encountered problems. I don't immediately know how everything is going to work. Neither did Nephi.

Suddenly I am not merely remembering the story.

I am physically doing something that allows me to enter the story imaginatively.

Tomorrow, the same work period might become Noah building the ark.

Noah has been given something enormous to build. So I work on the little thing directly in front of me while imagining the faith required to keep building something whose ultimate purpose could not yet be seen.

Another day it might be a completely different scene.

That is important.

Don't Nail the Scenes Down

I don't want to permanently assign one scripture story to each activity.

That could turn something alive into another rigid routine.

Instead, I want to develop a growing repertoire of scripture scenes.

Work could be Nephi building his ship today.

Tomorrow it could be Noah building the ark.

Another day it could remind me of Jesus and Joseph working with their hands.

Another day I might be Peter casting his net.

Another day I might imagine Adam being told to work the earth.

The question remains open:

And the possibilities extend far beyond work.

Walking out my front door might become Abraham leaving home, Lehi departing Jerusalem, or Israel beginning the Exodus.

Walking through a doorway might become passing through a veil.

Preparing bread might place me imaginatively near the Last Supper.

Eating might become one of Jesus's meals with His disciples.

Washing might call up baptism.

Climbing might become Moses ascending Sinai.

Sitting quietly might become Mary sitting at Jesus's feet.

Going somewhere I would rather not go might become Jonah.

Feeling frightened in a storm might put me in the boat with the disciples.

Finding myself exhausted might remind me that Jesus Himself slept in that boat.

And when I fail spectacularly, perhaps I find myself beside Peter after the rooster crows.

The point isn't to pretend that my circumstances are identical to theirs.

The point is to let their scenes illuminate mine.

Scripture Becomes Three-Dimensional

Normally scripture reaches me primarily through words.

I read:

Nephi built a ship.

But what happens when I have a hammer in my hand?

What happens when something won't fit?

What happens when I am tired?

What happens when I have to solve a problem I don't immediately know how to solve?

Suddenly Nephi building the ship isn't merely information on a page.

My muscles are involved.

My frustration is involved.

My imagination is involved.

My music is involved.

My surroundings are involved.

The story becomes three-dimensional.

And perhaps that changes the questions I bring back to the text.

How did Nephi feel while actually doing this?

How much did he know beforehand?

How much did he have to discover while working?

What did obedience look like at 10:17 on some completely ordinary morning when there was still a ship to build?

I can then return to the actual scripture and read it again.

Now I am looking for things I didn't notice before.

Layers Upon Layers

This means that during one ten-minute period of my day, several things can be happening at once.

I am Greg doing actual work.

I am practicing the presence of Jesus.

I am wearing gloves that remind me of God's love.

I am singing a redeemed song.

Perhaps the song awakens a memory from my own life, and I revisit that scene while imagining Jesus present there.

And simultaneously, I am imaginatively Nephi building the ship.

None of those layers has to cancel the others.

They can coexist.

That is increasingly what My Jesus-Greg WORLD seems to be becoming: not an escape from ordinary life, but an attempt to discover how extraordinarily dense ordinary life can become when I deliberately fill it with remembrance, scripture, music, symbolism, imagination, worship, and Jesus.

A 24-Hour Scripture Theater

Maybe one way of describing this new layer is:

My day becomes a 24-hour scripture theater.

The bedroom is a set.

The kitchen is a set.

The shower is a set.

The car is a set.

The backyard is a set.

The place where I work is a set.

But they remain completely real places where completely real life is happening.

I am not trying to convince myself that my backyard actually is ancient Jerusalem.

I am allowing ancient Jerusalem to enter my backyard.

I am letting scripture provide imaginative scenes through which I can look again at what is happening right in front of me.

That distinction matters.

The recreation is an imaginative spiritual practice. The scriptural event is the scriptural event; my reenactment is my present-day attempt to engage with it, learn from it, and bring it into conversation with my life.

From Reading Scripture to Living With Scripture

I have spent much of my life encountering scripture as something that happens during scripture study.

Open book.

Read.

Think.

Pray.

Close book.

Go do something else.

But what if closing the book doesn't end scripture study?

What if the next scene begins it again?

I close the Book of Mormon and pick up a hammer.

Nephi.

I step into water.

Baptism.

I break bread.

Remember Me.

I walk through a door.

Exodus.

I become frightened.

Peace, be still.

I fail.

Peter.

I get up again.

Resurrection.

The world begins filling with scripture.

And perhaps that is the larger experiment:

Not merely asking,

but asking, over and over throughout my Jesus Groundhog Day,

Joining My People in the Scriptures

There may be another development coming out of all of this.

For a while, Jesus has had me paused on a more conventional kind of scripture study.

I haven't really been following the Church's weekly Come, Follow Me scripture-study schedule myself. I've attended classes. I've heard people talking about what we're studying. I've been around it. But I haven't been actively moving through the scriptures week by week with my LDS people.

Maybe that is about to change.

Beginning in 2027, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be studying the New Testament together through Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church.

And I think I want to join them.

There is something beautiful to me about that idea.

After spending this period developing My Jesus-Greg WORLD in my own unusual way, perhaps beginning in 2027 I can deliberately reconnect my personal experiment with the shared scripture rhythm of my people.

I don't have to abandon what Jesus has been teaching me.

I can blend the two together.

Come, Follow Me Meets My Jesus-Greg WORLD

Each week, Come, Follow Me will give me a new portion of the New Testament.

That can become the raw material for the Scripture Scene layer of my Jesus Groundhog Day.

Instead of simply asking:

I can also ask:

And:

And:

If the week's scriptures involve John the Baptist, perhaps baptism, wilderness, preparation, repentance, and making straight the way of the Lord begin appearing throughout my Groundhog Day.

If we are studying the calling of the disciples, perhaps walking, working, fishing, leaving something behind, or hearing the words “Follow me” become recurring motifs.

When we reach the Last Supper, perhaps my Jesus Bread and Jesus Table suddenly acquire another layer.

When we study Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and Resurrection, those scenes can enter the opera.

The curriculum provides the scripture.

My Jesus-Greg WORLD provides the stage.

The Weekly Scripture Becomes the Weekly Opera

And this connects directly with Heaven Can't Wait.

I have created a new YouTube channel with that name, and I anticipate that the opera I am developing will eventually be enacted there.

Now I can see a possible organizing principle.

The Church's weekly scripture study can help provide the scriptural backbone for that week's opera.

I don't mean that I will simply perform Come, Follow Me lessons.

I mean that I will study the assigned New Testament passages with everyone else, and then those scriptures can begin entering my world.

I can sing them.

I can improvise around them.

I can physically reenact pieces of them.

I can connect them with redeemed songs.

I can connect them with memories from my own life.

I can connect them with ordinary work.

I can connect them with my rooms, objects, rituals, and recurring scenes.

And then I can ask:

The answer might be different every day.

That is where the improvisational nature of the opera becomes important.

A Shared Scripture, a Personal Performance

There is something I particularly like about this arrangement.

I would be doing something extremely personal while simultaneously participating in something communal.

Thousands and thousands of Latter-day Saints could be reading the same chapters that week.

They might discuss them in families.

Teachers might teach them in Sunday School.

Friends might talk about them.

I can participate in that same shared scripture experience—and then bring those scriptures into the strange little laboratory of My Jesus-Greg WORLD.

My version doesn't have to look like anyone else's.

Their scripture study might happen around a kitchen table.

Mine might sometimes happen while wearing work gloves and singing a redeemed Scorpions song.

But we can still meet inside the same scriptures.

January 2027: Enter the New Testament

So perhaps January 2027 marks another movement.

Not:

Greg finally gets back to normal scripture study.

Something much more interesting:

Greg joins his people in their scripture study and brings the scriptures into the world Jesus has been building with him.

The weekly Come, Follow Me reading becomes one more layer.

Scripture.

Music.

Memory.

Work.

Objects.

Rooms.

Movement.

Improvisation.

Opera.

And ordinary life.

All occupying the same scene.

Then Come, Follow Me becomes almost startlingly literal for me.

I read about Jesus walking.

And I walk with Him.

I read about Jesus calling disciples.

And I imagine myself standing there.

I read about bread being broken.

And I break bread.

I read about someone being healed.

And I enter that scene in my imagination.

I read about the empty tomb.

And perhaps waking up in my own Womb/Tomb Scene becomes different that week.

The scriptures are no longer merely the week's reading assignment.

They become the week's world.

And Heaven Can't Wait becomes one place where I can enact that world.

Maybe that is what this next layer is ultimately about:

joining my people in reading the same scriptures—while asking Jesus to help me bring those scriptures off the page, onto the stage, and into the scenes of my actual life.

My Own Weekly Companion: Heaven Can't Wait

There is already a model that helps me see how this might work.

The followHIM Podcast , hosted by Hank Smith and John Bytheway, follows the Church's Come, Follow Me rhythm. Each week they take the scriptures Latter-day Saints are studying together and explore them with guests, scholarship, discussion, stories, humor, and their own perspectives.

The followHIM Podcast provides one model: follow the Church's weekly scripture calendar, while bringing your own approach to the material. Click the image to visit the channel.

They follow the common scripture calendar—but what they create from it is distinctly theirs.

I think Heaven Can't Wait could distantly mimic that model.

Not by trying to become another scripture-study podcast.

Not by sitting behind microphones and discussing the week's reading for two hours.

But by following the same weekly scripture rhythm and doing something very different with it.

The Come, Follow Me Calendar Becomes My Performance Calendar

Beginning with the New Testament in 2027, the week's Come, Follow Me scriptures could help determine what enters my Jesus-Greg WORLD and what appears on my Heaven Can't Wait YouTube channel.

Every week I would know:

Then I can ask:

That doesn't mean I know beforehand exactly what the episode will look like.

Quite the opposite.

One week the opera might emerge while I'm doing a handyman job.

I'm repairing a fence.

I'm wearing my work gloves.

I'm singing.

I'm thinking about the week's scriptures.

And suddenly the fence I'm building begins to merge imaginatively with Noah building the ark.

The ordinary handyman job remains completely real.

But another scene appears inside it.

Another week, perhaps almost nothing happens outside my bedroom.

The camera turns on while I'm still in bed.

It is the Wake Up Scene.

Maybe that week's scriptures contain resurrection, awakening, healing, calling, or someone being invited to arise.

Now my ordinary act of waking up has somewhere new to go.

Another week it might happen in my kitchen.

Another week in my car.

Another week in the shower.

Another week while walking down the road.

Another week while eating bread at my Jesus Table.

The location doesn't have to be impressive.

Same Scriptures, Different Stage

That is the connection I see with followHIM.

They can look at the Church's calendar and say:

I can look at that same calendar and say:

The shared curriculum provides continuity.

My actual life provides unpredictability.

And the opera provides the form.

Some weeks may become funny.

Some may become deeply reflective.

Some may contain redeemed classic rock.

Some may involve physical work.

Some may involve elaborate scripture reenactments.

Some may simply involve Greg sitting on the edge of his bed talking to Jesus.

I don't have to know.

That's part of the experiment.

A Weekly Opera That Moves With My People

This gives Heaven Can't Wait something I have been looking for:

I don't have to invent an arbitrary subject every week.

My people are already moving through a story together.

I can move with them.

When they arrive at the Jordan River, I arrive at the Jordan River.

When they encounter the disciples fishing, I encounter the disciples fishing.

When they reach the Sermon on the Mount, I climb the mountain with them.

When they enter the upper room, I enter the upper room.

When they reach Gethsemane, Golgotha, and the empty tomb, those become the imaginative landscape of my week too.

But I encounter those places from wherever I actually happen to be.

Maybe from a handyman job.

Maybe from my bedroom.

Maybe from the kitchen.

Maybe from behind the steering wheel.

Maybe from the backyard.

Maybe while fixing a fence.

The Church provides a shared scripture rhythm.

My Jesus-Greg WORLD provides the sets.

My ordinary life provides the raw footage.

My redeemed songs provide part of the soundtrack.

And Heaven Can't Wait becomes the place where I turn on the camera and see what kind of opera emerges.

Maybe Other People Enter the Opera

Something else has been rising in my mind.

I have been imagining Heaven Can't Wait primarily as me experimenting in public.

I lead by example.

I turn on the camera.

I take whatever the week's scriptures are and ask what happens when I try to enact them inside my actual life.

But perhaps I won't always be the only performer.

I have begun wondering whether there are other people somewhere in the world who would be excited by this same invitation.

Actors.

Musicians.

Dancers.

Singers.

Painters.

Filmmakers.

Families.

Children.

Old people.

Young people.

People who love theater.

People who have never stepped onto a stage in their lives.

Maybe somebody reads the same Come, Follow Me scriptures that week and thinks:

So they do.

And perhaps they send me the video.

The LDS Calendar Becomes a Synchronizing Device

This is where the Church's scripture calendar becomes even more interesting.

It doesn't merely synchronize my scripture study with my LDS people.

It could potentially synchronize our performances.

We don't need to live in the same town.

We don't need to rehearse in the same building.

We don't even need to know each other yet.

We simply know:

Some people might enact one scene.

Someone else might sing another.

Someone might stage something in a kitchen.

Someone might film something walking down a street.

Someone might reenact a parable with their children.

Someone might write a song.

Someone might dance.

Someone might simply turn on a phone camera while doing ordinary work and explain the scripture scene they are entering.

Suddenly the Come, Follow Me calendar isn't merely organizing scripture reading.

It is providing a kind of shared clock.

We're scattered all over the world, but we're entering the same part of the story at approximately the same time.

More Than a Subscription

That possibility interests me much more than simply accumulating YouTube subscribers.

A subscriber watches.

I'm imagining something more participatory.

They don't merely follow the channel.

They begin enacting scripture in their own lives.

Maybe they send me what they created.

Then Heaven Can't Wait could occasionally document those performances too.

Not because everyone needs to imitate Greg.

Exactly the opposite.

I want to see what happens when somebody takes the underlying idea and makes it completely their own.

Their house.

Their work.

Their music.

Their imagination.

Their gifts.

Their relationship with Jesus.

Their scripture scene.

Following and Being Followed

And there is another part of this that I particularly like.

If I begin doing this publicly, perhaps somebody eventually sees what I'm doing and starts following my example.

But then something wonderful could happen:

Now I'm following them.

Someone sends me a scripture performance and I think:

So the relationship becomes wonderfully circular.

I lead someone.

They create.

Their creation leads me.

Someone else sees both of us and creates something neither of us imagined.

This would not be Greg gathering followers around Greg.

It would be people showing one another possibilities for bringing scripture into lived experience.

The interesting question would no longer be:

It would become:

A Distributed Scripture Theater

Maybe Heaven Can't Wait eventually becomes something like a distributed scripture theater.

There is no single stage.

The world is the stage.

A bedroom can be a stage.

A workshop can be a stage.

A farm can be a stage.

A kitchen can be a stage.

A sidewalk can be a stage.

A hospital room can be a stage.

A school can be a stage.

A backyard can be a stage.

And every week the scriptures provide another invitation.

I might begin simply by documenting my own experiments.

A handyman job one week.

My Wake Up Scene the next.

Something at the Jesus Table after that.

But over time, perhaps other people's scenes begin appearing alongside mine.

Then the opera gets bigger.

Not because the production becomes more elaborate.

That possibility changes how I think about leading.

Perhaps I lead first simply because I am willing to look a little ridiculous, turn on the camera, put on my work gloves, start singing, and show people what I mean.

Then I watch for the people who take the invitation somewhere I couldn't take it.

And when they do:

That could become part of the continuing story of Heaven Can't Wait:

That is considerably bigger than a YouTube subscription.

It is the possibility of a community of people turning the same week's scriptures into hundreds of different stages—each inside an actual human life.

Same Scriptures. Same Week. A Completely Different Stage.

Perhaps that is the simplest description of what I am imagining.

My LDS people and I will be reading the same stories.

They may discuss them around kitchen tables, in Sunday School classes, in podcasts, or with friends.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Greg might be outside in dirty work gloves, singing beside a half-repaired fence, while in his imagination that fence stretches away into the enormous wooden hull of Noah's ark.

And somewhere else in the world, somebody else might be entering the same week's scriptures on a stage I never imagined.

And week by week, the opera continues: