Unpredictable Love
Jesus and his disciples are sitting around the Passover table. Yet again he has taken his closest friends by surprise, kneeling down to wash their feet. Finished, he takes his place again. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he says.* It’s hard enough to love people the established ways: to put food on […]
Pruning
This spring, I have done more pruning than ever before. Pulling away what is dead is one thing but cutting down what is alive is quite another thing. The rose bushes cut down to their knees, the cypress trees as far up as I could reach, the blueberry and butterfly bushes down to my knees. […]
In God’s Care
One of the earliest most indelible images of Jesus from my childhood is the Good Shepherd, the subject of this Sunday’s gospel.* If there is a psalm we know by heart, I can bet it is Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures….” […]
Witness for Peace
Suddenly he is among them. All that he represented to them had come to a violent end–and now he has returned. All they treasured had been ripped away, and now is with them again, beyond their understanding. “Peace to you,” he says, almost casually. “Why are you troubled?”* As though he does not know. As […]