The Upside-Down Way
Jesus turns the usual ways of the world—the standards by which we have learned to order our lives—upside down. We have been taught competition over cooperation, revenge over reconciliation, leading over following, enhancing our importance over humbly submitting to one another. When we attend a function, we have learned to scan the room and find […]
The Burning
I’ve come to start a fire… —Luke 12:49-56, The Message In the days when a hearth fire kept the family alive, our ancestors learned to bank the fire before they went to sleep, pushing the logs and coals together to preserve the slow burning. It was important to keep it smoldering through the night, ready to […]
With Cautious Hugs
For the first time in a year of pandemic isolation, I set the table for five on Easter Sunday. I felt both excited and awkward, unsure that I had enough food, that the house looked okay, that we were, in fact, safe from infecting each other. After a year of restricted contact, we were about […]
More Than a Meal
After getting the awful news that his cousin John, the baptizer, had been killed, Jesus slipped away in a boat to a quiet place to grieve and pray and plan.* Seeing a great multitude make their way to where he was heading, a wave of compassion fell across his bow. Back to his healing work […]