John 11:1-45 The messenger arrived where Jesus and his disciples were staying with the kind of news no one wants to receive. “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” It was a simple statement of fact, but an unspoken hope hovered in the silence that followed. An expectation that Jesus, who had healed countless strangers, would surely rush to cure his good friend Lazarus. Jesus, though, seemed remarkably nonchalant about his friend’s condition. He said, “This illness does not…
Psalm 46 I’ve seen enough apocalyptic disaster movies to know that the plots of most of them follow a predictable formula. Most revolve around humanity’s struggle to avoid extinction in the face of a global catastrophic shortage of some resource. In “The Road” it was a shortage of food. In “Waterworld” melting ice caps covered the continents with oceans, creating a scarcity of dry land for people to live on. In “Mad Max” it was water that there was not…
John 4:5-42 Back in 2004, a guy named Frank Warren had an interesting idea for an art project. He made up some postcards that were blank on one side and on the other side were printed with his address and a simple invitation. The invitation was this: “You are invited to anonymously share a secret. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything—as long as it is true and you have never shared…
Long ago, God spoke to a prophet named Ezekiel in a vision. In that vision Ezekiel was transported to a valley. The floor of the valley was strewn with human bones, like the slain of a mighty army that had been utterly defeated. Ezekiel noticed that the bones were “very” dry, which seems to mean something like that they were dead as a doornail. God asked Ezekiel an odd question. “Mortal, can these bones live?” It would seem that the…
Our pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a truly unforgettable experience. It is difficult to describe in words what it feels like to look out upon the same sights that Jesus would have taken in, to walk in his footsteps and to worship in places where he and his disciples would have prayed. Many of the sites related to Jesus’ life were venerated by the earliest Christians, sometimes even used as “house churches” where believers would meet for worship and…
In Alicia Britt Chole’s book of Lenten devotions, 40 Days of Decrease, she writes: “Decrease is a spiritual necessity. John the Baptist was the first among Jesus’ followers to grasp its countercultural power. “Less is more” is a popular simplicity mantra in our day. But John’s understanding of “less is more” was spiritually profound. In many ways, John lived a Lenten lifestyle 365 days a year. His diet was narrow, his possessions were minimal, and his focus was eternal. But…
