Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41 [Note about the text: There are many players in this story of Jesus healing the young man with blindness, and it should be noted that all of them are Jews. This is important because at one point in the story we are told that the young man’s parents are “afraid of the Jews.” When John writes this he is speaking to the church that existed decades later, at the time he was writing. Many years after Jesus was crucified, his disciples were expelled from their Jewish community, which was very painful for them. From that perspective, this is a story about the pain of feeling excluded, perhaps the pain of being unseen.] I don’t know if it is accurate to call this the story of Jesus healing a blind man. Maybe it should be called a story about all the ways people take issue with Jesus […]
Continue readingMonth: March 2026
The Way Around
John 4:5-42 We are in the third week of our Lenten journey now, and I am thinking about the ways in which journeys to new places may change us. In my morning devotions last week I encountered some questions pertaining to this. How does what you encounter today affect your actions today, and tomorrow? How do the experiences you have now change the way you will be later? Questions such as these seem to get at the bigger question of whether, and how, you will be open to a new thing when it is presented to you. To the extent that we can afford to, many of us attempt to travel in a way that will be as unchallenging as possible. In many ways, we try to take home with us when we go away, to keep it as familiar and comfortable as we can. But then are we able […]
Continue readingThe High Way
Genesis 12:1-4 John 3:1-17 All of us have moments when we do impulsive things. Like, when your friend says, “Let’s go out for ice cream!” and you weren’t planning to do that, you were actually planning to go home and do laundry, but then you thought, “Ice cream? Why not? You only live once, right?” We have all done something impulsive once in a while. But probably not leaving your home and walking off toward an unknown destination. I’ll bet you haven’t done that. I wonder what Abram thought when God called him to walk away from his home and his people and go to a place God would show him. There must have been something – or a few things – on his mind. But we don’t know. The text doesn’t say. It just says that Abram went, as the Lord told him. I try to imagine why. Maybe […]
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