Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 21

A prayer for the seventh Sunday after the Epiphany.

God

We tell ourselves and each other to be still before you.
We tell each other and ourselves to be patient.
We hear that those who do evil will not last,
but we can’t be still and be patient when there is so much anger and fear,
when there are people losing their lives because of our inhumanity.

Or maybe because of our humanity.

We beg you for justice and deliverance
Begging like Joseph must have begged, for year after year after year,
betrayed by brothers, alone in Egypt.

And yet, whe...

10 men want pity.

Jews and Samaritans fundamentally disagreed about theology and practical ways to live it out. But near one town at the border between the two groups was found a group of 10 men that everyone was against. They were, the text of Luke 17 tells us, “lepers.”

It means they had one of a variety of contagious skin diseases, the kind that even before anyone knew about contagion, everyone avoided. Because God said to avoid them.

In the Old Testament, in Leviticus 13, we read that people who have...

Ten men.

May I be a little vulnerable? I don’t like Bible stories about healing.  I’m a hospital chaplain, after all. And I see people who aren’t restored to physical health. And often, as the “official” spiritual person in the room, I can’t simply speak and have them get well, the way that Jesus could.

I’d love to. But I can’t.

So when I read the healing stories in the Bible, the times that Jesus heals, the times that the disciples heal, I feel inadequate to explain God’s ways.  Why were those ...

Misguided Questions

Rich Dixon is back, thinking about questions.

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The Freedom Tour 2017 team spent a second night discussing storms and a well-known passage, Hebrews 12: 1-3.

Opening question: in the context of our conversation about storms, what’s the writer’s main point?

I’ll let you ponder that one. Here’s an idea that came up in our circle.

“WHY?” is a common response to storms.

Why here? Why now? Why me?

And it became obvious there was a companion response: “HOW?”

How could this...

Like a tree

So, I was looking at Psalm 1 for our chapel on Sunday. I’ve looked at it for years. I wrote a paraphrase of it. And I was thinking about sharing it here. And I hesitated.

Because I’ve spent time in the comments sections. And I’ve spent time with people.

The words of the psalm may have been written as a preface, as a summary, to the rest of the collection. It’s a eulogy, good words about a life. It’s not a formula, “do this and you’ll be guaranteed a good and prosperous life, particularl...

She did what she could.

Her name and her backstory are lost.

There’s speculation, of course. There is always speculation about the things we don’t know from things we read in the Bible.

What we know is that people who were threatened by what Jesus was saying and doing were trying to stop him. The religious leaders were trying to kill him, but without causing a riot.

On one particular day, three miles from Jerusalem, Jesus was at supper. A woman poured expensive perfume on his head. People complained to eac...

A prayer for the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

God.

We aren’t very good with choices.

It’s hard to choose between the best thing for us and the best thing for others.

Choosing the right voices to listen to is hard. There are so many voices and so many options and so many things going wrong.Choosing the right people to follow is hard. There are so many people who claim to be right and so many people who mess up. Including ourselves.

And then we struggle with deciding between trusting you and trusting ourselves.

We con...

A deep breath.

A week ago Tuesday, I told you I was taking a breath. Since then, I’ve done a bunch of stuff. And had a cold.

In my earlier days of writing here, I probably would have scheduled reruns or kept writing anyway. Anything to avoid silence on this channel. Because, after all, the very name of the blog includes a commitment. 300words A DAY.

But as I wrote to my friend Rich the other day, “The last couple weeks have had more output than reflection.”

I do my best to repurpose words and idea...

The Storm

Rich Dixon is back on the road.

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Let’s get back to bike tours.

During FREEDOM TOUR 2017, our team talked about storms. Jesus said we can expect storms, and spoke about preparing for them.

It’s good to know your eternal house will withstand the storm, but earthly storms are still nasty and painful – no matter how well we prepare. I told a personal story.

A couple of years after I left, my small Iowa hometown experienced a horrific tornado. As I helped some friends clean up, ...

A prayer for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

God.

Isaiah wrote your words in a scroll, more than almost anyone else in the Old Testament.  and those words are quoted throughout the New Testament.

Paul wrote your words in letters that we still read, over and over. His letters shape much of our thinking about what church could be.

Peter wrote some more of the New Testament. But he was also the leader in the earliest days of the church.

And all of them talk about how insignificant and unworthy they are.

If they aren’t any go...