Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 23

A prayer for the third Sunday after the Epiphany

God.

We know that we are not like each other. We look different, we do different things, we feel different feelings.

We confess that often, we wish you had made us like someone else.
We confess that often, we wish you had made other people like us.
And we acknowledge that we just wish that people liked us. And that we liked them.

It’s harder, gap between who we are and who others are,
when we are in moments of pain and uncertainty.
Fear and sickness both make our thinking and feeling har...

Sometimes it’s pie.

Picking up from yesterday.

We are given messages to share with each other, messages that are given from God, through the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes it’s a message of wisdom, – a glimmer of insight for making the right decision, looking at two alternatives and seeing a third that reflects scripture in ways that have to be inspired.Sometimes it’s someone who at that moment simply believes with a resolve that carries everyone along.Sometimes it’s a word of healing of relationships or ...

What might count?

I’m going back to Tuesday, when I was talking about Jesus and wine.

We are waiting for Jesus to do the same kind of miracle. Our wine is all gone. Our family is sick. We are confused. People aren’t responding to our cries for help.

We are hoping for a miracle and we’re not seeing anything happen. We are praying and praying and someone is still sick. We are hoping and hoping and we are still without a job, are still without direction, are still wondering.

And we are waiting for God t...

Worried?

Rich Dixon invites us into a challenging season.

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The FREEDOM TOUR has encountered an obstacle.

I’ve spent the last few days fussing about it. Time for true confessions.

We discovered late last week that local governments won’t allow us to use the beautiful Fort Collins bike trails for our Freedom Tour Classic. Since all four of our traditional routes depend heavily on those trails, we’ve been scrambling for an alternative plan.

My first reaction to this sort of news isn’t h...

Sometimes we need help.

Sometimes the wine runs out.

The story isn’t going to end there, of course. We know where the Jesus-wedding-wine story goes.

But the non-fatal story that you are in the middle of right now is going to keep going, too. The embarrassment you are afraid of isn’t all there is.

Because you are no more alone than the father of the bride was at that moment. He probably though he was alone. But he didn’t know that Mary knew that her son had capacity no one had yet dreamed of.

He still has...

Everything has limits.

“I did everything I could. But it wasn’t enough.”

I talk to nurses these days. ICU nurses work and care and listen and do as well they possibly can. It’s what nurses do. Some days, they make no mistakes, they offer remarkable care to patients and their families, they do everything they and the physicians know to do. And the patient doesn’t make it.

Sometimes, as those nurses walk off the floor and out of the building, they are spent.

What we forget, what we need to know, what we need...

A prayer for the second Sunday after the Epiphany.

God.

We read about miracles in the Bible. People healed. People fed. Water turned into wine.

We want those kinds of miracles. Because people are sick. People are hungry. We’d just love to have a great celebration.

We don’t see those miracles.

Maybe we could help people out. Offer them courage. Offer them opportunities.
Maybe we could offer shoveling and comfort and supper.

But those aren’t you doing a miracle, those are us expressing love.

Which is, I suppose, a kind of mirac...

the beauty of ordinary.

“There is no shame in not leaping from a plane. There is no shame in delivering a good batch of non-gourmet chocolate chip cookies.”

I wrote those sentences on January 2, 2014.

I was thinking about writing a manifesto, a battle cry of belief. A manifesto is an answer to the question posed on the back of a Radisson hotel in-room coffee wrapper: “That’s our philosophy. What’s yours?”

The manifesto I was thinking about would be called “The beauty of ordinary”. It would speak to all the ...

Take my hand.

Thomas Dorsey was not home when his son was born.

He was not home when his wife died after the birth of their son and when their son died the next day. He was away from home to speak and sing, when he got the telegram. It was 1932.

He came home with the grief, and to the grief.

And eventually, in response, he wrote “Take my Hand, Precious Lord.”

I heard that story the other day. I smiled in relief. Because that song always had an acknowledgement of heaviness to it. Rather than t...

Simple And Difficult

Rich Dixon on thinking about focus:

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Continuing last week’s reflection on Falling And Numbers… What’s your memory of President Jimmy Carter?

A political leader? The Carter Center? His unending work for peace?

For me, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions President Carter is Habitat for Humanity. I wonder what made a former US President lend his considerable influence to that particular organization? (Was it because Jesus was a carpenter?)

I can’t know the...