Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 44

Interruptions

More from Rich Dixon:

You plan and plan a bike tour, but mostly the interruptions end up being the stories you tell.

Nobody expected Una’s loud conversations with Jesus. And we sure didn’t expect what happened during a rest stop in a West Virginia farmyard.

First, an impromptu dance party broke out, a reaction to a stressful morning of winding, narrow roads and too much traffic. As the group danced away some anxiety, most of us didn’t notice the conversation between Lydia and Dr. Una...

In the name.

Peter and John were at the temple in the middle of the afternoon. They were there to pray. They were there, looking for ways to help, people to tell their stories to.

And their lives intersected with a beggar.

We don’t know his name. We don’t know how he was lame, unable to walk. We only know that he had NEVER walked, never in his life.

As happened in that culture, people who couldn’t work in other ways, begged. Someone carried him to the temple entrance, likely because people on the...

A thought on old prayers.

As you know, every Sunday I share here the prayer that I will be praying in the hospital chapel that day. These prayers reflect the Bible passages that are part of the service for that day. The passages are from the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle of readings.

Often, I use the prayer I wrote three years before, after reviewing it to make sure it still makes sense.

I’m comfortable with “reusing” these written and spoken statements to God. There is precedent from the Psalms,...

A prayer for the fourth Sunday of Easter

God.

We are having a hard time.

Many of us are condemning ourselves.

“I don’t know what to think,” we say.

“I can’t figure out who to trust.”

Many of us are condemning others. Even each other.

“If someone believes that,” we say, “I don’t even know how to talk to them.”

Many of us aren’t even sure how to trust you, because of the things that we’ve been told that you say, because of the things we’ve been taught that it means to follow you.

But God, you do love us.

If ...

Permission for the weekend.

First published April 25, 2009.

Sometimes we think about what we don’t get to do when we choose to follow Jesus. As a result, we sometimes don’t think about the things that we can do. This list, taken from what we are told to do, helps us think about what we get to do.

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Rest. You get to do that.

Pray. You get to do that.

Trust. You get to do that.

Sleep. You get to do that.

Laugh. You get to do that.

Weep. You get to do that.

Ask. You get to do that.

Love. Yo...

And he opened their minds.

This is the continuation of a series that started with “If only I could see Jesus.”

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Jesus starts with their fears, and does everything he can to establish his presence. He says “Peace”. He lets them hear his voice and his words. He shows them his hands. He eats fish.

But then he gets to the work at hand. This meeting isn’t about a friend who came back to life and will eventually have another funeral. These people had already seen that with Lazarus.

Jesus says to the group what...

Una

Rich Dixon is taking us along on his next ride.

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The day after our field trip, the team cycled out of Cincinnati.

I won’t provide a crank-by-crank account of this ride, but there are a couple of stories worth relating.

One of them is about Una.

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Dr. Uname Mulale (pictured with Becky) grew up in a dirt floor village in the African country of Botswana. When we met her, she was a pediatric critical care specialist on the faculty of a New York City teaching hospital.

...

Even when they saw him, they didn’t believe.

Though there had been people reporting that Jesus was alive, his sudden appearance was unsettling.

That’s an understatement.

At least some of them were terrified that a ghost had appeared. I’m guessing that the two were saying, “How did you do that? We didn’t see you on the road.”

There was a hubbub. It wasn’t the peaceful, powerful, quieting moment that we might expect.

In the squealing and fainting and terror, Jesus talks.

Calmly, I’m guessing.

“Why are you so worked up,”...

“If only I could see Jesus.”

That’s what we think in really hard and lonely moments.

If Jesus would appear and sit with us and fix things, we’d be happy.

We wouldn’t be lonely.
We wouldn’t be scared.
We wouldn’t be sick, maybe, or our loved one wouldn’t die.
We’d know the right things to do.
We’d know he isn’t mad at us.

It’s not as simple as that, for most of us. Including the disciples we read about today.

On the evening of the day he rose from the dead, Jesus appeared in the room where the disciples were meeti...

A prayer for the third Sunday of Easter

God.

Peter and John walked on the temple grounds and told a man to get up and walk.

I would love that. To walk along the hospital hall, to step into a room, to say “get up and walk.” Or to say, “Cancer, go away” or “Broken heart, be made whole” or even “Peace be with you.”

We try it, of course. And we wish for it. And we long for it.

But almost all the time, it feels like nothing happens.
It feels like you aren’t fixing things.
Even when we try to have enough faith.
I don’t think tha...