Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 51

Accepting responsibility for you.

More notes from a chapel message from the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. For the first part, see “People are real.”

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Here’s the next principle that Paul offers: Knowledge puffs up while love builds up.

Paul’s not talking about a debate between truth and love.

He’s saying that sometimes we think we know more than we know. And in those moments, we can be obnoxious about how we express what we think we know.

There are lots of church leaders who have crashed in recent years. ...

Witnesses

From Rich Dixon:

We’ve accumulated thousands of cycling pictures over the years.

None has been more memorable than this one. It was taken on the final day of the 1500-mile ride on the outskirts of New Orleans. The white car in the distance marks the finish line of our epic journey.

You can imagine my emotions in the final yards of completing a project we once thought impossible, and it would be easy to misinterpret this photo. You’d be excused if you saw Rich, by himself, celebrating...

People are real.

Some notes from a chapel message from the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany.

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In a letter we know as 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to be addressing several issues, topics, and questions that he’s heard that they were struggling with. As he addresses each of the questions, he does it by coming back to their common identity as people belonging to Christ, and then pointing out the implications for the behaviors of the people involved. Some of the issues matter to us, some of them may not as...

Reminding myself to smile.

“Write the post for tonight, smiling while I do.”

That’s the instruction I wrote to myself while writing my project list one day last week. I realized that I needed to remind myself to smile.

I’m not sure whether it worked. I’m not sure I wrote any smiley posts last week. The reminder, however, was valid.

I often forget to smile.

As I worry about lists, as I fret about keeping up, about doing enough, about getting things right, I forget to smile. As I sit with people preparing for...

A prayer for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany.

God.

For millennia, people have gathered to sing to you together, to speak to you together. And to talk about your great works, your majestic works, your grace and compassion and truth and justice.

We love the idea.

We struggle with the reality.

Gathering is hard these days.

Thinking about your great works when we are dying is hard. Thinking about your grace and compassion is hard when we’ve heard them proclaimed by people who don’t show them. Thinking about your truth and just...

Present in healing

I am not an indiscriminate hugger. I can’t say whether or not Jesus was. I do know, at least from the first stories that Mark tells us, that Jesus was a toucher.  

There are several interactions recorded. John baptizes him, he invites Peter Andrew, James, and John to follow him. He teaches, and then heals a man by scolding the evil spirit. He grabs Peter’s mother-in-law’s hand, he heals a bunch of people, he heals a man with a skin disease. We don’t know how he healed the bunch of people. ...

Getting ready for Lent. If you want to.

In 2011, I wrote a post called 33 things to give up for Lent. A bunch of people read it. Eventually, I wrote a devotional for the season of Lent and called it Lent for Non-Lent People: 33 Things to Give up for Lent and Other Readings. During the last decade, a few thousand people have bought this book.

The goal has never been to convert people to Lent people. And it wasn’t intended as a research project on the history of Lent. Instead, it grew out of writings here at 300wordsaday and else...

Success

Rich Dixon on keeping track

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I don’t think Jesus thinks much about numbers.

“How do you define success?”

We asked that question as we planned, but we were tackling something bigger than we could even imagine. We avoided stating a clear definition of success partly because we couldn’t think big enough.

Our vision of what was possible grew as the ride progressed. As we approached the finish line, I felt we’d been successful, while still wondering exactly what “success” meant. ...

Having an authority.

A couple years ago, I started writing through Mark. At least that’s what I said I was going to do. When I look back, there are 39 posts in the series, which wandered and then eventually faded away in May.

There was a new grandson that year (Happy Birthday today, Ben), and a big research project, and other activities I don’t remember at the moment, that may not be worth recalling.

In the meantime, Mark is still a gospel, in the Bible, still telling a story about Jesus to those who are in...

On a week of positivity.

I am not a positive person.

At least I don’t think of myself that way. I’m more pragmatic. Things happen. We respond. And always looking on the bright side when you are seeing people in hard times can be really annoying.

So having to spend a week being positive, more accurately, testing positive, feels counter character.

Spending the week at home, sick but not devastated, mental fog slowly lifting, energy but not lots of margin, caring for each other, capable of writing but not of su...