Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 6

Cruising Along?

Rich Dixon and Jesus go on rides together.

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Jesus and I had another handcycling conversation this week.

The explanation requires a bit of bike geek talk. My spiffy new handcycle uses a unique e-assist system. On most e-bikes you just pedal, and the motor does the work. My bike is “torque sensitive,” which means the motor helps only in proportion to how hard I work. Pedal easy – not much assist. Pedal harder in a harder gear – more assist.

I chose this bike specifically because ...

What to do with more stuff.

Then Jesus tells a story.

A farmer has a great year. So much so that he is out of storage. He has no place to put it all. He has to decide: “what do I do with all this grain?”

It’s a valid question, one that many of us face. We get a bonus, we get a raise. We get zucchini, we get tomatoes. We get a promotion, we get a bill paid off. We get more likes on Facebook, more ___ and we say, “What should I do with my stuff?”

The man makes what seems like a wise business decision. He can tear...

More.

One place I worked had a copy machine that made copies. It didn’t sort. It didn’t duplex. It made copies. And we made a lot of copies. We put together books for people taking classes. We spent a lot of time making copies and putting the books together.

One day we got a new copier.

It would duplex, letting us put pages front and back. It would collate, putting the books together. It would save us a lot of time. I watched it work and I said, almost right away, “If only it would drill the ...

A prayer for the eighteenth Sunday of ordinary time.

God-

I think that we don’t know where you are working. And how.
Because you don’t do what we would like how we would like it done,

We think that you aren’t working at all. That you are ignoring us. And even that you don’t care.

You talk to the people of the tribe of Ephraim with such compassion,

“It was I who taught you to walk. It was I who healed you.”

But we don’t see you guiding us. Drawing people together, calling people toward you.

We don’t see that you have given us mi...

Let love be genuine

Paul (not me) said, “Let love be genuine” in Romans 12:9.

That’s in the ESV translation. It’s close to what I first heard as a young person.

My favorite Bible translation* is the New Living Translation (NLT). Here is how the people who worked on that translation translated that same verse: “Don’t pretend to love others. Really love them.”

How do we really love people?

The answer lies in reading the rest of verse 9 and all of verse ten…

“Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what...

Cranking and Honest Talking

Rich Dixon is back.

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I’m going to do something a bit different and respond to one of Jon’s posts.

It’s the story of Martha and Mary. More accurately, the story of Martha getting upset because she didn’t think Mary was doing her share. And she wanted Jesus to notice.

I think I’ve told you before that I spend a lot of time talking to Jesus while I crank my handcycle. For some reason, this post sparked quite a conversation.

I’m certainly not the guy who sits around trying to l...

Bread, please.

Buried in the middle of the prayer is a simple daily request. “Give us this day our daily bread.”

It doesn’t feel like a demand. I hear it as a request, actually. There is a poignancy to it.

At a time when day laborers depended on receiving their wages daily so they could buy that day’s bread, this is a request for basic human needs. For a people whose ancestors wandered for decades in a wilderness eating bread delivered daily, this was a contemporary expression of an ancient reality. ...

A prayer for the seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

God

We don’t understand.

At any given moment around this hospital those words describe someone’s heart.

We don’t understand why the treatment isn’t working. Or why it is working.

We don’t understand why they are still together after 68 years. Or why this relationship isn’t working.

We don’t understand why so many things are happening to us right now.

We don’t understand what the next step is, what you are trying to do here, why “you took” their child, his joy, her pain.

W...

On ongoing conversations with God.

So Martha finally erupted.

And Jesus talked to her.

Not in the way she wanted. Jesus did not tell Mary to get up and help. He simply told Martha that she needed to pay attention, to not get distracted about the WHY of the work.

On the other hand, Jesus didn’t tell Martha to stop working. After all, the whole group needed to eat.

What we don’t know, but perhaps could guess, is that Martha may have had a servant who was helping. What we don’t know, but perhaps could guess, is that a...

A Persistent Thought

Rich Dixon has us thinking about implications.

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Does an idea ever rattle around in your brain, and you just can’t stop thinking about it?

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about Dick Foth speaking to the Freedom Tour community. I keep hearing him say, in his calm, grandfatherly voice, “Everything that happens today has eternal consequences.”

It’s one of those things you know if you follow Jesus, but something about hearing it in that context made it especially resonant.

Rela...