300 words a day

While Jesus was warning the disciples about bad teaching, the disciples were worried about their next meal. Sometime after they sailed away from the Pharisees, someone noticed that in the rush to leave, no one brought any food. There was one loaf of bread on the boat. It became a concern for the disciples. They […]

God. A week ago was Easter Sunday. We celebrated, one way or another. And then we had this week. In this community, in this world, people have been born. People have died. We wondered, a bit, whether the world was going to end. We read about the resurrection and the hope for the future and […]

Mark tells stories that don’t always finish. They end, of course. But there’s not always a summary of the lesson, or a sense that people understood. One example is the ending of the three stories we’ve looked at this week. Jesus feeds people because he has compassion. He walks away from people because he has […]

Some people worry that they might annoy Jesus. They hesitate to ask questions. They try to get things exactly right. They point to a moment when Jesus rolled his eyes, climbed in a boat, and sailed away. And they want to be sure he’s not going to do that again. +++ Sometime after Jesus fed […]

Rich Dixon on tearing down and building up. +++ Tearing down someone else’s building doesn’t make your building better. We don’t have to look far these days to find folks demolishing other people’s buildings. Seems to be a human instinct, believing that tearing down someone else makes me somehow bigger or stronger. It doesn’t. In […]