May 2010 – Page 4 – 300 words a day

hitting reset

Sometimes, we need to hit reset. We need to reboot. We need to stop moving just to move. We need to throw off everything that is extra weight. We need to quit doing the things that we know are tripping us up. We need to look around for Jesus, for the voice that called us […]

by Jon Swanson

big and small uses of time

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday) A few weeks ago, a friend mentioned that he told his pastor how wrong he was to clean the church’s toilets. This friend (let’s call him “Bob”) said how much wiser it would be to hire a cleaner who needed the work – and his pastor could spend […]

by Jon Swanson

Divine eavesdropping

“What can Andrew and I do today? The zoo costs too much.” It was the most delightful text I have read in a long time. The thought of Hope and Andrew, brother and sister, trying to figure out what to do for part of an afternoon made me smile. Andrew needed extra credit. Somehow, going […]

by Jon Swanson

Little pieces of love.

We want to do huge magnificent works of passionate loving action. We want to have a significant impact. We want to do something massive that will transform the world. We want to focus all of our energy into something amazing. That’s what we want to do. Instead, we decide that we can’t do anything massive, […]

by Jon Swanson

Urgent and important

(Reprint from January 6, 2009) I heard this today: “Forming people in Christ as a slow work, so it can’t be hurried; it is an urgent work, so it can’t be delayed.” Eugene Peterson said it. He’s the pastor and teacher who “wrote” The Message. It’s a paraphrase, taking the Bible and telling it in […]