December 2011 – Page 2 – 300 words a day

Advent 25: Accomplished

The story starts with John, at least for Luke. John the Baptist, that is. Luke, the history writer, starts his narrative not with the coming of Jesus but with the coming of John. And now these relatives, Jesus and John, are well into their lives. In fact, in their early thirties, they are almost done […]

by Jon Swanson

Advent 24: Unexpecting

For the past month, throughout advent, we’ve been looking at the people who were expecting Jesus. In the town of Nain there was a person who wasn’t expecting him at all. But her lack of expectation didn’t stop Jesus from helping. Jesus and his disciples and a crowd were walking toward town. A funeral procession […]

by Jon Swanson

Advent 23: Hungry and rich

Levi had a pretty good job, at least financially. He collected taxes. When you have the Roman army backing you up, you can make a comfortable living collecting taxes. You don’t have many friends, other than tax collectors and other people who have money but are socially unacceptable. But there is, I’m guessing, a sense […]

by Jon Swanson

Advent 22: Friends

“What do we do? How can we help?” When we have friends who are in the middle of pain and suffering, when we have friends who have no way to get to Jesus for healing because of the crowds, what do we do? I mean, we can’t heal anyone ourselves. We can’t take away the […]

by Jon Swanson

Advent 21: Beggars

We look down on beggars. We figure that they are people who couldn’t get control of themselves, who couldn’t find socially acceptable ways to live. We ignore them if we can. We turn our eyes away. We drop a quarter in the bucket at Christmas, hoping that the beggar with the bell will stop ringing […]