Fifteen years ago, I started a post this way: “I jot notes to myself. Sometimes they become part of lessons or sermons or posts. Sometimes they just accumulate.” And then I shared the list that follows. I have no idea of the contexts. It was a long time ago. But some of them are helpful to revisit.

• If you asked three people who know you well to honestly evaluate how judgmental you are, could you trust what they say or would you know that somehow, for some reason, they are completely wrong?
• Your spirituality scorecard for others is the one that God will use for you.
• The disciples walked right with Jesus and didn’t understand everything that was going on. But they decided there wasn’t any other choice. They followed.
• You can keep thinking about how tired you are and how adrift you feel, or, you can ask God to keep guiding you step by step and then you can give him credit for it.
• If I am a fan of yours, how much am I responsible for your image of yourself?
• If confession is the release of pressure, repentance is walking back up the path of relationship.
• In calling Peter, Jesus didn’t say, “Don’t do that.” He said, “come do this.”
• Listening to top-forty radio, songs worked their way into my mind unnoticed. And I learned every word. I still know “Copacabana.” There is a place for reading one or five psalms every day. Just reading them. Not even meditatively. It can be like God’s greatest hits playing in the background of our lives.
• If you knew that you didn’t have to work hard to make God happy, that he loved you, how would that change how you live?
• Most of us hate grace. It creates in us a sense of being beholden to someone.
• Story leaves tracks on the heart and mind.
• For Jesus, the story, the parable, isn’t designed to sit nicely in sentimentality. It’s told to pierce pomposity.