love – Page 3 – 300 words a day

How to deal with obnoxious Christians

If you are not a Christian, that’s easy. Do whatever you want. Throw stuff at them. Tell them to shut up. Give them a cup filled with cool water and say, “I think that Jesus said you were supposed to give this to me.” The guy wanting to burn the Koran? Feel free to remind […]

by Jon Swanson

loving through interruptions.

Jesus is counting down the hours he has with the disciples. He’s facing death. It’s a burden. Though he knows it will turn out okay eventually, he is not looking forward to the process. So he’s covering the important stuff, the ideas that will be on the exam. Judas leaves the room, Jesus takes a deep […]

by Jon Swanson

but it is really really challenging.

We talked about love yesterday, about loving each other. It sounds delightfully lovely. It isn’t. It’s tongue-chewingly, ego-brutalizingly, priority-devastatingly lovely. Walk backwards with me through John 13. Right before Jesus gave his new command, to love one another in the same way he had loved them, Judas left the room, slipping away, arousing no suspicions. […]

by Jon Swanson

do why I do.

We look for punishment. We want to know what the penalty will be if we don’t do something. We want to know where the boundaries are, how far we can go before we get hurt or scolded or destroyed. I understand that feeling. I get a phone call and think, “Oh no, what did I […]

by Jon Swanson

one thing I do

I had a friend who had a dream of following God. For him, following God had a certain location to pursue, a certain amount of meditation to conduct, a certain amount of following God without having to follow anyone else. And then he got married. And then he wondered whether he could follow God while […]