Nehemiah – Page 2 – 300 words a day

Restoring vision: A non-profit leader’s story

First published February 18. This is one of several posts on Nehemiah this year. It didn’t make it into A Great Work. Nehemiah had a problem in the non-profit he was leading. He’d been called to the international office for a lengthy assignment. During Nehemiah’s tenure, the organization had experienced a resurgence in reputation and […]

by Jon Swanson

“A Great Work” is not a how-to manual. Whew.

Q: Did anything give you chills when writing A Great Work? That’s a really odd question. Except that I have an answer. I was looking at chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah. It’s the one where Ezra starts reading the book of the Law, and the Levites start translating it, and everyone starts weeping, […]

by Jon Swanson

The moment Nehemiah became more than lists.

Q: What captivated you about the book of Nehemiah? The more I slowed down and looked at the text to see what was going on, the more excited I got about everything I had missed by skimming. Probably the first really exciting moment, the one that showed me that other people could get excited about […]

by Jon Swanson

A glimpse of Nehemiah’s story

“You need to understand how I grew up,” Nehemiah said. “You know how you heard stories from your mom about how your great-grandfather left Sweden and left his wife and son for a decade while he went to Wisconsin to make a new life? You remember how she wanted you to have a sense of […]

by Jon Swanson

Nehemiah, feasts, Lent, and a new ebook.

Nehemiah has challenged me many ways. The biggest so far is the beginning of a series of publications that I’m talking about as “A New Routine.” I published the third ebook this weekend, this one as a Lent reader (Kindle) (Nook). Here’s how it relates to Nehemiah. In my Nehemiah email, I wrote about Nehemiah […]