relationship – Page 3 – 300 words a day

maybe it will work

“If he listens to you.” Jesus is talking about how to talk to someone about sin, someone in your spiritual family, someone who already has agreed to the house rules and is now bending or breaking them. As we have seen, Jesus says to talk to them. “If he listens to you.” We assume that […]

by Jon Swanson

relationship rewards

“Store up treasure in heaven.” That’s what Jesus tells us. Don’t spend your energy on stuff that gets eaten up by financial declines so that you panic about how much less you are worth this week than last week. Because, of course, if your measure of your worth is in your portfolio and your portfolio […]

by Jon Swanson

urgent isn’t always solemn

I thought about my past two posts. I’ve talked about urgency. And I realized that we often confuse urgent with frantic activity. We confuse urgent with serious faces. We confuse urgent with loud voices and high blood pressure. I realized that can’t always be true. The urgency of becoming like Christ, of following Jesus isn’t […]

by Jon Swanson

God with us

We’re past Christmas. We want to be done with it. But one word lingers because of Christmas. Immanuel. In the middle of Matthew 1:17-25. Matthew quotes Isaiah (a prophet) who uses the name Immanuel and then helpfully explains it: God with us. This quote is an aside to the audience in the middle of a […]