Tag: John
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John 16: Relatable
How relatable is John’s Jesus? “Fully human and fully divine” is one of those Christian doctrines that is really hard to wrap your head around, and for me it usually devolves into a “What did Jesus know, and when did he know it?” musing that doesn’t have much of a resolution. On the one hand,…
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John 14: Naming names
I’m bad with names. It’s funny, because I was once in a group exercise where we had to remember the name of everyone who came before us. I was second to last, but still got everyone’s name right and even remembered something about most of the people. But have I messed up the name of…
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John 13: Wrong Summit?
So apparently mountaineers encounter this challenge of false summits. They think they’re climbing to the summit of a mountain, and when they break through the clouds to get to the top of where they are climbing, they realize that it’s not really the highest point. The next thing over is taller. (Sometimes, apparently, this can…
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John 12: Doing the Best We Can
What if there are no bad guys? We judge other people’s intentions by their actions, and we judge our actions by our intentions. Stephen M. R. Covey (the son of the “7 habits” guy) taught me that in his book “The Speed of Trust,” which anyone who works on my team is sick of hearing…
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John 11: Jenga
Sometimes I think that my faith is like a game of Jenga. A piece disappears, and I wonder, “Is that one going to make it all come crashing down?” We spend a lot of time covering for God. I don’t think He needs it, and I think we do more harm than good in trying…
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John 10: Prove It
Here’s another way I side with the Pharisees, and a major reason John is my least favorite gospel. Again thanks to Fr. Raymond E. Brown’s commentary, I now realize that John, like the other gospel writers, uses parables. But where the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke start theirs with Jesus saying, “The kingdom of…
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John 9: Understanding the assignment
“They understood the assignment.” That’s been a popular phrase lately. I noticed it in social media posts about celebrities at the Met Gala who showed up in sufficiently avant-garde fashion choices, but I’m sure it long predates that (and will soon be passé). It calls to mind the kid who shows up to class having…
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John 8: 12ff: Uncluttered
Man, clutter is a sneaky thug. Ever since Hurricane Ian missed us, I’ve been antsy to take on the clutter in my life. I’m not sure what the causality is between a hurricane and a Marie Kondo instinct, but timing-wise, the antsiness came after the storm. Maybe the recognition of how close we came to…
Reading Francis 