Posts from May 2025
One More Year
There is a vineyard and the man who owns it. There is a fig tree and the gardener who tends to it. The fig tree was planted three years ago and has yet to bear any fruit at all. The owner wants it gone. Three years is plenty to expect some results. Why should it waste the soil? Why not plant something else in its place, something with the potential to produce fruit? The vineyard owner has been patient enough.…
Bothering to Notice
Keep your lamps lit, Jesus says in Luke 12. Be like servants in the house whose boss is set to return tonight. Maybe the boss will return in the evening. Or maybe it will be the middle of the night. Or maybe it will be nearly sunrise. Whatever the case may be, the servants’ patient watchfulness will be rewarded when he finally comes home. He’ll be so happy with them that he sits them down at the table and serves…
It All Yields
A funeral. A widow. A mom with no son now. This is the scene in the town of Nain when Jesus enters (Luke 7:11-17). As soon as Jesus shows up, Luke immediately tells us everything that is disheartening about this mourning mom’s situation. She’s already buried her husband. Now she’s burying her only son. In this ancient context, a woman was typically reliant on the man in her life for economic stability. In the absence of her husband, she would…
To Fall into His Gravity
A new Exodus! God’s people have been freed from sin and death. We have trekked our baptismal path through Jesus’ death and resurrection and have arrived at newness of life, no longer enslaved to sin (Romans 6:1-14). But Paul isn’t finished yet, and this discussion of freedom from our slavery to sin is about to take a strange turn. To belong to Christ is to be freed from the enslaving gravity of sin. However, Paul still describes our new, baptized…