Month: May 2020

Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor? John 12:5 Over the years, we’ve spent countless hours on Rook, our family card game. Though we all know how to play, we don’t all hold our cards the same. Some of us hold our cards counting from left to…
Read more

Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. John 12:3 My visit to inpatient chemical dependency treatment (2014) was not my first attempt at recovery. I’d completed out-patient treatment twice prior to that. Both times, I applied the…
Read more

It is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish. John 11:51 In my recovery, I’ve felt tremendous guilt over the things I’ve done to hurt myself and others. I’ve found peace in knowing I’m forgiven by God and in working at living differently every…
Read more

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. John 11:48 At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, I was dubious regarding the need for radical change. As the numbers grew exponentially in Italy and New York…
Read more

Many . . . believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. John 11:45-46 In Sunday School, as a child, I was told that we needed to keep our eyes closed during the prayer. When I discovered that a classmate wasn’t following the rules, I…
Read more

The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” John 11:44 A few months ago, I collected all our outdated video tapes and sent them into one of those services that digitizes…
Read more

Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. John 11:39 (KJV) I grew up hearing the stories of those who followed God to be missionaries in far-off, exotic places. As a child, it sounded exciting, but as I got…
Read more

Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” John 11:35-37 A while back, we watched a movie in which the antagonist angrily declared that God couldn’t be all-powerful and…
Read more

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. John 11:25-26 We all have a way in which we expect the world to work. When life doesn’t go the way we want, we become frustrated,…
Read more

If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him. John 11:9-10 When I was a kid, I was introduced to a movie franchise – still popular 40 years later –…
Read more