Jesus guides us in many different ways. Sometimes he makes the next step clear as day. Other times, like Peter discovered in John 21:1-14, it feels like we’re left to muddle through, only to find that Jesus was leading through our muddling.

“I am going fishing.”

Peter didn’t know what else to do. The past few weeks had been indescribably intense with the nightmare of Jesus’ crucifixion and the ineffable wonder of his resurrection.

Now he was sitting with Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two others. They were just waiting. It was disorienting. Jesus wasn’t there and he hadn’t told them what to do next.

Peter used to know just what to do: prepare the nets and boat, go fishing, tak…

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There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.

This line is from Jim Croce’s song, “Time In a Bottle,” in which he also writes:

If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.

Jim wrote this in 1972 for his 1 year-old son. Jim knew he didn’t have an eternity with his boy. But he had less than he knew. On September 21, 1973, Jim died in a plane crash. He was 30 years old.

We know time is short. But it’s shorter than we know. We don’t have time to waste.

That’s why Moses wrote Psalm 90. Our lives are “like grass that is renewed in the morning…

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For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope (Romans 8:20).

Are you tired of fighting futility? Evil and disorder relentlessly throw wrenches into the gears of your life. What’s the point?

For God, the point is hope. Which is very strange. Futility and hope are not friends. The former tends to kill the latter. Humans can’t make them both be true at the same time. But God can.

Futility — Turned on Its Head

Futility means things fall apart. It means that what begins fresh and green and thrilling in the morning of life and love and new ventures fades and withers in its evening (Psalm 90:5-6). People die, families disintegrate…

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“Lord, what about this man?” (John 21:21)

Peter asked Jesus this question when he learned that Jesus had ordained very difficult things for Peter’s future. So Peter wanted to know about John. Was Jesus going to give John a better deal?

Jesus responded, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me” (John 21:22)! In other words, How I deal with John is not your concern, Peter. If I deal differently with him, you must trust me. I want you to be faithful to the calling I have given you.

“What is that to you?” This is a question you and I need to be asked every day. Because how God deals with other people is frequently of excessive concern to us.

The …

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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).

Judas simply could not fathom Mary’s ridiculous decision.

During dinner she had just dumped all that rare perfume on Jesus’ feet! Almost a year’s wages now puddled on the dirty floor. Completely wasted!

“Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

How noble. But Judas wasn’t concerned for the poor. “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and being in charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Judas was concerned for Judas.

…

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“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Jesus died for the church. But for Jesus the church is not an institution like Yale University or Apple or The United Way, where the corporation has the brand value and the people who populate it are an anonymous (and largely replaceable) mass, except for a few VIPs. Jesus did not die for an institution. He died for individuals.

The church isn’t even a republic like The United States of America. Jesus didn’t die for a republic. He died for persons.

Jesus died for persons with names, faces, personalities, disabilities, histories, and sins. He did that because he loves each person. Every sin Jesus bore on the cross …

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She hobbled into the synagogue to hear the healing rabbi. Hoping against hope. You see, she “had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself” (Luke 13:10-11).

Eighteen years. How many of her tears had God collected in his bottle (Psalm 56:8)? How many of her prayers in his bowl (Revelation 5:8)?

Eighteen years of suffering. The slow burn of chronic pain had worn on her soul. She had suffered the loss of capacities she once took for granted. She had suffered the indignities of others’ pity and disgust. She had suffered their suspicion that her body was bent under the weight of divine judgment.

Did she know that her affliction wa…

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Ask the Apostle Paul to explain love (agápē) and the first thing out of his mouth: “Love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Forget the rest of his list for a moment; my work is already cut out for me.

I’m prone to impatience. I can’t honestly blame this merely on my temperament or my family of origin. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Impatience is a fruit of selfishness. And selfish is simply an ugly, accurate description of my fallen, depraved nature, which wants all of creation to serve me. Selfishness is the real archenemy of love:

Selfishness seeks its own private happiness at the expense of others. Love seeks its happiness in the happiness of the belove…

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A reflection on John 8:2-11.

“Shame on you, Whore!”

She was married, but not to the man in whose arms she had been laying. Suddenly the door had burst open. Oh no! Instantly she was in the grasp of angry men who dragged her — and her forbidden secret — out into the street.

“Adulteress!” The name pierced her like an arrow. Scandalized, loathing looks bored into her. Her life was undone in a moment, by her own doing. 

And it was about to be crushed. They were talking about stoning! O my God, they’re going to stone me! God, please have mercy!

But God’s verdict on her case clear:

If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with th…

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He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:11-12)

God is such a genius.

This, obviously, is a candidate for understatement of all-time. But everywhere I look in the Bible and see how God engineered redemptive history, that’s what I think. I am in awe of a wisdom and foresight that, quite frankly, from all my observation and experience, does not come from humans.

Here’s an example: Jesus’ ethnicity. Jesus was a Hebrew Semite. That means Nordic, European and Slavic peoples can’t lay claim on him as one of them. African peoples can’t claim him, East Asian …

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