Do good, be punished

After John 11 

He had turned water

into wine, he had fed

5,000, he had calmed

storms, he had healed

lepers. He had saved

children, and now he

raised a man from

the dead. This was

too much; they feared

this miracle worker,

this rabble rouser;

they feared he would

become so strong that

he would attract the eyes

of the overlords, that

this man threatened 

everything they were,

everything they had.

The decision: he must

die for the good of all.

Better one man die

than the whole nation

perish.

 

Photograph by Ashkan Forouzani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

To Translate the Ocean – SDG Morgan at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Grief and lament in Texas: Weeping with hope – Melissa Bondurant at CDM Women’s Ministry.

 

Don’t overlook Sunday – Stephen Kneale at Building Jerusalem.

 

A Matter of Politics? – Jean Danielou at The Imaginative Conservative.

Signs and wonders

After Acts 5:12-16

What is rare becomes

commonplace, 

signs and wonders

done among the people,

the people joined

together in one place.

It is a spectacle,

inspiring amazement

and fear and awe;

reverence and reticence;

multitudes join and

multitudes hold back, 

casting nervous eyes

at the rulers and elites

watching for a whiff

of disloyalty and

insurrection.

But multitudes come,

adding to the rising

of belief, the word

of signs and wonders

spreading outward.

People hear and people

carry the sick and ill

and diseased and lay 

them on beds and mats,

hoping that even

the shadow of the healers

would fall on them,

touch them, heal them.

And they are healed,

multiplying the evidence

of signs and wonders.

Photograph by Sorasak via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Miracles Happen

It took three months before I could write about this.

In March, I received the kind of phone call that chills the heart. My brother called -- his middle son had been in a terrible car accident. He asked me to call our then-85-year-old mother and my older brother in Louisiana. My nephew and the friend riding with him were at the hospital. It was a one-car accident; it was a stormy Saturday night and, coming to a stop sign, my nephew braked -- and the car hydroplaned, hit a curb and went airborne, finally hitting a tree.

That, and not much else, was what was known at the time. The police called my brother, who rushed to the scene and then the hospital. Both boys had been trapped in the car, and the top of the car had to be cut off to get to them. They spent a few days in the hospital; my nephew had a broken arm that needed physical therapy. But they were generally okay. (I saw a video of the car, and nearly got sick. How could anyone be okay coming out of that?)

A couple of weeks after the accident, my brother was called by a woman who had actually been the first to arrive at the scene. And she was there because my nephew's evasive action after the car hydroplaned likely prevented a head-on collision with her car. Police were called almost immediately, but no one showed up for almost 30 minutes. (This explained some of the time discrepancies; in the mad rush to the scene, my brother didn't ask why it took the police so long to call -- the accident was five minutes from my brother's house.)

The lady who called said this: for some time, she had been learning how to pray out loud. She was uncomfortable doing that, until this accident. Another lady stopped and checked the boys' pulses and couldn't find any. The first lady climbed into the back seat of my nephew's car, put one hand on each boy, and prayed out loud until the emergency medical people arrived. The paramedics took one look and said both boys had to have massive internal injuries. But they didn't.

Miracles don't happen today, right?