John 11:1-45 I was once a guest at a family’s dinner table, when they were talking about people they knew. And when the name of one particular person came up, the tone became sharply negative, critical. The matriarch of the family looked up with surprise and a little bit of confusion. Apparently, she had not received the memo: this person is on our bad list now. She looked around and said, “Oh, we don’t like them anymore?” She shrugged. “Okay.” And that was it. The unwritten rule in the household was everyone had to think alike, because disagreeing led to conflict. And “our family,” they would say, doesn’t have conflict. To be fair, all families desire agreement, want harmony in the home. Even if we are willing to harbor some disagreement, we pick our battles carefully. We don’t want conflict for the sake of conflict; if we are going […]
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Freedom
Genesis 2:4-7,15-18,21-25, 3:1-8 Several years ago, I saw a film about Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. He was a fascinating person, a bit of an enigma. What was it about Jobs that made him so successful? He was not especially kind or likeable. He was not a gifted programmer, like his partner Wozniak. He was not a businessman. What was he? What was his genius? He was a creator. There is one scene in the movie where he obsesses about the dimensions of his new computer, the Next. It was a black cube, but apparently the dimensions had to be off just a fraction of an inch for the human eye to perceive it as a cube. The production staff got it wrong, and Steve was not satisfied with the results. He actually had a million other problems more urgent than this, but this was the one he obsessed […]
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