Our Life With Jesus

"Prayer is acknowledging that we are always in the presence of God." -- Desmond Tutu "Prayer is the language of Christian community." --Henri Nouwen "Prayer is yearning, beseeching, beholding." --  Julian of Norwich "Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.  It presupposes faith and love.  Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." --Simone Weil

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent time together in the temple, they broke bread at home  and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." --Acts 2:42-47  

Jesus said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"-- John 21:17 The story of Easter continues in John Chapter 21, where seven of the disciples have returned to Galilee and, not knowing what to do with themselves, go back to fishing (life as they had known it befroe becoming disciples).  In spite of Jesus' rising, their failure on Maunday Thursday and Good Friday continues to weigh heavy upon them.  After they experience a fruitless night of fishing, the risen Christ calls to them from the seashore. Jesus prepares breakfast for his beloved disciples on a charcoal fire.  We might be reminded that when Peter denied Jesus three times in the high priest's courtyard, it was as he was warming himself  by a charcoal fire. And the large catch of fish reminds us of Luke Chapter 5, the calling of the first disciples, where Jesus led the empty disciples into the deep water ffor th gratest catch they have ever had.  John is suggsting that past and...

"Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."  --John 13:1 Life with Jesus is life immersed in the gracious love of God-- embracing, drenching, challenging, shocking, strong yet tender, moment-by-moment, decision-by-decision, transforming agape love-- given without demanding anything in return.    This love destabilizes his disciples in one way while rooting them deeply in an alternative way of living. When Jesus gathers his disciples for the Passover, he knows that "his  hour has come;" that the time he has been preparing them for is here.  And how do the twelve arrive?  Hopelessly wrongheaded, it would seem, their minds full of assumptions about their own privilege in God's emerging kingdom, bickering with each other over which positions each will hold in the new administration, blissfully deaf to the passion of his sharing.  Later in the evening, as Jesus pours out heart and soul to the Father in prayer, the ones who ...