John 15

The Christian faith often gives friendship short shrift.

Fruitful ministry becomes sustainable when it is shared, person to person and generation to generation.

In biblical Greek, the word we translate as “abide” is active rather than passive.

Some people can tell where wine or coffee is from just by tasting it.

What would the insurance-mandated boundary trainings that I’ve attended make of Jesus’ intimacy with his disciples?

The vine branch doesn’t put “make grapes” on its to-do list. It just makes them.

Sometimes it seems that the vine grower has prepared the vineyard and gone off to a remote island where things are warmer and nicer.

Sometimes the life of abundant love is lonely.

We are divided. We do not abide each other well.

In offering another refugee his citizenship, Chuong Nguyen is not submitting a transactional sort of sacrifice. He is giving a gift of selfless love.

Did you ever make a Möbius strip in grade school or high school? You may have seen one in the woodcuts of M.C. Escher. They are made by taking a strip of paper, say, eight inches long and an inch wide. You hold the two ends, give one a half-twist, then tape the two ends together to form a loop.

An ancient definition of God says that God is an intelligible circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

When we were baptized, we were given a new name: Branch.

The more I read the beginning of John 15, the more I come to believe that it is about the Lord’s Supper.

I have found myself dreading Facebook lately. With the general election beginning to churn, the competing posts are out: “Evidence of Obama’s socialist conspiracy!” “Republicans plan to inspect every woman’s womb!” Some are rather scary while others I quietly cheer; still others simply draw me into grief over how little Jesus seems apparent in any of it.

My desire to clean the kitchen was an exercise of love. Then my mom asked me to do what I was already planning to do—and my gift turned into affliction.

DeMarco experienced a lot of life before he came to care for his mother, and he will likely experience more when his time as caregiver ends. Yet I think of John 15:13.