a coffee mug that says, conversations on a table. The image is captioned with Conversations with Jesus

For a while I have been wrestling with what to write about. I have been wondering if I should just focus on keeping up with the brief daily devotionals or perhaps offering commentary on the news of the day from a pastor’s perspective. As I wandered around the internet, there’s a lot of that going on already. Sure, my “unique” voice would be different, but in so many ways, it feels like I would just be adding to the noise.

To be clear, I have loads of thoughts and opinions obout all the things that are happening in the world today. Whether it’s religion, politics, sports, or pop culture. I have ALL the opinions. If you would like those, then I’d be happy to get a cup of coffee and talk about any and all the things that are on your mind and that you would like my thoughts on.

The idea of adding more noise to the signal was unappealing. There are also people who are so much smarter and so much more interesting than me doing most of that already.

What can I write about that interests me? 
Last year I realized that my “why”, the core of what I wanted to be about was, “To be a person faithfully present.”

I think this is the thing that has intrigued me about Jesus. There’s so much that can be said about him on so many levels, but the thing that stands out to me is his faithful presence. In the Gospels we see him interact with all kinds of people from the lowly to the rich and powerful and everyone in between. Jesus engages with his disciples and with those who oppose him.

In every engagement he is fully and faithfully present to the person and people with whom he is talking with.

In this cultural moment when there are many people who are claiming to speak for Jesus I thought it might be helpful to work through his myriad of conversations and see what we might learn from him. How does Jesus deal with those with whom he disagrees? How does he respond to those who are on the fringes of society? Does he practice mercy? Does engage in judgment? Does Jesus extend grace or truth or both? There are so many more questions that we can explore.

I invite you to hang out with me in the Gospels for a while and explore the conversations of Jesus. I will begin in the Gospel of John. This is because the John’s Gospel really focuses on people and conversations. We get some of the longer recorded conversations of Jesus in this Gospel. I will be going slow. There may be multiple posts on one conversation. There might be only one.

I hope that you will comment and respond and offer your questions and insights. This will be so much more fun if you do.

My hope is to publish at least twice per week. It might be more (if I’m feeling inspired). But, the discipline that I am going to commit to is twice per week. I am going to shoot for publishing every Tuesday and Thursday. This should provide me time to practice a bit of lectio diving over each passage and also study and research some too.

Thanks for bearing with me on this little preface.