There are a lot of evaluations in today’s readings, of Jesse’s sons, of the man born blind and of Jesus himself. We do a lot of evaluating, and we need to recognize our limitations.

The NFL draft is coming up in a few weeks and a key part of the preparation is the what they call the “NFL Combine.” They invited 319 players to spend four days getting measured for height, weight, wingspan, and so forth. They were tested physically for speed, strength and athletic ability and skills. They were tested for intelligence and psychologically and they were interviewed.

That is just a piece of the evaluation process. These are multi-million-dollar contracts in an ultra-competitive league. Scouts watch hours of video, attend live games, do background checks, interview their college coaches, many have further workouts. It’s exhaustive and done by professionals; people who eat, sleep and breathe football.

Read More

Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ (John 4:10)

Living water. What does Jesus mean by “living water?” The phrase was commonly used to refer to running water, like a stream or river, as opposed to a pond or lake. That is what this woman thinks he is talking about at first. That would be in line with our Old Testament passage this morning from Exodus. The water God loosed from the rock in the wilderness was running/living water, clear and good to drink.

Read More

I took a drama class in high school where we learned about writing, set design and eventually production. We got to pick a short play to do, just for us, no audience. There were only about 10 or 12 of us in the class so everyone had a part except Mel Coffee, who was the director.

I remember almost nothing about that little play. I can’t tell you what it was about, my character’s name or anything else except there was one scene – one line, really – where Mel really pushed me. Ironically, the line was, “What do you want from me?” I tried it. Mel said no, say it like this, “What do you WANT from me?” So I said it just like he said it. He said no, say it like, “What do you WANT from me?” I apologize because I’m probably still not saying it right, except we went back and forth like that for a long time until I eventually got exasperated with Mel and I screamed at him, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” And he said, “That’s it!”

Read More