by jakeowensby | Apr 9, 2021 | grace, John 20:19-31
Forgiveness is what love looks like when you don’t feel like it. That’s a paraphrase of something Wendell Berry once said. To put that a different way, forgiveness is the kind of love that we give imperfect things. Things that aren’t always so likable. And since...
by jakeowensby | Apr 17, 2020 | John 20:19-31
Stay-home fatigue is a thing. Without intending to do so, most of us have discovered over the past weeks that much of our former lives ran on automatic pilot. Routines like the work day and the school week, grocery shopping and hitting the gym structured our days,...
by jakeowensby | Apr 26, 2019 | John 20:19-31
“You have to take the bad with the good.” That’s how my mom usually responded to my kvetching about my circumstances. When I was disappointed, flabbergasted, outraged, or frustrated, those words never failed to infuriate me. What I heard her saying was, “Calm down.”...
by jakeowensby | Apr 6, 2018 | 2 Easter B, John 20:19-31
Thomas died somewhere along the southwest coast of India. According to an ancient text called Acts of Thomas, King Misdeus, a local ruler, blew his stack when Thomas converted his Queen, his son, and his sister-in-law to the Way of Jesus. In response, Misdeus ordered...
by jakeowensby | Apr 22, 2017 | Easter 2 A, John 20:19-31, Uncategorized
For my birthday my wife Joy surprised me with a framed picture of my twenty-year-old mother Trudy. Someone had taken the photo aboard the ship that brought her to America. Doing some genealogical work while we were visiting Salt Lake City, Joy had come across that...
by jakeowensby | Apr 1, 2016 | 2 Easter C, John 20:19-31, Reconciliation
My father died in high summer. The sun had already baked the red Georgia clay into stretches of hard crust across much of the landscape. Tiny black gnats floated drunkenly around eyes and lips and ears. Slow. Persistent. Annoyingly elusive. The Baptist graveside...
