The Keener Way

  This past Lord's Day, my church did a overview study on the book of John. (Lord's Day is my name of choice for Sunday because I generally dislike using a calendar based on Roman mythology, but I especially hate using it for the day Yahweh overcame the grave) The purpose of the sermon was to present a broad overview of John's message. Our creator came to us in the flesh, this is the explanation of eternal life, and Jesus is the promised Messiah. But in the course of communicating this message, the sermon touched on two verses that got me down a completely different mind track. John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”  John 15:12-33 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."  The word Jesus is usin...

  Scrolling Facebook for hours is not mentally healthy by any stretch of the imagination. I try to do it very little. But every once in a while, some worthy tidbit of wisdom comes through my feed. And today, this is what I saw: "Paradoxically, it is friendship that often offers us the real route to the pleasures that Romanticism associates with love. That this sounds surprising is only a reflection of how underdeveloped our day-to-day vision of friendship has become. We associate it with a casual acquaintance we see only once in a while to exchange inconsequential and shallow banter. But real friendship is something altogether more profound and worthy of exultation. It is an arena in which two people can get a sense of each other’s vulnerabilities, appreciate each other’s follies without recrimination, reassure each other as to their value, and greet the sorrows and tragedies of existence with wit and warmth. Culturally and collectively, we have made a momentous mistake...