Talk about a swing in emotions. I have been working on two separate messages this week, one for Good Friday and another one for Easter Sunday. One was a message of despair, and the other was a message of hope. One a message of defeat and the other a message of victory. One a message…
Chapter 9
I was still trying to get my head around Jesus’ story of his wilderness encounter with the one he called the schemer. Really? What had I gotten myself involved in? Midnight fishing on Galilee was sounding better all the time. “Peter? Peter?” Jesus’s voice broke through my fog, “Come on, we have a date at…
Chapter 10
Jairus and others crowded around the man, asking him if he was all right and helping him to his feet. And then Jesus told us it was time to go. Time to go? But what had happened? I knew what had happened; I was there, but I really didn’t have a clue as to what…
Chapter 11
“Simon, Simon wake up!” “Leave me alone, the sun’s not even up.” “Simon, please, something’s wrong with Mom, she’s sick, she’s burning up and I don’t know what to do.” There weren’t many days I woke up in the morning. Usually that was when I was getting to bed after fishing all night and this…
Chapter 12
I could hardly believe my eyes; Esther’s mother was helping her in the kitchen and laughing as they listened to Jesus telling a story. Jesus? What was Jesus doing here? And he wasn’t alone. Andrew, James and John were there along with a couple of guys I didn’t know. “Simon, your friends arrived right after…
Chapter 13
And that was how we spent the rest of the day. Jesus sitting on the bench out front, my bench, the one I could see the water from, and what seemed like a never-ending line of sick people. There were headaches and rashes, fevers and coughs. And it was always the same but different. Jesus…
Chapter 14
And life went on. We didn‘t spend every day with Jesus, but we were spending more and more time with him. There were still nights I spent fishing with Andrew, but for the most part Eli carried the load there. A few days after Marion’s healing Jesus showed up our home. Several of the guys…
Chapter 15
The net was ready to split with the sheer volume of our catch. The water churned with the efforts of hundreds of fish struggling for freedom; the water shimmered as the sun reflected on the scales the fish had lost in their frantic efforts. I had never seen a catch this big and even as…
I Do Not Like them. . .
I feel like the guy in Green Eggs and Ham. Not Sam-I-Am, the other guy. For years I have told myself and others that I didn’t like Eggs Benedict because I didn’t like hollandaise sauce. Last month I tried some of Angela’s hollandaise sauce on the tip of my finger and discovered that I do…
Chapter 16
Our group was growing, there were always people coming and going but there was a core of us who always seemed to be there; myself and Andrew, John and James, Nathaniel and Philip and the Zealot. That changed one afternoon as we were returning from the shores of Galilee where Jesus had been teaching. As…