In church this Sunday we will consider Mark 5:21–43, a complex pattern of two interwoven stories. Among the many lessons we could glean from this is the importance of simply seeing the suffering and the needs of those around us.

In the middle of that passage, we find the story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. It says,

“She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse” (Mark 5:26, CEB)

A lot of us can probably relate to…

Let me be clear: I am no agriculture expert. Far from it. Few of us are these days. According to Market Insider, only about 1.3 percent of the American population now works on a farm, compared with 70 percent in 1840.

But I grew up surrounded by hardworking farmers in West Tennessee. Both sets of my grandparents grew up on farms and continued to cultivate their own food well into old age. That gives me no expertise, but it gives me an appreciation for the uncertainties and hardships and the necessity of balancing hard work and patience.

It also helps…

If you don’t remember “Home Improvement,” you probably don’t remember the 1990s. Tim Allen starred as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, who lived for bigger, better, more powerful tools because, well, tools!

Perhaps you are a Tim Taylor clone, but most of us fit the mold I learned from a former student who worked at a hardware store. He told me, “People don’t buy drills. They buy holes.” In other words, customers don’t care so much about features. They care about benefits — what the tool would do for them.

Effective communication has always utilized tools of one sort or another.

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No matter how dedicated I am to an employer, there is no getting around this truth: when you own a business, you simply take care of it better than if someone else owns it.

The difference lies in how you think about a relationship. Do you identify with the business? Have you invested in it? The more the answer to these two is “yes,” the more sense of ownership you have — which has little to do with legal ownership or money.

We don’t own our children, after all, but most parents are highly “invested in” them.

Jesus alludes to…

You don’t hear people talking about sin much these days except in jest. Las Vegas proudly claims the nickname “Sin City,” but generally the word has fallen out of fashion. Churches that talk about it a lot often get viewed as backward, and to fair, they often have an unhealthy focus on the nature of sin. Not that sin could be healthy, but rather they get all fired up about someone else’s sin. That’s always a safe subject.

After all, while we’re eating popcorn watching the latest “reality” show or the even stranger antics of real-life politicians and celebrities, we…

Thomas has gotten a bad rap. “Doubting Thomas” we call him and anyone who wants proof. But look closely at John 20:19–31. Jesus didn’t scold Thomas for needing proof. He just said those who didn’t need such proof were happy.

Don’t we fall into the Thomas camp most of the time? Don’t we want some kind of proof? The real question isn’t whether we need proof. It’s whether proof will make any difference. I can’t help but wonder what would have been different had Thomas been there the first time. We might never have known his thinking process. Still, just…