two brothers and 2 brothers

two brothers

(1) Never more have I wanted to read the book of Acts than I did this past Friday. I started reading Luke's Gospel account on Thursday, making this the most compacted reading of the doctor's Gospel that I've ever done.

And because he smelled like the book of Acts, and smacked of Acts, and was just gagging to be continued by the book of The Acts of the Holy Spirit, I had to take a few moments to talk myself into the discipline needed to FIRST read the Gospel according to the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And because I've learned that Luke-Acts is [written/intended] as one work, I save the trouble of applauding my own cleverness at seeing the similarities. I guess I could here note my gratitude that I am familiar enough with Acts to identify something that sounds like it.

But anyhow... I liked seeing it. As if The Acts of the Holy Spirit isn't (aren't!) exciting enough, a cliffhanger tantalising my spiritual/mental taste buds before I even got there was almost too much. Almost too much. I literally grunted an "AUGH!" aloud when I read the last word in the Lukan Gospel and knew I couldn't skip a book to have the cliffhanger gratified.

(2) And so I did. I did read John's Gospel and it was more delicious than I remembered. The only thing that would make it better would be if Jesus were actually alive, and so was God's Word, and the Holy Spirit spoke to me through it in Guelph in 2014, a juncture slightly different than first-century Israel. That would be cool.

*cough*

In the first chapter I read this: 

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

  "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked.

And I paused to try to slip into the first readers' shoes. My first substitution was based on the look-down-on-itude of the place. "Detroit! Can anything good come from there?" Another sub could be made for a relatively small or obscure town, on a global scale. "Fergus! Can anything good come from there?" 

It helped. How skeptical and scofferly I would be--at least initially--if I was told someone important hailed from Ajax. Hahaha. A king born in Red Deer, Alberta?? Yeah, OK.

2 brothers

On Saturday, because of the flukiest fluke of all time, I ran into the boys. Yes, J and B were there with their dad, looking the same, looking happy, looking cute, looking (GARGANTUOUSLY, MONSTROUSLY) bigger, looking like I remember, and looking like I've missed so much.

I'm not sure what I felt at the time and I'm not fully sure what I feel now. I was aware that I missed them and aware that it was painful to be physically a few feet away but relationally as far as I've ever been. They were comfortable enough but it's not the same. It was not the same and that is hard. I think I want to bundle them up and love them until everything is good. I don't have a neat wrap-up for this post.

Maybe I'll put here what I meant to add to the previous post. I meant to tell the Lord that I was just joking about the holy crowbar. He doesn't get my sarcasm.