The stories of Jesus that he told on the road through Samaria, between Galilee and Jerusalem, take on a distinctly practical tone. Jesus and his disciples have left the synagogues and familiarity of Galilee and are not yet at their ultimate destination of the temple in Jerusalem. They are in unfamiliar and hostile territory, but Jesus doesn’t rush through Samaria with a sense of urgency. If anything, he slows down. Takes his time. He begins to lay out a vision of the kingdom

In Mark 2, Jesus ends up in debate with some religious leaders because his disciples, while walking through a wheat field on the Sabbath, broke off some of the heads of grain to eat. A seemingly simple action to satiate hunger pangs while out and about. But for the Pharisees that were watching, this was not something to be tolerated or pardoned. The disciples of Jesus had violated the law by harvesting on the Sabbath. God had commanded rest and yet here’s the followers of Jes

For over 500 years the Roman Empire utilized crucifixion as a means of punishment for those that they deemed a threat to their power and their sense of order. Thousands and thousands of people were executed on crosses all over the known world until the practice was outlawed in 337 CE. So many crucifixions. So many crosses. Yet, after 1700 years of history moving forward there is only one cross we still talk about. There is only one cross that has come to represent so much to