"If you believe, you will get anything you ask for in prayer." - Jesus

Jesus and his disciples went to Jerusalem on Monday morning after spending the night in Bethany. He was hungry and saw a fig tree on the side of the road. As he approached the tree, he noticed that though it had leaves, it had no fruit. Something about tree with no fruit reminded him about what he saw in the temple on Sunday and what he is going to do in the temple later that day.

So he denounced the tree. "You will never have fruit again", and the tree immediately dried up.

The next day, Tuesday, the disciples see what has happened to the tree and they are all amazed. Just 24 hours before the tree had been green and healthy. Now it is barren and dry.

"How did the fig tree dry up so quickly?", they asked.

Jesus gives them this answer, "I tell you the truth. If you have faith and do not doubt, you will be able to do what I did to this tree and even more. You will be able to say to this mountain, 'Go fall into the sea.' And if you have faith, it will happen. If you believe, you will get anything you ask for in prayer."


- Text: Matthew 21: 18-21
- Music: "December", from Autumn Ends (EP)

The Gospel of the Cheeseburger

I am writing this blog post in Firefox, trying out the plug in ScribeFire. It's a word-processing like extension that let's you write and post to any blog from within Firefox, using their editor. I am not sure it has any advantage over the Blogger editor ... but I will let you know what I think as I get to know this software better.

The Gospel of The Cheeseburger

I slowed down, okay ... stopped ... posting to this blog because I was beginning to feel that any observation I might make about this journey would be something that someone else had already noticed. Have you ever had a similar feeling?

But then I went to Mass this morning at a different church. I had been to this church before, but today my receptors were tuned differently and I became really aware of both how different and how identical elements of the mass were. The hymns were different, that is for certain. And the space had a different feel (my church is old and very decorated, this church was new and very stark).

But with the readings I started to feel something familiar. Different yet familiar.

And during the homily I realized that this pastor was speaking to us from his interpretation of what the readings were saying. Some of his ideas were very different than what I have become accustomed to hearing, but his words also rang with some recognizable elements of truth.

From there I thought about McDonalds. One of the early concepts of the chain was that each store should be like all of the other stores, so that customers would be comfortable entering and would know what to expect regardless of what store they visited. In fact, I believe I once read that Ray Kroc associated that feeling as being "like going to church".

And then I thought about all of the hamburger chains in the world. I mean, there are the Burger Kings, the Wendy's, the Carl's, the A&Ws ... and those are just the ones down the street from here! Each one presenting a ground bit of beef in some way that they hope will be appealing to their customers.

Keeping in mind that this thought processing happened over a couple of moments (I am now about 30 minutes into typing this post!), and that the flow of thought extended to my writing - where I realized that it was quite alright if I never have an original thought. That is quite alright if a million people make the same observations or have the same realizations.

I realized that there is something unique that each of us bring to that concept, through our explanation of that concept or observation. And that whether it is a Blog or a Podcast or the great American novel, it is our voice that makes it unique.

And that, my brothers and sisters, is the good news of the cheeseburger.