Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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It is death that deserves derision, not the disciple who reaches through sorrow for his Lord.
The Christian answer to death is not a disembodied app, but a bodily resurrection.
The ascension is not about Jesus going away. It's about Jesus taking his rightful place so that he might fill the world with his presence and power.
I realized that no matter where I call "home," I won't be able to shake the feeling of homesickness.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
God has a hall ready for us, for us and for so many more
We know that death does not have the last word in Christ.
God comes to us through the flesh and blood and spirit of Christ precisely where he promised to be manifest to us and for us.
Only the resurrection of Jesus guarantees and facilitates divine presence and love to us as divine life for us.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
The resurrection of Jesus encompasses the total and comprehensive glorification of a human being, not merely his restoration.
If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.