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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Children are not meant to carry crowns. They are not meant to rule. The burden crushes them in slow, invisible ways.
Jesus is very difficult to bring down. That’s the power of it.
Instead of a “how-to” manual, the Bible is a “what-you-didn’t-do” story.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
Do our petitions move God?
There is no true life and meaningful community apart from forgiveness.
Both now and forever, the bruised and crucified Lord nailed to a cross is our assurance of deliverance.
Every day is a Sabbath for Christians. Every day is the day the Lord has made. Every day is a day to find rest in Christ.
Righteousness before God is possessed only by grace and that through the currency of faith.