Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

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Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
Take courage, you who were lost: Jesus comes to seek and save that which is lost. Ye sick, return to health: Christ comes to heal the contrite of heart with the balm of his mercy. Rejoice, all you who desire great things: the Son of God comes down to you that he may make you the co-heirs of his kingdom.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
While the world is full of horizons and endpoints, for Christians, there is always tomorrow, and there are people in that tomorrow waiting for us as we wait for them.
We ache in eager anticipation as we see Christ in action and as we take in the snapshots of his life, death, and resurrection.
For Christians, Advent is the time when the Church patiently prepares for the coming of the Great King, Jesus the Christ.
The Church stands firm on the word of promise that Christ will one day return to change what we know by faith into sight.
That is the task of preaching in these last weeks of the Church Year, to enable the people given to our care, to praise God from the perspective of the end when our Lord will return in glory bringing us into His Kingdom of glory.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.