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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Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
The cross not only stands as the measure of our hatred of God but also as the measure of God’s love for us.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.
The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.
Eucatastrophe is the coming untrue of all sin, evil, and death. And where that starts is the empty tomb of the risen Jesus.
In Israel today, it's still possible to witness the same scene the disciples saw 2000 years ago when the Bedouin shepherds bring their flocks home from various pastures at the end of the day.
When Jesus appeared again to his disciples on that first Easter evening and again a week later with Thomas and the Emmaus disciples, what did Jesus show them? His hands.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
Heaven is yours now.
This is the sound of freedom. The Eternal One died so that we who are dying might live eternally with him.