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.
12/10/25
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.
12/09/25
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.
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03/13/22
Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
03/10/22
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
02/28/22
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
02/23/22
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
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02/10/22
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
02/03/22
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
01/27/22
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
01/05/22
Christians do have a hope that those who sleep in death will be awakened and their joy will never end, and we yearn for that day.
12/25/21
God’s candle is not so easily extinguished. His promise is not some vague light at the end of the tunnel that we may or may not reach. In fact, God’s light has a name: Jesus Christ.
12/21/21
Isaiah speaks to our time. He speaks to our rejoicing now and an anticipated joy-filled future. Christ’s coming, Christmas, brings them both.
12/10/21
The early biblical stories about Bethlehem are dark and violent. They wreck us. They frighten us. In this little town, we see a microcosm of the vast and mangled mass of humanity, each individual thirsty for even a single bead of light to be dropped into the blackened depths of their souls. He who is born in Bethlehem is that Light.
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12/01/21
There is no other transitionary event in human history that warrants three full months of focused attention and persistent acknowledgment than the incarnation of the Son of God.
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