‘Peace’ means “I have forgiven all those sins against me.”
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 6-9.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.

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From political parties to sports teams, we know all too well how quickly we can ruin a good thing, turning a temporal allegiance into a spiritual one
When I was a young boy I was constantly trying to assert my superiority over my siblings. I had to be the best at everything, and it was easy to believe I was the best.
Jesus is the heart of the Gospel, and the Gospel is Good News. But it is always Good News that comes to us best on the lips of another.
He comes to fill our old, stony heart with the new wine of his forgiveness.
Just as we believe ourselves to be forgiven because God sees us in Christ, so to forgive others is to see them as God sees them in Christ. To forgive, in other words, is to put God’s eyes in our eyes and our eyes in God’s eyes.
Gerhard's preaching categories ring true of descriptions ring true of the ways in which we attempt to communicate the Gospel in the twenty-first century. His words of advice deserve our attention too.
Blood is the thing. In the Scriptures, sin must be covered or "atoned for" as it's called, by blood.
Separating the Law from the conscience is not just bad because it makes the Law ineffective. If the Law and the conscience are not brought together, it also means leaving the conscience unaddressed and unassuaged when the Gospel is preached.
Some things, once they are deemed disgusting or contaminated, permanently carry that quality with them. These things are even thought to be “contagious,” negatively affecting whatever they come into contact with.
At the Passover, when Jesus said, "Take, eat, this is my body... take, drink, this is the New Testament in my blood, which is given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins," he wasn't inventing a "new" thing.
Each of these little epiphanies in Middle-earth are like the star the magi saw arise in the sky, a light that reflects and points to Jesus who is the Light of the world.
When people are baptized, time is transcended. They go back to the Jordan and the Jordan comes forward to them. In a single splash, or a single dunk, they enter the war.