God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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Over and over, generation after generation, sinners repeat the same mistake. "How is it possible that God can be a man," we ask.
Christians are Christians not because of anything that they have done but because of everything Christ has done for them.
Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
We who fall within the Protestant camp of Christianity have longstanding issues with ritual. I get that. Ritual is often abused. Idolatrized. It can easily devolve into a hollow act of religious farce.
We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
So, what do we do when someone doesn't believe God's promise of forgiveness, life, and eternal salvation is for him?
He lavishly pours out His rest in the waters of Baptism, in the spoken words of absolution from the pastor’s lips, in the preaching of the cross and resurrection, in the consumption of heavenly cuisine from the table at which He is host and meal.
Looking back, I see that the biggest problem (besides heresy) was that my faith was first about what I did or didn’t do, but it was also intangible and spiritual.
It is worthwhile because Jesus Christ gave baptism to His disciples as a means for making disciples after He had suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and buried and rose again on the third day.
A promise was made to my older brother roughly 50 years ago. He was just an infant and had no idea that this promise was being set upon him.
The dying words of Jesus were not, “Make it worth it,” but “It is finished.”
No, when the Lord is ready for battle, of all creatures, he commissions Mary’s little lamb.