When we consider our own end, it will not bring us into a final wrestling match with the messenger of God, but into the embrace of the Messiah of God.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
This is the third in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.

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Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”
The victory of Christ is hidden in the crosses we bear as Christians following Him to our own personal Golgothas.
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
We all look forward to Lent’s conclusion and the celebration of Resurrection Sunday. This is the Sunday of victory and joy as the Church enters into the reality that Christ has defeated death and hell, declared victory over such enemies and set history on its final course of consummation.
Only Jesus’ absolute absolution can satisfy a troubled conscience.
Now, resurrection can only follow upon death. The good news is, it will!
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
No matter how great our efforts or how righteous our intent, we will go from troubled to scared, and scared to terrified, unless we are sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb.
God goes to work on us through His Word like a woodcarver chisels a block of wood.
The pastor declares it. We receive it. The forgiveness of sins. It’s a simple thing.
While I was still an over-eager seminarian the professor warned me, “Mr. Riley, this is exciting stuff.
Freedom from the Law does not come through personal perfection, it comes through Jesus Christ. The answer is not a better you, but a you who is united to God through Christ.