When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.
The life we are trying to manage, improve, and secure is not something to be mastered. It is something to be surrendered. And this is where everything changes. Because in Christ, the approval we are seeking has already been spoken.
It is within this charged atmosphere that Luther’s writings take on their full significance. His responses to the Turkish threat were not merely reactions to military events; they were rooted in a deep theological reflection on the nature of God’s rule over the world, the responsibilities of Christian rulers, and the role of the Church in times of crisis.

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From you, Dad, I learned that a man is truly a man when, as Ecclesiastes says, whatever his hand finds to do, he does it with all his might (9:10).
How will they reach this magical moment, this milestone on the journey of life? Perhaps by chasing their dreams, pursuing their passions with a heart wholly devoted to the attainment of whatever goals they set for themselves in life?
I’ve come to realize at the tender age of 47 that sometimes church doesn’t work.
For it is His law I have broken, His office in which I have failed, His people against whom I have sinned. All is from Him, so all I have taken, I have taken from Him. All others against whom I have sinned, I have sinned because they are of Him.
I was angry at heaven, at earth, and everything in between, for my life and my love and my hopes had all gone wrong, terribly, irreversibly, wrong.
Perhaps a phone number seems an odd thing to get sentimental about, but I can’t help myself. You see, if that number, and the phone connected to it, could speak, they would tell my life’s story.
The wine of communion is a gift from God and the blood of Christ we receive at the rail an inebriant that encourages and frees us.
As I peer back over the years between the me-then and the me-now, I see one striking similarity. I am always a man who forgets who he really is, because I’m always focused on becoming the man I want others to think I am.
Which makes the question of prudence worth asking again: given the recent and strong Catholic attempts to defend a broad religious liberty, why all the implicit and explicit swipes at their potential Protestant allies?
I sin more in thirty minutes than those of the “victorious Christian life” supposedly sin in thirty years.
An understanding and appreciation of the goodness (and given-ness) of place and family, and the vocations attending each, can of course be taught and learned in a classroom or by means of a book.
The thing is, not only is fixing our past impossible; who’s to say we wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes? In fact, who’s to say we wouldn’t make matters even worse?