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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There is a power that is stronger and mightier than the power of separation in death. And that power is the power of God’s love for you and me.
I rededicated my life as many times as I could when the guilt was unbearable. I would read my Bible more and pray more, yet I still struggled. I knew deep down, I was breaking God’s heart with my failure at being his child.
It is that love, finally, which comes back again and again, not as an afterthought, but as the underlying theme of the entire section.
By basing our assurance on the promises of God, which we not only hope for in the future but live in now, the Christian can finally rest in the comfort that they are both saved and not responsible for their own salvation.
The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.
In our attempts to flee from our fears and escape death, we will become imprisoned by them.
Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.
Comfort is not a platitude; it is a promise. A promise from our God who left his place of glory and died a sinner’s death for poor sinners.
That is why we dance on graves. That is why we smile in the midst of sorrowful tears. That is why we retell old stories and share humorous memories.
When the old Adam hears a command, he hears a prescription. Like a coach drawing up a play so you can win the game.
The unrelenting truth of the Gospel is our only hope. Jesus Christ is the unshakeable, unmovable object of our faith. It is this hope in Christ that we find relief and comfort.
The Easter season is designed to cultivate our resurrection thinking throughout the year. When God looks at us each day, He sees us through the lens of Christ’s resurrection. We should look at our lives the same way.