The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

All Articles

Free speech isn't dead yet, and when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, it never will be.
God’s headline for his church prioritizes the person of Jesus and his purpose to demonstrate God’s power by dying and rising again for our salvation.
Symbols throw together a physical artifact we can see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell, with a truth beyond the tangible.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
God’s words do things. When God blesses you, you are blessed.
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does.
This week, when you go to church, take a moment to reflect that you are being summoned by a loving Father, hands full of gifts he wants to give.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
To embrace our creatureliness is to affirm the truth that we were created to worship.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).