While God can, and often does, appear to people face to face, he also often employs the use of several types of messengers.
The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.
Christianity does not locate freedom in radical autonomy. It does not tell either men or women that happiness consists in escaping obligations arising from relationships we did not entirely choose.

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But I remember that that’s how it ended. Words. Wine. Blood. A sudden halt to the conversation.
Behold the seemingly foolish ways of our wise God. He bids us embrace what appears impossible: that blood alone is our defense, that blood alone saves us from destruction, that the blood of a lamb is more than enough.
As I remember these stories of the other side of Christmas—where it’s not a wonderful life, where there’s no joy to the world, where silent nights are interrupted by screams and sobs and cursing and gunshots—I remember that this other side of Christmas is precisely why there is a Christmas in the first place.
We are like the spoiled children of kings who spit in the face of paupers on the street. We have been given so much, yet we treasure so little.
Dan reminded me—in his words, in his patient suffering, through his unwavering faith in Christ, by his confidence in his baptism—that Jesus Christ does not abandon his own. No matter where they are, no matter what they’re going through, He is there.
There has only been one baptism in the history of the world: the baptism of Jesus. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
What if, while we were admitting all these serious infractions of the divine law, our pastor simply yawned?
Last night our family watched Pixar's Inside Out and yes, I'm very late to that Pixar party. I enjoyed the film. The personification of Joy and Sadness was extraordinary.
We are a sinning church with a preaching problem.
What makes this story remarkable is that this man, along with others hanged that day, was among the most hated men in human history. He was guilty of atrocities so horrific only words forged in hell could adequately describe them.
The water and blood that streamed forth from Christ, streams us back into him as we are buoyed up by the waves of baptism, through the wound, and into the body of God incarnate.
Our Father does not bid us to turn inward, but outward, to the Son who is himself our unending Sabbath rest.