God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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We hang on to our sins not despite the fact that they hurt, but precisely because they do hurt. We need to hurt, to fret over them, to cry over them, to make amends over them, because by doing so, we will grease the wheels of God’s forgiveness.
I looked up at the cross and saw what God had become to bring me home. He had become what I was.
Our faith is not a mountain but a grain of sand, not pure gold but gilded plaster. And all it takes is a few nicks and scratches to reveal its shallowness.
Grace is easier to tweet about than extend. When we are talking about my sin and the impact it has on others, I want grace.
Surely everyone reading at one time or another in their lives has heard the popular phrase I’m writing about today.
What is really good for the soul is not so much confession as absolution. If confession is us telling the truth about ourselves to God, then absolution is God telling us a truer truth about ourselves.
By Philip Melanchthon (from the 1535 Loci Communes), translated by Scott L. Keith, Ph.D.
Whether we are overcome by happiness on the mountaintop or overwhelmed by sorrow in the valley, our vision can be our greatest handicap.
When God is at work, oftentimes the best activity is non-activity, the best speech is non-speech. Sometimes God wants us to shut up.
Believe in God, belong to a church, and behave yourself isn’t the Gospel.
We chase after status, wealth, luxury, glory, honor, youth, beauty, and pleasure. We work ourselves to death. For what?
If April 1 is April Fools’ Day, then March 25 is Divine Fool’s Day. Falling nine months before Christmas, it’s the day when God set in motion what appeared to be a foolish plan.