God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exist to serve our goals, our metrics, or our platforms.
The gospel isn’t for the strong but people who know they aren’t.
One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.

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“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” These are the words of Jesus to a man who promised to follow him after saying good-bye to his family in Luke 9:62. Tough stuff.
I woke up this morning feeling restless. It could be the 7,000 holiday calories I have eaten every day for the past two weeks or it could be that a new year has started and so follows the resolutions.
As God is prone to do, He sometimes shows us who He is through people whom we would never think of as teachers, much less imitators of God.
Generally, we call that path the lectionary. I’m a big fan of the lectionaries in general. They do several things.
King has some kind of belief in God, but was probably under no inner compulsion to do anything we would term evangelism.
O little flock, fear not the foe, for at your head is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for you.
From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.
That all being said, come to think of it, I’ve never gone 24 seconds without sinning.
“You shall have no other gods,” God says, and we, spurred on by the prohibition, roll up our sleeves and get to work fashioning gods like there’s no tomorrow.
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.
Whatever numbers you want to plug in, ours must be greater than zero. We’re in a partnership with God, after all. We both do our part. We’ve got to meet the Lord halfway. If only he does all the giving, and we do all the receiving, the relationship is doomed to fail.
Who are we, really, but a bag of blood and bones, in which are mixed in bittersweet memories and the shards of shattered dreams and broken hearts?