How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”

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Lent means that we do not have to look to ourselves but can look to our neighbor in love as Christ has loved us.
You can die now, you can let go, and because that is true, you can begin to live!
God is not a preoccupied parent, he’s an invested and interested tender loving Father. He values what perplexes us.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
This world of unbearable grief and accidental calamity is being renewed and, soon, will be completely bereft of every pernicious foe.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
God saves us through people. He saves us through means. He puts a voice on the gospel.
Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.
Maybe it was because I read this book to put myself to sleep. But maybe the lack of any Christian references was part of my sadness.
It is precisely from the cross that the glory of God shines most brightly into our lives, as dark and sinister as Golgotha appears from a sinful distance. Cross trumps crisis.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.