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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Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
Take away the water, words, bread and wine. Can you be a Christian without water, words, bread and wine?
Faith does not require that we always Hoorah what the Lord does. God wants children, not brown-nosers.
At our churches must remain focused on the deep kick, the real deal, the thing itself. I’m not the first on this site to remind us that this is Christ himself.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
The chief verb of the liturgy is the gift of God’s forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ.
You cannot fudge Glory in this life. You get there only on the Better Day that is coming and not one day before.
Today the Spirit whom unfaithful David prayed the Lord would not take from him Pours himself into sinners that they might sing of the faithful love of their Husband.
O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus he says to these bones. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
I came across a "deep commentary" in the form of a Facebook meme, extolling the frustrations of the natural man's inability to understand the things of God.
What Jesus did and gives on these two Thursdays encapsulates his whole life and mission.
Over the next few months, I invite you to join me in looking at what the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the subject of worship through the lens of language.