As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
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.

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When Jesus appeared again to his disciples on that first Easter evening and again a week later with Thomas and the Emmaus disciples, what did Jesus show them? His hands.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
Bathed in the waters of baptism, you are placed in God's path of totality, a path he won for each and every one of us.
Jesus continues to do the same for me and for you as he did for his disciples. He still shows up for us. He still speaks his peace to us.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
The seemingly small, the particular, the previously overlooked, magnifies in importance.
We can interpret "be the Church" as either law or gospel.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
Christ's resurrection does not merely negate the bitterness of sin; it changes it into a source of divine sweetness, embodying the promise of a new life for us and a restored existence overshadowed by heavenly hope.
My goal here isn’t to selfishly reflect on all the reasons I will miss Rod because I know that if you are reading this, you may miss this man, too.
God demonstrates his great love for us in the actions of Jesus, who came down into the flesh and soaked up all our sin.