American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.
The Passover wasn’t just Israel’s story; it’s ours.
God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.

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We prefer this to be switched around. We want something to happen in us before anything happens outside of us.
Don’t say you’re beyond hope, for there is not one beyond God. Don’t say you’ve done too much evil, for there is no wrong bigger than God’s heart of forgiveness.
The Confessions instead look forward and provide a critique of the world and of all my various religions and idolatries.
But when we trust Jesus, then we close our eyes to it all and say, “Heavenly Father, I’m your child.
It has been three years since Allyson and I honeymooned in New Orleans. We had a great time eating our way through the French Quarter, learning to drive in a city of only ways, and forgetting that real life existed for only a few days.
The only obedient son is shunned so that the disobedient one may return. Why? Because God loves sinners. He doesn’t leave them alone.
The only sea of tranquility that can unite God and man and bring brotherhood among us is found in the Word and sacraments.
We’re all familiar with the “outrage” in our culture about the trend in youth sports to award “participation trophies.”
The church is a home for the family of God. It’s not a mall, a café, a coffee shop, or Amazon. It’s where we usually don’t get what we want, but what we need.
In the tiny Bible-belt town where I grew up, tragedy brought people together.
I can pretend for a little bit, but as soon as the phone is put away and it’s just me and my sin, I am fearful about what my walk says about me. I know what I should do, but I can’t quite seem to do it.
Life is certainly unfair. But in Christ, at least in part, we rejoice at such a notion. Grace, that great descriptor of God’s devotion, is a word that only finds its purpose, only exists at all, because it exists as a response to guilt.