God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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There is joy in Lent, but it is the kind of joy that comes in being made whole.
Because of my Advocate, there is no judgment or condemnation by God in my suffering.
Repentance comes on account of suffering, loss, failure, and death. It happens when the promise of forgiveness of sin given in Jesus’ death is proclaimed to us down-and-outers.
We cannot scan any random passage of Scripture and automatically assume the words are unconditionally addressed to us. Often, very often, they are not.
Ash Wednesday, is meant to remind us we have a death problem. All living things made from the soil shall return to it.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
In our transactional view of our faith - “If I don’t… then God won’t.” “I need to, so God can” - we are seriously underestimating who we are dealing with.
Good works do not give us a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Rather, good works result from righteousness given by the good work of the Righteous One on the cross.
Any good work we perform among you; any doctrine we write upon your heart – that is God’s own work.
We’ve hung on every whisper of hope that this way of life would end and a new one would rise to take its place.
People do not seek the gospel because they want to, but because God’s Word drives them to it.
On each of the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve (December 17-23), Chad Bird will provide a meditation that focuses on the ancient “O Antiphons,” each of which addresses Christ by a different Old Testament name. Today’s reflection, the sixth in the series, is on “O King of the Nations.”