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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Is there no sweeter sound than Immanuel? Christ’s name, God with us. Those three words heal an ocean of hurts, give courage to the weakest heart, and lifts the head of the weariest pilgrim.
We have heard of the man born to be king. Here in Bethlehem, by divine condescension, the King—the King of kings—is born to be man.
Jesus isn't Superman. He's not from another planet. He's from Earth.
God coming to us at Christmas encapsulates the essence of Christian faith: we don't make ourselves strong and then work our way up to a strong God.
He created us with an eye on recreating us. He made humanity in his image because one day he would assume that image. The Creator would become a creature while remaining Creator.
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
The devil is effective with this attack because it calls out all the things a Christian sinner experiences as simultaneous sinner and saint.
This time of year, Christmas time, the world isn't so much Christ-expectant as it is Christ-haunted.
Sometimes we try be the bad god, sometimes the good god, oftentimes a freaky hybrid of both. The result is the same: Jesus the savior just gets in our way.
If the devil took over a church, I suspect it would be bursting at the seams every Sunday, with smiling faces, clean noses, straight morals, conservative voting, institutional fidelity
In those waters we are nailed to his cross and washed out the door of his tomb. Within his wounds we safely hide.
I don’t care why you left the ministry—moral failure, congregational politics, burnout, whatever—the Christ whom you proclaimed has not left you.