Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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Christmas wrecks all attempts to penetrate God’s hiddenness and seek Him out in Heaven. He comes to us clothed in our humanity.
Rejoice with Mary as she would rejoice with you. Be blessed, like her, with humility from God, so that you may serve joyfully and willingly wherever and in whatever role God has placed you.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
When and how did the church start this season of anticipation?
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
Help comes for those who cannot help themselves. When we bottom-out and come to the end of ourselves, that is where hope springs.
For Christians, Advent is the time when the Church patiently prepares for the coming of the Great King, Jesus the Christ.
The Church stands firm on the word of promise that Christ will one day return to change what we know by faith into sight.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Preachers and church workers must also hear the gospel preached to them.