Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
Here, robed in Word and Sacrament, is your King, infant though He be, come out of eternity into time to bring you out of time and into eternity.
You are not in debt to sin. You don’t owe it anything. There’s no reason for you to serve it.
Christ is present in the pure preaching of the gospel. And if Christ is present, then we have entered into the domain of the sacraments.
Viewing the Word as a unified theological narrative prevents us from treating the Scriptures like a cage match between competing theological systems, with prophets duking it out with apostles, and psalmists with evangelists, all supposedly fighting for their voice to be heard.
Not only does God reveal the identity of Jesus in this season through what we see and hear Jesus doing and saying, but God also reveals His gracious will through Jesus despite what we see and hear.
Paul is thinking of the cross and empty tomb, but the liturgical calendar places us at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not the end: Jesus standing waist deep in the Jordan River.
Buried deep in our human psyche, there seems to be more than a need—almost a necessity—to celebrate the arrival of a new year. It’s like an unspoken, unlegislated cultural demand, as instinctual as moving to music or smiling at a newborn. Why? What deep human need is at work here?
Love turns out to be not simply a thing or action, but a characteristic of God himself.
The shepherds are the most unlikely people to play the role the angels cast them in.
The Advents of Christ (past, present, and future) elicit faith in the word of Christ, confirmed by his presence.