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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God and love are synonymous. Any talk about love that is not talk about Jesus is, at most, a half-truth.
There is true help in the midst of our pain. Someone who suffered as we suffer, who embraced all our pain in his suffering and death on a cross.
The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw," written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
I venture to assert I have never read, in the entire Scriptures, words more beautifully expressive of the grace of God than these two children words.
Whoever you are, your Father loves you differently than he loves other people. You are more than a grain of sand in the vast desert called humanity.
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
His kingdom is not one of force and might for our exploitation and his gain, but one of his patience and long-suffering for our benefit.
True love isn't a thing. We can't find true love in our souls, soul mates, or safe spaces. We can't marry true love, buy it, or create it from scratch.
We want to be kind, gentle, and cheerful to others, but we’ve got to protect ourselves from getting hurt.
Forgiveness, not love, can restore a relationship that’s top-heavy with negative emotions.
What do we say when a Christian admits the church has driven them to atheism? And they don't mean ideologically.