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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For those of us who recognize the disciples’ despair in ourselves, Jesus comes with the same word: “Relax, it’s me. Peace be with you.”
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021). Now available for preorder.
The result of this day’s proceedings, in Luther’s mind, was likely to be a painful death at the stake.
Jesus is proclaiming the good news that he has come to put an end to laboring to be loved by God.
The cross is not some mystic metaphor for the change we must undergo before our self-realization, but the earth-shattering event that changed the course of eternity.
We will always need comfort until the reign of God, his kingdom, comes in full with Christ’s return, and our suffering and the sin that causes it is no more.
You have this Shepherd who knows your voice, your cry, your incessant baaing.
Jesus offers to the anxious soul the one thing it ironically wants: certainty of the good.
God loves you no matter what. Loves you no matter how many times you have screwed up. Loves you to death, he does.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours patience and hope into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Tomorrow Jesus will laugh his way out of the tomb, spit in the face of death, and kick the devil in the throat as he dances to the clapping glee of angelic masses. But today he just rests.
Good Friday encompasses the silence of God, even as it focuses on our salvation in the cross of Christ.