The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

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The Lord knew how it felt to be a rejected stone.
Walther’s living legacy is his enduring teaching on how to distinguish the law and the gospel in the Church’s proclamation.
Sunday morning is about receiving, not giving.
Christ's words of exclusive salvation are not just a warning but a sure promise for you.
How can we be sure that we are getting a “solid spiritual diet” and not a “milky” one?
In the sacrament, we receive an earnest of that future promise here and now in the body and blood of Jesus given and shed for us.
What might Christians of the Reformation tradition think of claims like these about the nature of salvation?
Jesus makes David’s words his own, because David’s words were Christ’s to begin with.
As I look back, I choose to remember her as a soul redeemed by Christ.
The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
The story of salvation is the true story of God doing his unexpected work of salvation for us.