We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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If you and I were to examine our own lives, we’d likely have to admit that we are frequent disciples of Jeroboam’s “bootleg religion.”
The irony of our idolatry is that many of our idols could and would speak the gospel to us if we would listen.
God bestows faith that it should deal not with ordinary things, but with things no human being can master such as death, sin, the world, and Satan.
The law is good and holy but so often when we are “shoulding” on one another, we actually are just going to end up “burning” each other’s fields.
The Holy Spirit is sent, not to talk about himself, but to point us to Jesus.
The world’s history and Jewish history was like a story in search of an ending; and when Jesus rose from the dead the ending was now revealed.
We have the Gospel in Word and the Gospel in Sacrament. Both are poised to declare the peace of the Lord, the good news of God’s forgiveness because of the life, vicarious atonement, and resurrection of Jesus the Son.
Pentecost reminds us of not only what happened on that day described in Acts 2 but what is happening every day: the Spirit of God working in and through God’s people, according to his word.
Pentecost is the event which jolts the world into taking note that something entirely new is taking place.
What is it, though, that makes bedtime so fraught with anxiety?
Faith isn’t something that needs to be done. It’s something to be enjoyed because faith is a gift bestowed by God’s word through the hearing of the Gospel.
"Ragged" written by Gretchen Ronnevik is now available for purchase from 1517 Publishing