Whether a Christian enjoys high church, low church, or something in between, aesthetics in the Church are not about any one individual person and their particular tastes. Aesthetics are, fundamentally, not a matter of legalism, but of edification—that the Gospel of Christ might be preached and taught to all peoples, unhindered by its medium.
Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.
As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.

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To preach Christ and Him crucified is to reveal again the revealed God who saves.
The reason that God’s commandments are not burdensome is that Jesus has fulfilled them.
This parable does its surprising work of turning everything upside-down, as Christ’s Kingdom always does.
Jesus is the only one who is His brothers’ keeper on behalf of all of humanity and the only one who answered the rhetorical question fully and correctly for you.
The love mentioned in 1 John 4:15-21 fourteen times (!) is a love that needs no apology but is determined at all times to sacrifice for the other.
The true masterpiece of the Bible’s narrative is that we are blessed not in the way we want but in the way God gives freely on account of Christ alone.
The Kingdom will be manifest when the King wills it, and rest assured, He is a good King.
The Word and the Spirit go together. The Spirit, the breath of God, illumines and makes alive through the Word of God; both written and external, that is, preached and sacramented.
To say that whoever loves has been born of God is also to say that those who are born of God are recipients of love. They do not have God because they love but because they are loved.
In the Reformation, as in the tabernacle, God gave skill, artistry, and craftsmanship to put his Word in images so that through art, his Word would be revealed.
We need to hear the gospel because it is good news that is not from you, or about you, or because of you.
This is an excerpt from the Sinner/Saint Advent Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2022). Now available for purchase!