This is an excerpt from this year’s 1517 Advent Devotional.
Thanksgiving, then, is not just about plenty. It is about redemption.
Why is it truly meet right and salutary that we should at all times and all places give thanks to God.

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Getting ready for church is an exhausting exercise for a lot of people. By getting ready, I don't mean making wardrobe decisions.
But in that quest for thou shalts and thou shalt nots, you’ll miss what really matters. You’ll trample the cross while racing for the tablets of stone. From the tale of Achan's theft, you’ll rob yourself of Jesus.
Just how should we think about our good works in the Christian life of faith as we live that life before others... and before God?
In the tiny Texas town where I grew up, sleeping in on Sunday morning was as inconceivable as rooting for someone besides the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon.
Good people like fist-pounding on the pulpit about the bad things that bad people do in this bad world of ours. It makes them feel better about themselves.
I stumbled down labyrinthine paths, crawled in and out of cavernous pits, got lost a million times, and somehow ended up a little farther down the road to healing. Yet in all those crooked lines I see the hand of God writing straight.
Ultimately, the lie we have believed is that God is like we are. He is not. Thank God that he is not. He is the Lord who reverses all our expectations.
I once saw a man holding a sign that read: Divorce is an abomination. Repent! That’s it. Nothing else.
Nonetheless, if we wish to treat apologetics as a practical endeavor for concrete engagement with people who ask about Christianity, it seems best to start with the questions young people are actually asking.
In Christ, we become part of the group of eight on the ark. The eight does not increase to nine or ten but swells to contain us all. God recreates us in this saving flood of baptism. We enter the new creation in Christ.
One of my podcast addictions is Criminal. Their tagline is “Criminal is a podcast about crime. Stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.”
If you read my posts here or on my own site, you’ll find that most of my writings lean toward the issue of dark times or brokenness in our lives.