1. C.S. Lewis, Grief, and the Holiday Season
  2. The following poem was written by Tanner Olson to accompany 1517’s 2023 Advent Resources, The Clothing of the King. Advent begins this Sunday.
  3. An Anglo-Saxon poem gives fresh insight to the cross
  4. How the pumpkin patch has a lot to teach us about the love and work of Christ
  5. Human solutions to problems, important as they are, are inadequate to meet our deepest needs
  6. The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
  7. Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
  8. This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  9. I’ve experienced firsthand the promise that God never leaves a congregation empty-handed.
  10. We may not all be mass-murdering Nazis. But we all have the same root sin that causes the most egregious criminal activity on the face of the earth. We all have the desire to be our own God.
  11. God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
  12. While we wait in tribulation for our white robes (or pants) to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, we confess to one another our seen and unseen stains.