1. What I desperately needed was not to preach to myself, but to listen to a preacher—not to take myself in hand, but to be taken in the hands of the Almighty.
  2. God wants his word of promise to be the only thing we bank on, the only thing we have confidence in.
  3. The Lord knew how it felt to be a rejected stone.
  4. Walther’s living legacy is his enduring teaching on how to distinguish the law and the gospel in the Church’s proclamation.
  5. 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.
  6. What is undoubtedly true, however, is that St. Peter wasn’t left outside. He wasn’t left weeping. He was restored, as am I, as are you.
  7. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  8. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
  9. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  10. Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.
  11. The lesson of Malachi reveals God’s love for his people. When the people ask for proof of God’s love, he reminds them of their election.
  12. All our sin and shame is answered for in the death and resurrection of our Lord.