This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.

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Every earthly kingdom meets its end. All empires crumble and fall. But from the beginning, the kingdom of God, which Christ would rule, was said to be eternal.
Jesus satisfies, fills, and saves because he is the Son of God, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever.
Longstanding tradition must be bolstered by something outside of ourselves that also lies outside of the traditions of men.
Christ is always the ultimate for God's children, but we sometimes struggle with things that come before.
You have real freedom through the gospel of Jesus Christ, a freedom that doesn’t rest on founders, votes, or power plays.
One Christ rules over all of it. He is the constant, the root that nourishes every estate and every vocation.
No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
What the gospel does is take people who were enemies of God and transform them into lovers of God
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
One way or another, Rod always found a way to bring whatever story he was telling back to the gospel and God's grace in Christ.