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.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.

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This is an excerpt from In Defense of Christian Ritual written by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2021). Available for purchase this Tuesday!
Apathy, melancholy, and disillusionment plague the footsteps of the up-and-coming generations more than ever, especially in the realm of religion, and it’s worth asking, “Why?”
Yes, Adam and Eve both participated in sin. This was a joint effort of the two genders of mankind. They are both sinners. But the first sin wasn't letting the serpent in the garden.
"A Lutheran Toolkit" is available for purchase today from 1517 Publishing
This is an excerpt from “A Lutheran Toolkit” written by Ken Sundet Jones (1517 Publishing, 2021), pgs. 23-25.
And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
When God cancels you, it is an occasion for all of the canceled who are in heaven and earth to rejoice in that one more is added to our number.
Jesus is our sympathizer, our propitiation, and our advocate. We will be tempted but God will provide the way out, the way out is Jesus, the one who died for our sins.
The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
We’ve hung on every whisper of hope that this way of life would end and a new one would rise to take its place.
Christian peace is not the absence of problems, but it is the presence of God amid our pain and sorrows.
The well-meaning advice “time heals all wounds” is offensively false when we confront the overwhelming evidence that the constants in our lives are death, taxes, and suffering.