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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On Saturday, July 16, Luke Gabriel Bird died in a hiking accident in Chile. He was a midshipman in the United States Naval Academy. He is our son. Here are some reflections on his life, his faith, and his Lord.
At the heart of The Idiot is Dostoevsky's confession of faith and the confession of all Christians.
We are loved by our heavenly Father. When the Creator and Giver of all good things is caring for you, suddenly, you are free to care for others.
Cyril’s fervor for pure explication of the gospel was present throughout his career.
What Jesus promises is better than justice. Jesus promises grace.
Vilification of the other is married to the justification of the self.
The spirit indeed is willing and desires bodily death as a gentle sleep. It does not consider it to be death; it knows no such thing as death.
This is not just a pericope about hereditary sin and actual sins, nor is it providing a pattern for prayer. It is fundamentally about God our gracious Father and His promise to hear us, answer us, and provide for us.
But it is not always helpful to create tidy categories of good and bad and to say, “Stop being ‘a Martha’ and do a better job of being ‘a Mary.’” That is a dangerous sermon to preach. In doing so, we can fall into the very thing we see Martha doing.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is both a call to faith in Jesus and a call to love our neighbor.
Despite the very real obstacles and difficulties, this entire scene is marked by God’s gracious work.
Because of Jesus, God always hears our prayers, and he always responds to them in love–regardless of the quality or quantity of the one speaking them.