We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.

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What we confess concerning a corpse confesses much about how deep, or how shallow, is our understanding of the importance of the incarnation of Jesus, his death, and his (as well as our own) resurrection.
I say I was dead before Jesus called me, but actually, I was worse off than that. Imagine a corpse who is at war with life, who is an enemy of the Life-giver. That was me.
“There’s my beautiful mermaid!” Those were the words spoken by my husband the other morning as he approached me while I waited by our car in the parking lot of the Y.
A clever skeptic named James Huber created a clever skit called “Kissing Hank’s Butt”. That’s the version he created for use in G-rated contexts. His main site uses more mature language. Many Christians will find it offensive.
It all started when out of the nothingness of Mary’s womb, the Word who makes all things, made for Himself a body, human through and through. From the virgin soil of Eden the first man came and from the virgin womb the last man came—came to re-genesis you.
Much like the 2014 Superbowl, the debate itself was lackluster and utterly predictable. However, one aspect of the debate struck me as worthy of commentary; the way Mr. Ham presented himself as a Christian intellectual.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? You are, who are flesh of flesh and bone of bone with Jesus, our Jacob.
We love because we find in the beloved something that is lovable. We see, we know, and then we love. Or, at least, we promise to love.
Why is it that we are so afraid to give the message of grace to our little ones? We bombard their ears with law on a constant basis.
Of all the words this woman ever spoke, these alone are chiseled forever into the stone of holy writ, and into the church’s memory. Mrs. Job becomes the patron saint of quick-tongued women.
I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.
Ever experience a congregation with the word "Grace" in its name that was nonetheless ironically ungracious and legalistic? I have.