What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.

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In his Gospel account, Luke challenges us to play "Where is Jesus?"
The devil is effective with this attack because it calls out all the things a Christian sinner experiences as simultaneous sinner and saint.
Read your life like a Hebrew, from the end to the beginning, and you will see that the last is first. The dead are alive, the cursed are blessed, the humble are exalted.
We who fall within the Protestant camp of Christianity have longstanding issues with ritual. I get that. Ritual is often abused. Idolatrized. It can easily devolve into a hollow act of religious farce.
To forget ourselves is to remember another, that is, to act in such a way that benefits them. That’s the problem: we don’t.
He lavishly pours out His rest in the waters of Baptism, in the spoken words of absolution from the pastor’s lips, in the preaching of the cross and resurrection, in the consumption of heavenly cuisine from the table at which He is host and meal.
No, when the Lord is ready for battle, of all creatures, he commissions Mary’s little lamb.
I became like God’s child David, whom the Lord pardoned of his adultery and murder. I became like Noah, Abraham, Judah, Aaron, Gideon, and so many more wayward children.
What Jesus did and gives on these two Thursdays encapsulates his whole life and mission.
Burdened within and without, we cross the threshold into church. We don't leave behind our earthiness, our tragedies, our white-knuckled grip on the last vestige of dignity in our sad lives.
Thankfully, our heavenly Father sent a Champion into the game to take our place. What we failed to do, He accomplished.
I looked up at the cross and saw what God had become to bring me home. He had become what I was.