‘Peace’ means “I have forgiven all those sins against me.”
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 6-9.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.

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Virtue, like all good things, can easily be weaponized. And not only can, but constantly is. Indeed, I would argue that, for churchgoing, rule-following, tradition-honoring, morality-applauding people, virtue often becomes the cancer that we deem a badge of honor.
The easiest way for us to contend with our sin is to become an agent of sin. We slice and cut others to pieces for all the world to see.
One moment, we pray for our rescue from sin and death. The next moment, we beg our Father to do unto others what we hope he will never do to us.
From all accounts, everyone in Nazareth would have just thought of Jesus as a very good boy who obeyed his parents and worked hard with his father as a tekton’s apprentice in the family trade.
It is that Christmas carol, the curious “We Three Kings” that we are looking at today in our examination of the origin and meaning of Christmas carols.
Christmas is, therefore, the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, even while he awaits a number of years to gather his disciples and inaugurate his preaching of the kingdom.
Christ busies Himself with accomplishing your salvation; race, age, sex, ability or even intelligence notwithstanding.
Jesus has not put on human nature like a shirt and pair of pants, easily stripped off to be a naked God again. No, from the moment of his conception onward, into the everlasting future, God is also human.
One gloomy, silent night, God stepped into our darkness. The Word had not only spoken but was now made flesh.
At Christmas, we hear the story of our salvation, but it’s not pretty.
While we do not have an answer, we do have a promise. A promise given to us by a God whose one and only Son was himself slaughtered by those terrified of losing their power.
Preach the full council of God even as it focuses on the Virgin Mary who was the virginal handmaid of the Lord and through whom Immanuel, “God with us,” happens.