God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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Abraham didn’t understand God very well (at least not early on). I don’t say that as a dig against the Patriarch. I don’t think any of us understand God very well either.
This rather unique human being is God grounded in our humanity. The man Jesus.
He has given you clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home—as well as grocery stores, carpenters, and farmers to provide those goods.
Even a sinner who is crushed by the weight of her offenses, who feels in her bones the weight of judgment, shame, and doubt can expect to receive God's good word.
Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?
The God who's lifted up above Calvary, abandoned and forsaken, should draw a more discerning crowd of followers.
The more I heard the song, the more I heard the heart of the Gospel in the song.
There is no Psalm as well known as Psalm 23
He finds the woman and the man in the Garden and fought back for the identity of His people.
It was Jesus who appeared to Hagar, comforted her, and gave her the promise of future blessings. It was Jesus who came to her when it seemed everything and everyone else had let her down.
You matter so much to God that he would rather die than lose you. You matter so much to Jesus that no suffering was too much, no deprivation too burdensome, no punishment too severe for him to endure to have you as his own.
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.