American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.
The Passover wasn’t just Israel’s story; it’s ours.
God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.

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What the law is powerless to do, Jesus accomplishes for us. Jesus delivers what the law demands.
We sing, and in so doing, we are blessed as we are instilled with the word of God in word and song.
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 the words the pastor speaks that send the dead out alive.
The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.
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.
The promise of Advent is the promise of the lamb slain, who is born and given for us so that we don’t have to fear sin, death, and hell.
One gloomy, silent night, God stepped into our darkness. The Word had not only spoken but was now made flesh.
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.
All creation joins together to repeat the sounding joy.
God will not repent. He will not repent of His promises. He will not change His mind regarding His selfless, self-sacrificing, inconceivable love for sinners.
Abraham knew that this was a God who kept his promises.