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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by Philip Melanchthon, translated by Scott L. Keith, Ph.D.; edited by Kurt Winrich
This evening we will together take a very abbreviated look at what led Luther down the long road to the discovery of the Gospel.
The same can be said of the Reformation. I have often heard both Roman Catholic and Lutheran brothers and sisters bemoan the celebration of the Reformation.
You became, for a time, ritually unclean. Not sinful. Not immoral. To be unclean meant you bore in your own body the effects of a creation in bondage to decay.
Professional historians frequently assert that "miracles" are not a proper subject for historical investigation.
All our little laws reveal that we are, by nature, trying to justify ourselves before others, and before God, based on what we do and who we are.
We fly away to the judgment seat of God. There we shall appear before the One who knows all, before whom nothing is hidden. Do you really think you can conceal anything from Him?
The essential Christian claim is that God came to earth in Christ and died for men to take care of their problem of sin and evil.
Years ago I picked up a used copy of Thomas Á Kempis’ Imitation of Christ at a second-hand bookstore.
Dear church, do not get sidetracked. This is about far more than terrorism, racism, gun ownership, and the like. This is about the evil of the human heart.
The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
As the story unfolds we see Luther’s Heidelberg theses on display, even before the Fellowship leaves Rivendell.