God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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This opening section of Ephesians is a virtual treasure trove of gospel promises, praising God for who He is and the abundant blessings He pours out upon His saints.
The giver of life, the source of joy, stands weeping together with the human family as they grieve under the curse of sin.
With Jesus, troubles and sorrows, problems and worries, heartbreak and mourning are gathered up like left-over crumbs from a feast marking the celebration of victory over the enemy's forces.
We can not give our Heavenly Father anything that will make him love us more or less. He gives and we receive.
Mankind’s “thoughts and ways” on the matter of pardon and forgiveness do not even come close to exhausting, let alone fathoming, God’s “thoughts and ways.”
Take away the communal aspect, take away the communal gathering around Christ’s body and blood, and the Christian will begin to suffer a malnutrition of faith.
“Poverty of spirit” is not an ethical value we strive for. It is an act of God’s mercy spoken to the deepest recesses of our soul when it’s overwhelmed by God’s grace.
God invites you to confess the skeletons in your closet so that he might bury them in the grave for good.
The story of Juneteenth is one of living between proclamation and emancipation, and the story of the Christian faith is one of living in that same tension.
The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.
This is an edited excerpt from “The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah” written by Steve Kruschel (1517 Publishing, 2019).
This article comes to us from 1517 guest contributor, Karen Stenberg.