This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
The Church speaks not with the cleverness of men, but with the breath of God.
I always imagined dying a faithful death for Christ would mean burning at the stake. Now, I suspect it will mean dying in my bed of natural causes.

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God comes to us through the flesh and blood and spirit of Christ precisely where he promised to be manifest to us and for us.
This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Only the resurrection of Jesus guarantees and facilitates divine presence and love to us as divine life for us.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
The resurrection of Jesus encompasses the total and comprehensive glorification of a human being, not merely his restoration.
Christ Jesus brings his word and presence to where you are and he is even willing to do so through the likes of your personally present pastor.
Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.
Luther's emphasis on the need for sinners to have preachers who can provide them with the comfort and support they need for their faith in Jesus Christ and life is as relevant today as it was in his time.
If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.
This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.