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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He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, even as we curse and yell at him for not pleasing us with our pettish wishes.
He is our gold. He is our pure garment. He is our healing. He is our sanity. He is our wholeness.
We have seen a vision better than an angel. We have seen God on the cross. A God who is willing to suffer for us.
He would not go back on his word, for his word is the word of the Father and the Spirit, and they all say “come.”
That is why we dance on graves. That is why we smile in the midst of sorrowful tears. That is why we retell old stories and share humorous memories.
We already know how the war will conclude. Jesus wins.
Is there anything abiding, anything long-lasting that can inspire us to hope again?
As the storm waves of life crash into us, threatening to pull us down into the undertow of sin, Jesus comes and stands between us and the furious tides.
The Lamb is where we are, opposite God, in our place as sinners. He bears our punishment of sin, the forsakenness of God. Anyone bearing his or her own sin is finally lost, but not Jesus.
The biggest point Luther makes about the descent is not that Jesus triumphed over hell idle and unaffected, but that Jesus defeated hell by suffering hell away.
In his last novel, Islands in the Stream, Hemingway shows us what we get when we look to nature for ultimate truth: death.
Dangerous Bible stories show us a God who has no problem whatsoever using the muck and mire of our worst days to make his progress toward his good goal happen.