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.

All Articles

I’m a life-long New Yorker, and I have the pleasure of working minutes from the neighborhood I grew up in as a boy.
In the beginning, we read about the invention of religion. It begins simply enough in Genesis 3
We tell our children if they work hard and play by the rules, they’ll succeed in life. Jerks, cheaters, and thieves won’t. They’ll end up in the gutter. Or jail. Or worse.
Thank God for heroes: they inspire us to be better, to help others, to live and work for the good of our race. And thank God for villains, too: they incarnate our shadow side, our nocturnal soul, the dragon within us that must incessantly have its throat slit on the altar of repentance.
I’ve had a lot of nasty things done to me in my 43 years of life. Many of which were done by church people while we were worshipping and serving Jesus together.
But there is something far more serious and important: being reconciled to our Father in Heaven.
The devil isn’t a popular subject nowadays. The argument is made that we’ve progressed as a culture.
I am often haunted by my past. I am daily haunted by what I should be doing.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
What we notice less often is that this same fear wonders about both the efficacy of the Gospel and the Law.
The Christian sees himself or herself as one just as guilty as the rest of the world. But we see ourselves not just as what’s wrong with the world, but in the One by whom the world has been redeemed.
Would you go to the church on the corner knowing that the pastor is an ex-con?