We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.

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It is often the case that when dealing Divine, we find ourselves befuddled. For as relatable and surprisingly vulnerable God is as the man Jesus, he seems, at times, to retain a certain aloofness, a type of distance.
Before long I was deeply involved in the trilogy (the reader is invariably "drawn into" the story in a unique way, and for a good reason as we shall see).
Years ago I picked up a used copy of Thomas Á Kempis’ Imitation of Christ at a second-hand bookstore.
We are continuing our summer series on a theology of worship through the lens of language. Before moving forward, let me highlight a few points by way of review.
The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
We all began by hearing the truth, and then speaking the truth and believing the truth. That truth came to us on the lips of another.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
Hus was burned at the stake in his early 40s, Luther lived to a fairly ripe, old age, but why?
But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?
Before you ever know what happened, Satan has taught us to doubt the promise of the crucified and risen Christ.
That is the way of our Lord, the way of grace. He doesn’t abandon Thomas to drown in a sea of doubt.