Calling oneself a “Bible-believing Christian” fails to account for the fact that every belief system, knowingly or unknowingly, arises out of a particular history.
From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.
There are important historical reasons for making a distinction between ministry and vocation.

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If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
1517 would not exist without the leadership, friendship, and faithfulness of Pastor Ron Hodel.
There is someone outside of I, someone outside of you, that our faith and hope is in.
So, we pray. Not just in times of need, but we pray at all times. Because this is part of what it means to be saved.
We worry about the fact our days are as grass – so we try to scratch out a place for ourselves, to make a permanent, lasting place, to climb to higher places and succeed, more often than not, only to hurt each other in the process.
The point Luther made, again and again, was that distance between God and sinners is collapsed when the crucified Christ himself comes to sinners through a preacher.
Jesus opens for us a way to walk through suffering and to sing our song of salvation as we talk to our heavenly Father.
Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
What we have in our reading is a picture of how God deals with a lack of understanding.
Nothing stands against you. Only Christ stands now, and he is for you, more for you than you could ever know, for you like nothing else that has ever loved you.
If you sit where Joseph sits, then you also face the choice that Joseph faced. Do you respond with vengeance?
Is the "still small voice" of God a murmuring in your heart, a whisper of conscience, the Universe whispering to you? When we explore 1 Kings 19, that "voice" turns out to be very much like the Messenger and Word of the Lord.