Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.
As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.

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Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
The vinedresser refused to give up on his unfruitful tree. He put himself between it and the judgment it deserved, serving as mediator and caretaker.
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
Jesus' course led from death into life, as He had promised. And He promises to lead us on that same course from death to life, from lament to joy.
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.
This world of unbearable grief and accidental calamity is being renewed and, soon, will be completely bereft of every pernicious foe.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
As the greater and more faithful Son of God, Jesus did what the Israelites could not do. Neither can we.
Excerpt #3 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
God saves us through people. He saves us through means. He puts a voice on the gospel.