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.
It appeared everything would work out perfectly when Ivan the Great married Sophia Palaiologos. But when inheritance was discussed the problems arrived.

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You are changing as your eyes move over these sentences. You are aging. You are on your way to death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.
There’s something appealing about a caged deity.
If you’ve been in church long enough, you might have seen the worst of someone’s unrepentant sin get them kicked out, cast out, excommunicated or “handed over to Satan so their flesh might die and their soul might live.”
There is an unfortunate, but familiar pilgrimage that entirely too many have taken—servants who have offered strong confession and service in the pure Gospel, but who then have doctrinally gone astray.
That is the way of our Lord, the way of grace. He doesn’t abandon Thomas to drown in a sea of doubt.
On this night of nights, Christ arises victorious and sends the devil’s hordes running with no darkness to find cover; death’s dark shadow is gone
“Why do you seek the living One among the dead?” the angel asked the two women. The time for Jesus to die has passed.
That man you see on the tree—he is the re-Genesis of the world. He has come to remake us alive and free and beautiful on the Friday of his crucifixion.
In this evil generation we’re all in the dark about something. We’re all inevitably overcome by the darkness of sin and death.
The first person who attempted to stop people from talking about Jesus was not a tyrant, a secular government, or a bully religious mob.
Thankfully, our heavenly Father sent a Champion into the game to take our place. What we failed to do, He accomplished.
He is the God who makes His glory visible in lowliness and servitude. He is the God who is so poor that He must borrow a donkey to ride into Jerusalem.