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.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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God’s plans and purposes for this world aren’t dependent upon us. They’re dependent upon him. This means our faith is liberated.
God is not what we experience him to be, what our emotions narrate him to be, or what our intuition thinks he might be. God is what and who he says he is.
Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.
Regardless of my experience, my talents, or even my mood, it’s these gifts of Christ that I have to give away. They are all I have, and they are everything.
Our anxiety about the future is a consequence of our old self’s attempts to achieve freedom for himself apart from Christ Jesus.
So, what do we pray? What do we say? In times of fear, in times of chaos, in unprecedented times, we pray and say the words that have been written on our hearts.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours the ability to abandon fixing our eyes only inwardly and lets us see ourselves as others see us.
And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
From the womb to the tomb, from the cradle to the grave, Jesus’ name defines and describes who he is and what he is all about.
As a parent listens for the cry of a hurting child, our heavenly Father waits for our cry of weal and woe.
For God to shine his face upon us is the same as saying, “Christ Jesus is with us.”
Has the modern world taken too strong a dose of the gospel as its inheritance from the Reformation?