God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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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.
Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22nd of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
For God to shine his face upon us is the same as saying, “Christ Jesus is with us.”
The accent of Scripture emphasized that Christ is for you. Yes, you. He’s not for the perfect people of our imaginations. He’s not just for Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, or Paul. Christ is also for you.
As human beings, we usually think that mercy should have limits; that it should never exceed its confines. This attitude is rooted deeply in the human heart.
Freedom and reconciliation were significant themes for both of the Martin Luthers.
In our transactional view of our faith - “If I don’t… then God won’t.” “I need to, so God can” - we are seriously underestimating who we are dealing with.
Jesus knows you and everybody else come from a long line of life wasters going all the way back to Adam. Jesus died for life wasters! Let go of your bootstraps. Stand back up. Your Father loves you.
Good works do not give us a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Rather, good works result from righteousness given by the good work of the Righteous One on the cross.
My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
What more could God do to prove to us that he is for us and not against us than to give his own Son into this fallen world to take the cross in our place, exchanging his righteousness for our many sins.