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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His word is what strengthens and changes our hearts. The Lord God will bring us victory.
We trust God's Word because Jesus never fails us. He is our daily comfort when struggles and afflictions find us.
Your prayers are not what make you acceptable in his sight. You have already been made acceptable through the blood of Christ.
He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, even as we curse and yell at him for not pleasing us with our pettish wishes.
New normals are always sneaking up on us. Preachers ignore them to their peril and the peril of our hearers.
The power of God's Word is nothing like human power. People exercise power through force and violence. God's Word manifests His power through humility, service, and self-sacrifice.
There is no comfort in naked sovereignty. A bully may be said to be “sovereign” over the elementary school playground, but that doesn’t bring much comfort nor does it promise security. We need something more than a God who is in control.
Apart from God's word, we will judge the right to be wrong and evil people as good.
It is one thing to pray against death’s slow and aggressive assault on God’s creation. It is another to trust in the one who has conquered the grave.
In the quiet of your own uptown, where your own sins bear down on you and create a troubled conscience before the world, before others, and before God, your Lord reaches across the chasm of brokenness to take your hand.
“Who Am I?” edited by Scott Ashmon (1517 Publishing, 2020) is now available for purchase.
There is often no way forward for us without the prophetic lament, because such laments force out our honesty and resentment at the God who does not treat us as we expect to be treated.