We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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As we enter into this year’s Advent season, this blog is a part of our series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ, Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
I think we can all agree that there is not a more popular writer on Christ Hold Fast than Chad Bird.
Where Jesus says, “She’s not dead, she’s sleeping,” death dies.
The more that we hear the law, the more we recognize others as those who, like us, are torn and tattered by the wounds of sin and brokenness.
We tell our children if they work hard and play by the rules, they’ll succeed in life. Jerks, cheaters, and thieves won’t. They’ll end up in the gutter. Or jail. Or worse.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
God has forgiven you. That is an objective fact. You can reject it, but it is nevertheless true.
Let’s take a walk together. And as we do, I’ll tell you a mystery.
We are caught up in a battle between two kings and two kingdoms. And, whether we like it or not, we are ruled by one king or the other.
When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
Early in the church’s life, some Christians were dragged before the city authorities in Thessalonica and accused of “turning the world upside down,” (Acts 17:6). They were guilty as charged. They were turning the world upside down. Or, rather, they were putting the world right side up.
The Confessions instead look forward and provide a critique of the world and of all my various religions and idolatries.