Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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Symbols throw together a physical artifact we can see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell, with a truth beyond the tangible.
This is an edited excerpt from Addendum A, “The Church Year,” On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service, written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023), pgs. 113-120.
To embrace our creatureliness is to affirm the truth that we were created to worship.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Your God is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2023).
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
Do our petitions move God?
What’s the big deal about Jesus’ name?
I didn’t see Christmas as a gift given to me to enjoy, I saw Christmas as a long list of expectations I needed to hold up to love those around me.
Can you imagine Christmas from creation’s point of view?
Luke shows us that when we try to fit God into our life movie, the plot is all wrong; and not just wrong but trivial.
We still think we can sort own own problems with more money, more education, more resources, more techniques, more, more, more.