Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?

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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.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
Sin is a heavy thing to bear. Its jacket is shame, its medals are guilt.
The love of God in Christ Jesus never changes. That love is for you.
Jesus has gone ahead of you on the road, and promises to be with you still.
We are not pursuing dragons; we are the dragons. We are, all of us, Eustace Scrubb.
A truly Lenten mindset sees the season as preparatory for the resurrection life of Easter as opposed to the mortification of Good Friday.
Your champion steps forward.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
The driving impulse of Lent isn’t so much “giving up” things as it is “putting on” something.