In the end, your story isn’t an epic of personal glory. You aren’t the hero. Your Savior Jesus is.
Whether a Christian enjoys high church, low church, or something in between, aesthetics in the Church are not about any one individual person and their particular tastes. Aesthetics are, fundamentally, not a matter of legalism, but of edification—that the Gospel of Christ might be preached and taught to all peoples, unhindered by its medium.
Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.

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Sometimes the old story is the one we need to hear again and again.
The great lie of addiction is that suffering must be fled, must be numbed, must be drowned out by any means necessary.
To be happy is to be the object of God’s love in Christ and to love God and others with the love of Christ.
This is an excerpt from Ditching the Checklist: Assurance of Salvation for Evangelicals (and Other Sinners) by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 5-7.
The wrong god means love remains frail, fickle, or a fiction. The right God means love is the most reliable thing in all the world.
Wisdom lurks in the outer places. Rich gratitude sprouts from the impoverished and forgotten.
The name of Jesus holds us fast.
It is impossible to live our lives in a way that would convince God of our value because he already knows our value. He is the one who gave it to us.
The love of God is creative, always giving, always reviving.
The Lord’s provision doesn’t rest on the strength of our gratitude.
This is an excerpt from Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation by Amy Mantravadi (1517 Publishing, 2024), pgs. 24-27
Thanksgiving is never out of place for the Christian.