1. A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
  2. This is an excerpt from part two of “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  3. This is an excerpt from chapter 9 of “What Can Really Know?: The Strengths and Limits of Human Understanding” by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  4. The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
  5. Prayer is not just about asking for things. It's about receiving what has already been given to us in Christ.
  6. God cares about our real life where we actually are. He is present in the everyday.
  7. When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
  8. God wants his word of promise to be the only thing we bank on, the only thing we have confidence in.
  9. The Lord knew how it felt to be a rejected stone.
  10. Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
  11. As I look back, I choose to remember her as a soul redeemed by Christ.