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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Cliché preaching may be symptomatic of shallow, consumerist culture, perpetuating a problem rather than the solution.
A wonderful intimacy, eternal and beyond our understanding, lies beneath the surface of these words. What is even more wonderful is how this intimacy is also ours. Through the saving work of Jesus, this intimacy is extended unto us.
The point is that the whole lot was wicked. And so were the Galatian Christians. And so are we.
Zipporah and Moses were bound by blood. More than that, God and Moses were bound by blood.
Jesus is not celebrating diversity or difference. He is promising sameness. Redundancy. A repeat of what has happened before.
The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah written by Steve Kruschel is available for preorder through 1517 Publishing. The following is an excerpt.
The Word was preached into your ears, the Holy Spirit worked through that word, and wormed His way from the sinful preacher's mouth to your wicked ears and onto your sinful heart.
While faith forms the relationship with God and love the relationship with the neighbor, hope forms the Christian’s relationship with the future.
How we feel is so often conditioned upon what we are experiencing. Faith grabs hold of something outside our experience, something objective and true that is not changed by circumstance.
Jesus sees His disciples facing future uncertainty and responds not with details about dates and times and procedures to follow, but with His promise and His presence.
We have one thing which will never change. We have a shepherd who knows us by name and who promises to speak to us in all of life’s situations.
This gospel is not like all other human acts of gift-giving. It doesn’t come with the expectation of a gift in return. His mercy is an unreturned gift.