As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.

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The Apostle Peter’s monumental sermon on Pentecost declares the Kingdom purposes and divine saving work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which culminates in the new world order with Christ in charge.
You and I have a God who pardons all our wrongdoing by taking all of them onto himself. He doesn’t zap us into oblivion at the first sign of rebellion.
Sin, death, and Satan may have had more than a puncher's chance to beat us, but when God stepped into the ring, they should have admitted defeat and thrown in the towel.
If the Risen Christ is ushering in a new kingdom and a new creation, then maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to see some earth-shaking and mind-blowing things taking place.
By his initiative alone, he remakes our hearts to love him and others unselfishly.
The whole point of Church is to be in a place that hands over the gifts and promises of Jesus Christ to dirty rotten sinners who are in desperate need of them.
There is no life when one is separated from the Promised Land because that will be the place where God will send His Messiah.
Faith isn’t something that needs to be done. It’s something to be enjoyed because faith is a gift bestowed by God’s word through the hearing of the Gospel.
We confess the ascension of Christ every Sunday in the words of the both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed.
In Christ, we live beneath an open heaven having the definitive proof in the cross of Christ that God is outrageously for us, not against us.
We all know what I think (maybe) Rachel knows: Celebrating ourselves isn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021), 122-125. Now available for preorder.