This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.

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Indeed, the law said, “You shall love the Lord your God,” but the law cannot give me such love, nor can it take my hand to grasp on to Christ.
From all accounts, everyone in Nazareth would have just thought of Jesus as a very good boy who obeyed his parents and worked hard with his father as a tekton’s apprentice in the family trade.
It is the words the pastor speaks that send the dead out alive.
The following is an excerpt from “Faithless to Fearless” written by David Andersen (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Christians are given a new name at baptism. We are given the Triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
Christmas is, therefore, the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, even while he awaits a number of years to gather his disciples and inaugurate his preaching of the kingdom.
The promise of Advent is the promise of the lamb slain, who is born and given for us so that we don’t have to fear sin, death, and hell.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.
While we do not have an answer, we do have a promise. A promise given to us by a God whose one and only Son was himself slaughtered by those terrified of losing their power.
Her importance goes beyond simply managing the reformer’s household.