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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One of the strongest elements in the evangelicalism of my youth has a place in Lutheranism that might be surprising to many. This is what our confessions call “The Mutual Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren."
The details vary, of course, but we too struggle to repair the heart broken by the tragic death of someone we love. We're dazed, angry, speechless.
The place where God appears or dwells ceases to be common ground; it becomes holy. Dust, rocks, vegetation, wood, metals, everything roundabout soaks in his sacredness.
In accordance with their views of what a church is, or what a church ought to be, they planned and executed each of these sanctuaries. In other words, theology designed architecture, and architecture signaled theology.
On that day the mourners were shocked to discover that behind the veneer of her bright smile lurked a fathomless darkness, whose depths she made manifest only when she despaired of life in this world.
Though the theophanic elements at the Jerusalem Pentecost were not as diverse as those at Sinai, there is one prominent commonality between the two: divine speech out of divine fire.
Yes, this is a time of cascading trial. The Lord has been very kind to comfort and assure us of His nearness and to open my eyes to new truth from a passage that I thought I understood.
The crowds, bored into silence, had left a vacuum in the tent that my little boy’s voice began to fill. He laughed unaware and uncaring that he alone laughed, deaf to everyone’s else silence.