‘Peace’ means “I have forgiven all those sins against me.”
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 6-9.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.

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For Luther, Jesus does something much better for those who grieve than simply identify with them: He brings suffering and evil to an end in His own death.
People say only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. But there are other certainties. Like the daily rising and setting of the sun. And like the fact that life itself has its risings and settings as well.
Death is quite the undertaking. To die when one wants desperately to go on living is the most gruesome kind of labor any of us will ever know. It’s painful and bloody and empties our pockets of the fortune we think is ours. But we must do it.
As usual, Luther took what he received and turned it inside-out, so that it shifted from a series of demands and became a bestowal of God’s gracious promise.
At the core of Luther’s advice is the proclamation that we are free to hand over our pain, our sin, and our inabilities to our Savior.
We're going to worry about what people think of us. It's going to get in the way of our relationship with Jesus. We're going to fear God's judgment. But, we're also baptized into Christ. So we don't give up hope. Jesus will help us and strengthen us. He will guide us in his Baptismal grace and peace.
When we get wrapped up in tying God down, when we worship and work in a way that seems good to each of us, it’s impossible to recognize God as loving Father and helpful Savior.
As I sit here on Easter Sunday, the light is coming into my living room. My dog is sitting sweetly in my lap, enjoy the light scratches on her ear and getting in my face as to stop me from writing.
Worship not only starts with God; it also returns to Him through the filter of the cross. Jesus did not enter a cosmic retirement after his ascension.
The initial sin, therefore, was not the eating of the forbidden fruit but rather listening to a cynic question and intentionally misinterpret God’s goodness
If everyone would just live by the rules, the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it?
Only in this manner could the good that the law pointed to be completed. It was completed in us, not by us.