‘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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Over the last 11 months I’ve spent the bulk of my time working to plant a church in New York City.
Years ago I picked up a used copy of Thomas Á Kempis’ Imitation of Christ at a second-hand bookstore.
One of the things you get used to if you talk about this thing called “grace” often enough, is sooner or later you’ll be looked down on by your peers.
In the classic musical, The Sound of Music, the storyline follows the main character, Maria, as she is sent from her life in an Abbey to become a governess over seven children.
Years ago a pastor friend of mine who felt betrayed by someone he trusted told me that he was under no biblical obligation to forgive his betrayer unless and until he asked for forgiveness.
He lavishly pours out His rest in the waters of Baptism, in the spoken words of absolution from the pastor’s lips, in the preaching of the cross and resurrection, in the consumption of heavenly cuisine from the table at which He is host and meal.
When Dorothy, Toto and her 3 new friends finally arrived in Oz, they were met with a staggering disappointment. The Great and Powerful is Oz was not so great and powerful.
It seems that no matter where we look in this world, we never quite find what we really need.
It is worthwhile because Jesus Christ gave baptism to His disciples as a means for making disciples after He had suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and buried and rose again on the third day.
A promise was made to my older brother roughly 50 years ago. He was just an infant and had no idea that this promise was being set upon him.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
The authority God gives to men—to you and I as baptized believers in Christ—is to forgive sins, to free them from guilt, to free them from the power of sin.