1. This is an excerpt from the prologue of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  2. What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.
  3. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  4. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  5. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  6. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  7. The earliest followers of God sang their faith, which is no different today as we sing of the hope we have in Jesus.
  8. The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
  9. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  10. Psalm 98, with its promise of a sea and mountains singing, takes these imposing natural features and turns them into a praise choir.
  11. Despite our best efforts to avoid him, King Jesus remains very much unavoidable.
  12. When and how did the church start this season of anticipation?