1. This is an excerpt from part two of “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  2. Grace comes for every foolish, self-absorbed sinner, for every “Nabal,” and announces that there is one who has already taken it upon himself to shoulder all of our wrongdoing, paying the price for it through the sacrifice of himself.
  3. The Bible not only calls us to remember God’s past acts of deliverance; it also invites us to recognize that God in Christ is still in the business of delivering sinners from bondage.
  4. As Luther said, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf of spring.”
  5. The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
  6. Caesar boasted: “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Christ can rightly say: “I came. I saved. I ascended.”
  7. God's faithfulness is constant and consistent. It knows no season. His love for us doesn't fade with the summer sun.
  8. We live for the most part, on the strength of our moral fiber, under the law, by our zeal for God and all that which tickles our proud fancy.
  9. The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
  10. What I desperately needed was not to preach to myself, but to listen to a preacher—not to take myself in hand, but to be taken in the hands of the Almighty.
  11. Praying the Word of God back to God carries didactic import. It teaches us.
  12. Just like for Mordecai and Esther, our lives are also sustained by the hand of God in the ordinary, in events begging to be seen as the work of Christ in our lives.