Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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While midnight might seem long, the mercy of God assures us that the morning will come.
A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
The Lord’s Prayer is liturgy and catechism, action and instruction, praxis and theology.
Prayer is not just about asking for things. It's about receiving what has already been given to us in Christ.
God cares about our real life where we actually are. He is present in the everyday.
When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
The Holy Spirit isn’t so much the one you look at, as he is the one who turns you from looking at yourself and your sin to your Savior, Jesus.
The Lord knew how it felt to be a rejected stone.
Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
As I look back, I choose to remember her as a soul redeemed by Christ.