We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.

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The emphasis for All Saints Sunday is not on the saints, but the Sanctifier, Jesus Christ.
There are plenty of reasons why you do not already do whatever you want out of fear of the law, and you will find these reasons persist and remain long after the gospel has its way with you.
A seed grows the kingdom of God. A whisper eventually turns the world upside down. A carpenter’s son from nowhere becomes the Savior of everyone. Such is God’s way.
What God created, God will grow. We don’t add a few stitches onto his creation.
The new life Christ opened for us in His justifying resurrection, the new life into which we were baptized is a life of faith.
Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
The giver of life, the source of joy, stands weeping together with the human family as they grieve under the curse of sin.
“Poverty of spirit” is not an ethical value we strive for. It is an act of God’s mercy spoken to the deepest recesses of our soul when it’s overwhelmed by God’s grace.
The law is good and holy but so often when we are “shoulding” on one another, we actually are just going to end up “burning” each other’s fields.
"Ragged" written by Gretchen Ronnevik is now available for purchase from 1517 Publishing
God leads us to the refuge that’s more secure and safe than any man-made thing, more than anything we own, more than anything that owns us.
"Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing" by Michael Berg is now available for purchase