1. Erasmus sought to find meaning behind the words of Scripture in order to make an ultimate claim. Luther, on the other hand, found the Gospel to be meaningless outside of Christ and his Cross.
  2. The entrance of children into the world reminds our world of the hope of redemption in Genesis 3:15.
  3. 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.
  4. The grass withered for them too, but they held on to God’s Word. They knew that was eternal, so they lived in it. They lived in his forgiveness.
  5. The Second Edition of “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory?” by Steven Hein is now available from 1517 Publishing.
  6. What God created, God will grow. We don’t add a few stitches onto his creation.
  7. Green is the color for “ordinary time” in the liturgical church year. It's the regular time of year that always gets overshadowed by other seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.
  8. The title “peacemakers” is not ours except as we tell and retell his peacemaking story.
  9. Christian hope means always hope in God and hope in Christ simultaneously without distinction.
  10. The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.
  11. The only one truly blessed of God, who in himself is God’s incarnate makarios, surrounds himself with a multitude of the accursed, the non-makarios.
  12. 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.