1. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  2. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  3. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  4. This is an excerpt from “The Alien and the Proper: Luther's Two-Fold Righteousness in Controversy, Ministry, and Citizenship,” edited by Robert Kolb (1517 Publishing, 2023). Now available for purchase.
  5. 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.
  6. The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
  7. Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
  8. That great truth of creedal Christianity – that God is man in Christ – is not set forth for our speculative enjoyment.
  9. Rejoice with Mary as she would rejoice with you. Be blessed, like her, with humility from God, so that you may serve joyfully and willingly wherever and in whatever role God has placed you.
  10. You are the friend in low places. It’s only from this place that you are free to look outside yourself for the remedy to the issues that plague you and humanity.
  11. We live again, not so that we will now pay our debt, but to proclaim that we live because our debt was paid!