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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By every conceivable category, grace shouldn't exist. It shouldn't have been bestowed. It's the card in God's trick we never saw coming.
Most days, we're not okay. We're not good enough, strong enough, or "Christian" enough.
God will not repent. He will not repent of His promises. He will not change His mind regarding His selfless, self-sacrificing, inconceivable love for sinners.
Abraham knew that this was a God who kept his promises.
Our brokenness cuts deeper than just the times when we recognize it needs to be fixed.
God does not combat the impending armies of Satan with might and power, but with the weakness of a babe.
The Son of Eve disarmed Satan’s hold on humanity, not with an earthquake, atomic bomb, or brilliant essay, but with his dead body and final words, “It is finished.”
I can only disbelieve you or believe you. If I disbelieve you, I go on being a miserable bore.
We are still so much closer to Peter in our flaws than his virtues, and Christ is still our rescue.
Advent draws us to the Lord who comes. We might even say that Advent really does begin in creation as the Father through His Eternal Word breathes His Spirit over the depths of darkness and calls into existence that the culmination of things that are not.
If someone confesses their sins into my ears, I have no options but to forgive them in the name of Christ.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?