As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.

All Articles

This is an edited excerpt from Addendum A, “The Church Year,” On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service, written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023), pgs. 113-120.
With the Spirit we will get lost in the world. We are on a new track.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
Elsewhere makes promises that can’t be kept, but God’s promises are secure, reliable, and certain.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
This article is written by guest contributor, Christopher J. Richmann.
Sometimes, we get prayer dementia. We can’t remember what we were going to pray for, we can’t put the words together, and, frustrated, there is nothing we can do but sigh and groan.
There is no AA for legalists. At least not officially. But there ought to be, and it should be called your local church.
It would serve us well to embrace the beauty of our diversity within the unity of the body of Christ.