‘Peace’ means “I have forgiven all those sins against me.”
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 6-9.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.

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The parable is harsh. It judges. If you do not believe, you will not be saved. But let us pause for a moment and think about why Jesus is telling the parable.
We give thanks to the Lord for His victory over death and the grave both for those who are now with Him in glory and for ourselves even as we press forward in faithfulness awaiting the Day when our eyes will see Him.
God uses the fifth commandment to protect us from selfishness, prevent us from only thinking about our needs, and to drive us to Christ and our neighbors.
Jesus breaks through our barriers in His beatitudes. He shatters our conceptions of the blessed life and opens the Kingdom of God to all people.
These words provide a very bleak picture of the future of Israel. Fortunately, the next chapters provide Gospel that is equally as clear and direct.
Jesus will strengthen and encourage us because he is true life, and life has defeated death.
The Gospel is gift, pure and simple. It is backwards. It is upside down. It is foolish. And as long as people are sinners, it is as relevant as ever.
The command to love those nearby is as challenging as it is simple. Jesus took the initiative to come near to us in loving sacrifice.
Justification matters so deeply. It is a matter of life and death, Heaven and Hell. It must be preached that way. Especially today.
The LORD is the God of Israel and, therefore, Israel can walk in His paths with holiness and righteousness because His holiness is with them and on them.
The Gospel is a precious and comforting word. It comforts and refreshes the sad heart. It wrestles it out of the jaws of death and hell and transports it to the certain hope of eternal life, through faith in Christ.
Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaluation of us.