This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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Polycarp’s faith, life, writings, and even his death revealed the fruit of faith and love grafted into his heart by Christ the Vine.
Jesus is very difficult to bring down. That’s the power of it.
There is no one — not now, not ever — who cannot be included in the family of God through the efficacy of Christ’s saving power.
"When God has his say, have confidence that his Word and sacraments bestow precisely what he says."
We now are the magi: we worship Christ because of who he is, but also because of what he has done for us and what he continues to do in his gift-giving to us.
Epiphany continues the work done at Christmas, bringing light and life to a dying world desperate for hope.
It's a new year, and you are still the same you: a sinner who is simultaneously perfect in every way because Christ declares it to be so.
Christ is the beating heart of Christian faith and its only object.
This is the basic argument of To Gaze upon God: that we who now see as if behind a veil will one day enjoy the unveiled splendor of God himself, who will dwell with us forever.
One Christ rules over all of it. He is the constant, the root that nourishes every estate and every vocation.
If we picture the New Testament as a divinely painted masterpiece that hangs in the middle of a museum, then all around it are other works of the period, in different corridors of the museum, in many styles, painted by diverse artists, with variations of color and technique.
Mary looms large in our theology, our liturgy, our confessions and creeds.