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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Is it possible to celebrate Thanksgiving every time we come together as God’s people as well?
We give thanks to the Father who has made a way for us to sit at his table.
In the Lord’s Thanksgiving Supper, we are not served turkey, green bean casserole, and cornbread. We are served Christ.
That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
Thanksgiving utters a confession of dependence, an acknowledgement of the gift of something not earned or deserved.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.
Our experience with good fathers – even when they are not our own – can point us to God the Father.
Hebrews proclaims you absolutely need a priest and you have one. This priest is Jesus!
The entrance of children into the world reminds our world of the hope of redemption in Genesis 3:15.
The goal of language in the mouth of a Christian isn’t to hold power for ourselves but to give it.
Man and woman together are complete. Apart, they are incomplete. The two correspond and form “one flesh” when combined in sexual relationships and as helpmates.
Rachel was the beloved wife, to be sure, but she was not the maternal link between Eve and Mary. That blessed position belonged to Leah.