1. If we just say to God, “We don’t get it, please explain,” he will. He will send us a preacher to point us to his words for more clarification.
  2. The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
  3. It’s scary to share my struggle and to show that I have cracks because once I’ve shown my cards, I open myself up for judgment.
  4. Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
  5. The hardest thing you and I will ever be called to do is to believe that it is done already, that it really and truly is finished.
  6. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  7. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
  8. All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
  9. Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
  10. We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
  11. God gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
  12. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.