When you step into the Lord’s house, he gives you a liturgical imagination to see with eyes of faith all of his goodness and grace.
The thief is the prophetic picture of all of us, staring hopelessly hopeful at the Son of God, begging to hear the same words.
The Solas are not just doctrinal statements. They are the grammar of Christian comfort.

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As with many teachings, the Lutheran teaching on Mutual Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren fits in with other teachings. The various teachings don’t stand alone, but they fit together as an organic whole.
One of the strongest elements in the evangelicalism of my youth has a place in Lutheranism that might be surprising to many. This is what our confessions call “The Mutual Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren."
God must kill me. He’s got to slay me, put me six feet under, and shovel dirt atop my corpse. Then, it’s like, “Hey, I finally understand! You’re God and I’m not.
One day I walked about that place I had tried to make home. I realized it was a prison cell of my own devising.
But unlike fish, there was actual pleasure in the prolonged chewing of this food. For the longer it remained in my mouth, the better it tasted, the more pronounced became its flavor, the more nourishment I received from each bite. This food is the bread on which Jesus survived during his forty days of temptation in the wilderness.
Today, and every day, he wears a crown and every angel in heaven knows him by name.
Have you ever experienced the awkwardness of meeting someone you really enjoy and thinking that it was the start of beautiful friendship, only to find out that they didn’t feel the same way?
O such is the crumbling fortress of the god of this world, but how it entices our flesh! For it looks like a house of candy to the Hansels and Gretels who wander through this world.
Like the patriarch, Jacob, who after his wedding night, awoke to the wrong wife in his bed, I too one day opened my eyes to find that the Rachel with whom I had fallen in love, for whom I'd labored long years, was not the one beside me as the sun rose.
The place where God appears or dwells ceases to be common ground; it becomes holy. Dust, rocks, vegetation, wood, metals, everything roundabout soaks in his sacredness.
Their tongue is our shield, for the weapon of angels is the word of their Lord. Revelation 12 says Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon and his angels. And how did they overcome him? By the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
Jesus is thus not only the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel; He is their fullness. He fills them with words, people, actions, and institutions that testify of Him.