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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The crucified and risen Christ comes to renew, restore, and build up.
This is an excerpt from Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation by Amy Mantravadi (1517 Publishing, 2024), pgs. 24-27
Christ is the beating heart of Christian faith and its only object.
We love hearing about Jesus, but we also love hearing about how much effort we need to exert to truly pull off this whole “Christian life” thing.
Christ is always the ultimate for God's children, but we sometimes struggle with things that come before.
No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
Just as trick-or-treaters arrive at doorsteps as beggars, we come to the Lord’s table with nothing to offer but our sin and need for forgiveness.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Luther understood that music is an exceptional teaching tool.
To preach Christ and him crucified is to keep the message simple and accessible.
Jesus Christ is relentless. He does not give up. And with him comes the certainty of redemption.