When we consider our own end, it will not bring us into a final wrestling match with the messenger of God, but into the embrace of the Messiah of God.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
This is the third in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.

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Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
To preach Christ and him crucified is to keep the message simple and accessible.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
Let your soul grieve, yes, but don’t let it be eaten alive by worry.
The sinful nature loves self, and pride is its native tongue.
Jacob is given the gospel afresh right when he needed it and it is because of this gospel that his faith is stirred up anew.
This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
In the Bible, we meet the God who also does not prance around naked as a jaybird.
God’s headline for his church prioritizes the person of Jesus and his purpose to demonstrate God’s power by dying and rising again for our salvation.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).