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.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.

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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).
Dispel some of that darkness bottled up inside you, with the grace first shared to us by Christ that is now ours to share with those around us.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
We can do nothing to warrant entry into the kingdom of God nor are we getting in if we think a seat at God’s table is something to which we are entitled.
Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
I have to believe that grace - God’s grace - will be waiting on the other side.