As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.

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We might assume that all ways are equal to raising a child in wisdom, but they are not.
The words “for you” are what deliver burdened hearts into the glorious light of freedom, for they deliver the precious, life-giving cargo of God’s relentless grace to each of us.
There is God. He existed before anything existed, for he has always existed and he will always exist. He created everything that exists outside of himself, and therefore he owns it all, including humankind.
In these two stories - one ending and the other beginning just a day apart - we find many ingredients that are uniquely American. We find grit, determination, and conquest.
At the core of Luther’s advice is the proclamation that we are free to hand over our pain, our sin, and our inabilities to our Savior.
When Lamech named his newborn son Noah—which means “rest”—he said, “This one shall give us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed”
The initial sin, therefore, was not the eating of the forbidden fruit but rather listening to a cynic question and intentionally misinterpret God’s goodness
No matter what happens, whether failure, pain, or discouragement, Jesus says, “Come to me... and I will give you rest"
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works for me, not because it substitutes a temporal and flimsy antidote to my problems but because it points me to the God who has adopted and baptized me
I was once asked why I thought young people were leaving the church in droves after they graduated high school.
We’ve all been there, waiting in line to check out, and the person ahead of us questions the price of something that was just rung up.
Asking, “Do you have to be baptized to be saved?” is really like asking, “Does Jesus have to save you in order for you to be saved?”