1. And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
  2. Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22nd of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
  3. When God cancels you, it is an occasion for all of the canceled who are in heaven and earth to rejoice in that one more is added to our number.
  4. This tale of two professors has a common theme, plot, and denouement - the good news of the one true story, Jesus Christ crucified for you.
  5. Jesus is our sympathizer, our propitiation, and our advocate. We will be tempted but God will provide the way out, the way out is Jesus, the one who died for our sins.
  6. The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
  7. This story of despair met with the hope of the gospel is rightly told by many during the holiday season.
  8. The well-meaning advice “time heals all wounds” is offensively false when we confront the overwhelming evidence that the constants in our lives are death, taxes, and suffering.
  9. St John of the Cross' feast day on December 14 commemorates the day of his death in 1591, at the height of the Catholic renewal movement that followed the Reformation.
  10. Christ urges us to love our neighbor as He loved us, forgiving all of their sins - giving them the absolving, shirt-pulling, embrace that we would also want.
  11. It wasn’t a perfect image, but it was still there, even in its cartoonish movie magic distortion. It was an element of the Gospel right there in front of me.
  12. Jesus overcame sin, death, and Satan on the cross. His bloody suffering and death marked this sinful world's defeat.