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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Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
We will not become hopeless because the Lord is with us.
The more awareness we have that we are weak and low and frail and incapable of doing this thing called life, the more perfectly we are positioned to meet the God of grace.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
While the world is full of horizons and endpoints, for Christians, there is always tomorrow, and there are people in that tomorrow waiting for us as we wait for them.
We ache in eager anticipation as we see Christ in action and as we take in the snapshots of his life, death, and resurrection.
Help comes for those who cannot help themselves. When we bottom-out and come to the end of ourselves, that is where hope springs.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Our God is a living God and he listens to our cries for help.
We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.