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 has conquered; he who has an ear let him hear. There is nothing to run from, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear because the Lamb of God has done it all.
The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah written by Steve Kruschel is available for preorder through 1517 Publishing. The following is an excerpt.
Jesus’s followers aren’t ostriches who bury their heads in the sand. That’s not helpful or hopeful for anyone. Resting from life’s trials and troubles comes in the remembrance of the One who is with you in the middle of all of them.
How we feel is so often conditioned upon what we are experiencing. Faith grabs hold of something outside our experience, something objective and true that is not changed by circumstance.
When we are invited to cast all our cares on God's shoulders, he means all of them — every single one of them.
"As we stare down another day, the struggles and joys that it will bring, take a deep breath. In spite of all the failures, floundering, and “that-should-have-been-something’s” flying in our faces, there is peace and redemption in Jesus." Tara Flattley
I love the liturgy of my church, and ache for its full return. When all the world is changing, and everything is disrupted, what comes to mind is what is unchanging: the grace of God.
No matter who or what chooses us as their enemy, we've received God's promise that there's nothing to fear. He will be our Light and Salvation. He will be our strength.
The monsters we fight against and the monsters we become are drowned in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus' death, and the power of his resurrection, restore our humanity.
Even when God doesn’t take away the troubled waters of our life, he is the Bridge we can lean on no matter what storms may come our way.
In the midst of the Word of God being spoken, she felt for the first time God had revealed Himself to her, not as the terrifying judge she feared, but as the loving and tender father He is.
God cares for us because we’re created in his image, but he also cares for us because the second person of the Trinity, the Son, became one of us.