The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.
Christianity does not locate freedom in radical autonomy. It does not tell either men or women that happiness consists in escaping obligations arising from relationships we did not entirely choose.
Jesus never promised me a World Series championship. He never promised that my children would always succeed or that life would go according to plan. He promised something better.

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We don’t love little because we have little that requires forgiveness.
What do you think of when you hear the term “self-esteem”?
Nobody is going to crash Jesus’ wedding feast. Jesus is throwing the only party in town worth attending, and it’s going to be a celebration.
It’s by no means an ivory-tower theological question. It’s as real as the weight we’ve lost from the stress of our divorce. As real as the bottle of antidepressants on our nightstand. We believe in him. We love him. But every voice inside us and every shred of evidence outside us points to his abandonment of us in our hour of deepest need.
The devil isn’t a popular subject nowadays. The argument is made that we’ve progressed as a culture.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).
God has forgiven you. That is an objective fact. You can reject it, but it is nevertheless true.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
The thing seems incredible, and I would not have believed it myself, nor have understood Paul’s words here, had I not witnessed it with my own eyes and experienced it.
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.