To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.
May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of Being Family by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-6.

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The Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah, written by Steve Kruschel, is available now for preorder and will be released by 1517 Publishing one week from today, on May 11. The following is an excerpt.
Jesus sees His disciples facing future uncertainty and responds not with details about dates and times and procedures to follow, but with His promise and His presence.
The temple Christ inhabits is His own body and His body has been expanded, as it were, to include both Jew and Gentile in the Church.
The Church is called to be Christ-like and that means reaching out in mercy to the widows, orphans and outcasts-the disenfranchised and helpless-like Christ Jesus gave example.
There is a question often raised by Christians and even some theologians that is unanswerable: Why are some saved, and others are lost? While it might seem to be a good question, it is not. Let’s examine it more closely.
By more intentionally and consistently incorporating the concrete elements of story and metaphor into your preaching, you refresh your language, serve your people, and shed fresh light on the Gospel.
We have one thing which will never change. We have a shepherd who knows us by name and who promises to speak to us in all of life’s situations.
You have been chosen to come out of the darkness and into this marvelous light, the light of the Resurrection. You are a people who constitute an exodus from racism, sexism, elitism, classism and now participate in a new race of human beings who are, through baptism, the foundational cure for the evils of these things in human society.
The teaching of the Apostles, the fellowship of believers, the breaking of bread and prayer lay out the components of worship.
This gospel is not like all other human acts of gift-giving. It doesn’t come with the expectation of a gift in return. His mercy is an unreturned gift.
When Christians die, heaven does not “get another angel.” We cannot become angels any more than we can become giraffes or ocean waves or stars. We are people and will remain so after this present life. God did not make a mistake when he made us human.
In this season of a global pandemic, Peter’s little letter is especially potent as he writes to sustain the hope born of Christ’s resurrection in scattered believers whose lives were marked by suffering.