For Luther, Jesus does something much better for those who grieve than simply identify with them: He brings suffering and evil to an end in His own death.
Death is quite the undertaking. To die when one wants desperately to go on living is the most gruesome kind of labor any of us will ever know. It’s painful and bloody and empties our pockets of the fortune we think is ours. But we must do it.
As usual, Luther took what he received and turned it inside-out, so that it shifted from a series of demands and became a bestowal of God’s gracious promise.
One of the great themes of the Game of Thrones is the personification of Death, most concretely in the form of the Night King, supreme commander of the blue-eyed nightwalkers.
As I sit here on Easter Sunday, the light is coming into my living room. My dog is sitting sweetly in my lap, enjoy the light scratches on her ear and getting in my face as to stop me from writing.
In a world where science tells us that everything is deteriorating and we’re all one day closer to our physical death it’s nice to think that there might be something we are getting better at.
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.