It's a new year, and you are still the same you: a sinner who is simultaneously perfect in every way because Christ declares it to be so.

As we celebrate Advent and Christmas, we flex the muscles of a new season, a new year, a new life which His resurrection and our baptisms have bestowed upon us.

Gretchen and Katie are back at recording and they talk about where they've been, and what they learned.

When you see the year ending, thank the Lord, because he had led you into this cycle of years.

C.S. Lewis, Grief, and the Holiday Season

Gretchen and Katie are finally back together, and they have a lot of catching up to do.

The nefarious thing about idolatry is that just about anything can become your idol: career, family, fame, wealth, status, spouse, you name it, any good thing can become a ‘god-thing” with ease. 

Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.

Our children are not our own, but even more, our children are born in need. They are sinful, from conception and from birth.

Christ has received the mark of law that we might be marked with the gospel, with the sign of his holy cross on our heads and hearts as redeemed children of God.

While the world and other religions might be fine with considering him everything but, the foremost thing our Jesus came to be and still remains is Jesus, Savior.

Buried deep in our human psyche, there seems to be more than a need—almost a necessity—to celebrate the arrival of a new year. It’s like an unspoken, unlegislated cultural demand, as instinctual as moving to music or smiling at a newborn. Why? What deep human need is at work here?