Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
Everyone dreads what might happen if political control is captured by the enemy. Paranoia is the characteristic feature of this kind of under-realized eschatology.
What fundamentally and truly matters about me is not what I do, but what has been done for me. Discipleship isn’t a virtue or habit that is honed through practice. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the one who has made it his mission to forgive sinners, raise the dead, comfort the troubled, and exorcise the demons that haunt us.
Christians are free to engage in political matters, even as Christians, but the church as an institution has a responsibility not to lobby for specific political ends, however worthy and just they might be.
Divine election is nothing other than God’s freedom and power to choose, and He has made His word the instrument by which He makes His choice about you.
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.