As Christians, we rest in the finished work of Christ on the cross, and we yearn for our neighbor to be reconciled to God, to know the peace that we are resting in.

What kind of shepherd does God provide? The answer, of course, starts and ends with Christ.

Salvation is not simply transactional; it is fundamentally relational. Not anemic, but full-blooded. Not disembodied, but bodied.

God is coloring over your sin and making you fragrant; he is making you righteous in his sight. The old is gone, forever covered over by this new work.

In the quiet of your own uptown, where your own sins bear down on you and create a troubled conscience before the world, before others, and before God, your Lord reaches across the chasm of brokenness to take your hand.

God doesn't help those who help themselves. He saves those who can't do anything for themselves.

Our brokenness cuts deeper than just the times when we recognize it needs to be fixed.

We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.

A new life in Christ Jesus is our hope. Not only that, Jesus is our access to God.

Reconciliation with God affirms the worth of our persons, and it banishes the inhibitions and fears, as well as the resentments and desire for revenge, which create gulches between us and those around us.

Stories like Onoda’s offer an interesting parallel to our life in the Gospel.

Here, we read the mystery and majesty of the incarnation of the Son of God wrapped up into a single package