“A love that left people alone in their guilt would not be real love.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1990, 1995), 217. Bonhoeffer was speaking about the love Christ had for humanity. By taking on human …
Tag: love
What happens when they are touched by the breath of God?
From its inception nearly two centuries ago, my church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was known to be a church body that, despite all the caricatures (negative or positive, rightly or wrongly attributed) was a church body that had been, to borrow from a father in the faith, grabbed by a book that would not …
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What Should We Speak?
One of the reasons I appreciate engaging in historical research, particularly related to the early to mid-twentieth century, is because it reminds me that today is not harder to live in—it only seems that way. To be fair, today is a hard time in which to live for a variety of reasons, not the least …
Love is Prior
This coming Sunday we are planning on having a couple of deaths and resurrections otherwise known as baptisms. As I read the scriptures I see baptism not as something I or others do to show our commitment to God so much as it is God’s way of making disciples of all nations, God’s way of …
The Path of Love
Twenty years before I was born the publishing house of my church body published a book called The Daily Office. It was a daily devotional, structured and rooted in the ancient liturgical traditions of the church. It fell out of use, as devotional texts do, but I was on the hunt for a copy for …
People
The congregation I serve is about a mile from a naval air station. A fairly decent portion of the people who commune with me on a Sunday have connections to that naval base either because they are or were active duty there, engage in or retired from contract work there, or have a friend or …
Today is a day…
I suppose there is no end to the number of emotions people are experiencing this morning. Some are celebrating, they are glad and joyous because the candidate they supported has won. Others are mourning, they are sad and fearful because the candidate they supported has lost. Me? I’m neither celebrating nor in mourning, neither happy …
Truth & Unity
Nearly fifty years ago, the student body of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis believed, as I did when I attended, that the faculty who taught them were not simply beloved mentors, but orthodox teachers. The students were not pawns, as some have suggested, but they were filled with passion for and devotion to those whom …
not resolved by power…
One of the wonderful things I get to do by virtue of my day off is spend time at a coffee shop near where my wife works. I hang out there for a variety of reasons: the people, the coffee, the opportunity to read in silence if I so choose. It is also a place …
the more things change, the more they stay the same…
The internet is a wonderful thing, at least, it can be. How else would I know that the title of this post was originally uttered by French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr? Well, I wouldn't. Now that graduation has passed, my ordination has taken place, and I am now only a day or two away from …
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an occasional theologian 