Salvation Is A Gift Given, Not A

It Is Precisely Because No One Needs Soup, Fish, Meat, Salad, Cheese, And Dessert At One Meal That We So Badly Need To Sit Down To Them From Time To Time. It Was Largesse That Made Us All; We Were Not Created To Fast Forever... Enter Here, Therefore, As A Sovereign Remedy For The Narrowness Of Our Minds And The Stinginess Of Our Souls.

The World Looks As If It Has Been Left In The Custody Of Trolls.

A Lost Sheep Is, For All Practical Purposes A Dead Sheep. It Is The Admission That We Are Dead In Our Sins---that We Have No Power Of Ourselves Either To Save Ourselves Or To Convince Anyone Else That We Are Worth Saving. It Is The Recognition That Our Whole Life Is Out Of Our Hands And That If We Ever Live Again, Our Life Will Be Entirely The Gift Of Some Gracious Shepherd. God Finds Us The Desert Of Death (not In The Garden Of Improvement) And In The Power Of Jesus' Resurrection, He Puts Us On His Shoulders Rejoicing And Brings Us Home.

For All Its Rooted Loveliness, The World Has No Continuing City Here; It Is An Outlandish Place, A Foreign Home, A Session In Via To A Better Version Of Itself-and It Is Our Glory To See It So And To Thirst Until Jerusalem Comes Home At Last. We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

Do You Seriously Envision St. Paul Or Calvin Or Luther Opening Bottles Of Welch's Grape Juice In The Sacristy Before The Service? Luther At Least Would Turn Over In His Grave.