This month begins the annual season of reflection and repentance in preparation for Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter. According to the Treasury of Daily Prayer, “During the forty days of Lent, God’s baptized people cleanse their hearts through the discipline of Lent: repentance, prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Lent is a time in which God’s people prepare with joy for the Paschal Feast (Easter). I...

Throughout the month of December we celebrate the season of Advent, remembering how the prophet Isaiah declared the miraculous birth of Jesus with these words, “Behold the virgin will conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel.” He also described the how the Messiah would, “bring good news to the poor…bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of ...

After the celebration of All Saints, the rest of November leads us into the last three Sundays of the church year. During this short season, the hymns and reading emphasize the Judgment Day and the return of Christ. In a sense this month is pre-Advent, even as the “Gesima” Sundays are pre-Lent.Therefore, we remember that time is short. As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “the creation waits with eage...

“Salvation unto us has come, by God’s free grace and favor. Good works cannot avert our doom, they help and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone, He is our one Redeemer.” The words of this hymn, beautifully summarizes the teaching of the Lutheran church, which is the true teaching of God’s Word. St. Paul wrote, “For I am not shamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvatio...

September 14 is Holy Cross Day, a day set aside on the church calendar to ponder the cross and its meaning in the life of the Christian.  During his life, Martin Luther lived under the cross, enduring much suffering for preaching Christ and Him crucified.  Luther wrote about the suffering all Christians will experience in his sermon on the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer in the Large Catechism...