Read the Bible in 2026

Since I was young, I’ve had a fascination with zombies. Hordes of shambling undead filled the toy aisles and phone screens of my childhood. Plants vs. Zombies, The Walking Dead, and even Minecraft were global phenomena heavily featuring these green-skinned ghouls. Zombie fiction exploded in the 2010s, just as I was at that impressionable young age when all things horrible and gross became wonderfu...

On April 17, 1521, when the “fabled monk”[1] was asked to give a defense for the convictions within him, Martin Luther respectfully and famously said:Since then your serene majesties and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, plain and unvarnished. . . . I am bound to the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not re...

Suffering. Few things in this life will strip you to your core like suffering does. The book of Job is a story about perhaps one of the most seemingly cursed men in the Scriptures. Job lost his wealth and his family in a single day. He was struck with “loathsome sores” that covered his entire body. His wife abandoned him, telling him to “Curse God and die,” forcing him to face these challenges alo...

I love musicals. They tell real-life stories, yet through song, those stories become magical. Specifically, when a musical sings about love, the whole story becomes mythicized. Take “Summer Nights” from Grease: the story is realistic. Two teenagers meet and have a summer fling. But when it is sung in a musical number, the simple love story becomes a fantasy.Song of Solomon is a musical. It tells t...

As we read Psalm 32 this week, to see confession and forgiveness in action, I thought it would be helpful to do a brief lesson on confession using Martin Luther’s A Brief Exhortation to Confession. The version I will be using is from a Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord, the statement of faith of the Lutheran Church. We could compare it to our Baptist Faith and Message 2000, but much larger. ...