Meredith Brodland

Age yourself by naming a video game you grew up playing. I’ll start: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

A devotion on families in conflict and the faithfulness of Christ: Luke 12:35–53 If you’ve experienced deep and destructive family conflict, the kind where relationships are severed and affection is completely lost, the harshest lesson you’ll learn is how fickle man’s love is. Parents will simply cut off love for their children and vice versa. Brothers will completely cease to love their sisters and vice versa. People that cherished you for an entire lifetime will simply walk away from you the moment it is no longer in their interest to love you. Now, when this happens, it’s common for people who have received this cruelty to conclude that those who walked away must have never really loved them in the first place. But, by and large, I think this is the wrong takeaway. It’s not that they never loved you. It’s that they always loved something more than you. And generally speaking, the thing they loved more was their own righteousness, the idol of their own supposed goodness and superiority, superiority that meant they should never have to experience discomfort because of you or apologize to you or show too much mercy to you, whatever it might be. And because this idol that they loved more refused to coexist with you, you were thrown out of their lives. And so, when Jesus tells us that He has not come to bring peace but division, that He is going to set mother against daughter and father against son, He’s talking about the consequences of believing His Gospel, not the purpose of the Gospel itself. Jesus has, of course, come to give us peace with God and with each other. But that peace will require us to forsake the idol of our self-righteousness, to let go of the lie that we are good, holy, sacred people on account of our own works. And when Christians believe that we are worthless sinners who have no hope apart from Christ, those who hope and trust in the idol of themselves will often hate us with a hate that trumps the love of family. They will often choose their idols over their flesh and blood, walking away from those they should cherish. Sometimes they will even sprint with weapons and violence towards those they are supposed to protect. But when you experience this, don’t despair. Because Jesus will not walk away from you. He will not abandon you. The Lord who abandoned His very life upon the cross to save you will come to your rescue. He will cover you in His righteousness. He will claim you as His own. He will give you the strength to endure the persecution of this world and He will lift you up into the perfect family when He lifts you up into paradise on the Last Day.

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I spoke with @toddwilken about euthanasia and "nature rights" on @IssuesEtc. Check it out. issuesetc.org/2025/09/23/alz…