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I founded Seedlings Braille Books for Children 35 years ago because I heard that braille books for children were scarce and expensive (more than $100 for a Hardy Boys book, for example). This tugged at my heart and started me on the path to making free and low-cost braille books for children. We now produce about 35,000 books per year. The best part is that, thanks to generous grants and donations, we’ve been able to keep the cost to an average of just $10 per book.

I have always loved Mary, the mother of our Lord, and each year she becomes more important to me. But my love for Mary does not come from admiration of her supposed meekness, about which we have often heard. She is wild and powerful, whole and free, confident and intense. She is woman, in its most beautiful and holy sense.

Members of the Happy Joes, a carpentry ministry of Mount Morris Holden Lutheran Church in Wautoma, Wis., handcraft toys for a community Christmas project that distributes them as presents to children in the area. This year they made 500 toys.

Author Torbjørn Greipsland has written or edited 18 books on topics ranging from emigration to Christian artists to the Norwegian royal family. For his latest, To the Ends of the Earth (Ventura, 2017), he set out to document what he considered an underappreciated aspect of his country’s history: Norway’s contributions to missionary work around the globe.

In doing so, he came to realize just how in sync Norwegian American missionaries were with the ELCA—even those who served well over a century ago. “As the ELCA does today, so did the pioneers,” Greipsland said. Both aspired to build schools, provide health care and bolster indigenous Christians in leadership.

Steve Thomason faced a massive blank canvas, his back to the congregation, and opened his arms wide, lifted his head and prayed. He was preparing to accept whatever God wanted to come out of his hands and onto the canvas.

Then, like a tennis player with a winning shot, his right arm swung forward and dotted the canvas with specks of smoky paint.

While the congregation sung and spoke the “Seven Last Words of Christ” cantata, Thomason—whose vocations of artist and pastor have merged for decades—transformed his first vigorous splashes of paint into a journey of Jesus to the crucifixion. Many watching were so mesmerized that when a video projection prompted them to leave quietly, they simply sat and stared at what they had seen, taking in what it did to them emotionally and spiritually.

When Charles (not his real name) knocks on our church door during the week, he sometimes wants to play the piano, often requests food and bus fare or asks to use the phone, and always leaves with the benediction “Love you.”

On Sunday, when the door is unlocked and staffed with an attendant, Charles will get coffee and treats, chat cheerily with people and perhaps interrupt the steady bubbling of table conversation with some improvisation on the baby grand in our fellowship hall. His vulnerability and dignity are evident in his daily struggles with mental health issues and bureaucratic public assistance.

In The Great Omission: Rediscovering Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship, author Dallas Willard examines the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—in particular, the German theologian’s venerated book The Cost of Discipleship. Willard concludes that the cost of “nondiscipleship” is even higher: “In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring.”

In his many temple talks, Jesus undoubtedly rubbed his listeners the wrong way. He didn’t sugarcoat the terrors, torments or trials of discipleship. But he also encouraged them not to crumble when persecuted for his sake because God sees their hearts.