Green fields, green trees, green paraments. It can all seem a bit mundane. But look again: there’s nothing ordinary about ordinary time.

As Hurricane Harvey dumped over two feet of rain in the greater Houston area, Romans 8:39 kept ringing through Donna Pyle’s head with Hurricane Harvey subtitles: Neither height of rising water nor depth of flood, nor anything else Harvey can hurl at us, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“There had been no mandatory evacuation for Friendswood residents. No one knew it was going to be this bad … And still, the rain continued.”

There are a number of fascinating things about the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca, Italy, but what really caught my eye was the baptismal font.

We sometimes speak of holding Law and Gospel in tension or balance, but we do well to remember that they are not even. Each has its own place and purpose. They should be rightly distinguished and applied, but this doesn’t always mean that they will be evenly distributed.

A happy, terrible act is Baptism — a rebirth of life and, at the same time, a drowning and death. We see this contrast in Romans: “We were buried therefore with [Christ] by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”