Speaking of Creeds...

...it is very interesting that we pray in the Tuesday Daily Prayer from Treasury to be "ever watchful for the confession of Christ's name."  And I do not think it an accident that our daily prayers in the Catechism prescribe the recitation of the Apostles' Creed at least twice daily:  every morning and every evening.  Why is that?  Because the Creed teaches us precisely HOW to confess the name of Christ.  Hearkening back to my own youth, I shall never forget the day when sitting idly at a ball game (and so, bored out of my gourd), two young men asked me if I knew what I needed to be saved.

I didn't understand what they were asking.  They proceeded to recite what I came to find out was the Apostles' Creed to me - they were Roman Catholics.  So began my trek into the Lutheran Church - long story - but the point of it is that it began with two young people simply using the Creed to confess Christ to another person.

Luther seems very conscious of such a use when he introduces the question in the explanation of the first article of the Creed in the Large Catechism:  "It is as if someone were to ask a little child, 'My dear, what sort of a God do you have? What do you know about Him?'  The child could say, 'This is my God:  first, the Father, who created heaven and earth..."   I.e., the Creed as a primary tool for confessing!  If we are to be ready always to give an answer to anyone who asks us about the hope we have, what better summary of that hope IS there than the Apostles' Creed?  Simple, direct, filled with the language of Scripture itself - it summarizes in three short articles the whole of our faith.  Yes, I think it was a wise thing when our Catechism prescribed it daily - and twice daily - in our prayers.