This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

All Articles

Nicodemus, like us, does not really have phantoms and dragons in his head. He has just one demon, one virus, one malady: he lives in fear.
In the United States Marine Corps, part of my training involved Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) handling. The 6 rules of EPW handling are:
Few smells are as pervasive as the smell of smoke. Anyone who’s sat around a campfire can attest.
Exemplified here are two misunderstandings about the forgiveness and graciousness of God among some Christians.
There are a few occasions in the Bible where the curtain lifts, and we get to peer into the inner workings of the Divine Court.
There were pictures of her bathed in the sun of South Padre, sand between her toes, arm-in-arm with beautiful friends
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
When it comes to this world, our beds are most often a mess even when we do our best to make them in the morning.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
I don’t know about you, but I am perpetually of the mind that God is disappointed in me.
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.
For most of my Christian experience I was taught and I taught others that church was primarily a place to go to serve, to use your gifts, to bless others.