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.

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Then, Jesus our Groom, with His nail-scarred hands takes our hands and walks out with us from that ultimate courtroom, and into eternity – His eternity – and a never-ending wedding feast.
Jesus opened our ears and mouth when He baptizes us. Jesus put His fingers into our ears, speaks to us, and washes our sins away.
Hurricane Florence, or any natural disaster, can serve as a painful reminder of our own mortality, the futility of human ingenuity and strength.
Only because He is an outsider can he afford the costly fee insiders could never afford no matter how hard they work.
When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
There was a TV show back in the ‘90s called “Dinosaurs” that I used to sneak into the living room at night to watch.
We all do it. It comes naturally to every human being. Since the Fall, every man and woman, every child, everyone imagines he can use experience and knowledge to figure out God.
True preaching arises when the Holy Spirit steeps the proclaimer in its own cycle of judgment and mercy.
Jesus says that none of our goodness is good enough to pass muster. Likewise, none of our badness is bad enough to propel us outside Jesus’ death for sin.
Early in the church’s life, some Christians were dragged before the city authorities in Thessalonica and accused of “turning the world upside down,” (Acts 17:6). They were guilty as charged. They were turning the world upside down. Or, rather, they were putting the world right side up.
I saw a beautiful picture of grace yesterday. A real bestowing of favor on someone less deserving.
Did Jesus ever marry? Yes, He married you!