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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A promise was made to my older brother roughly 50 years ago. He was just an infant and had no idea that this promise was being set upon him.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
The dying words of Jesus were not, “Make it worth it,” but “It is finished.”
We all began by hearing the truth, and then speaking the truth and believing the truth. That truth came to us on the lips of another.
What we see in the face of this God is not a loathing expression. We find the face of a compassionate man who knew all about shame himself.
No, when the Lord is ready for battle, of all creatures, he commissions Mary’s little lamb.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
A crisis of faith always occurs when we begin to believe that God has betrayed us.
I became like God’s child David, whom the Lord pardoned of his adultery and murder. I became like Noah, Abraham, Judah, Aaron, Gideon, and so many more wayward children.
God cannot love me unconditionally without prerequisites, especially after all I’ve done, can He?
Stephen Fry, the English actor, author and game show host once disparaged the “grammar Nazis” who felt it necessary to enforce all the rules of language but who had forgotten, or just didn’t care, about the joy of language.
Take away the water, words, bread and wine. Can you be a Christian without water, words, bread and wine?