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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This world of unbearable grief and accidental calamity is being renewed and, soon, will be completely bereft of every pernicious foe.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
Excerpt #3 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
The firestorm of the Reformation which turned Europe upside-down was not Luther’s doing. It was the Word, and the Spirit working through it.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
God saves us through people. He saves us through means. He puts a voice on the gospel.
Excerpt #2 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.
Maybe it was because I read this book to put myself to sleep. But maybe the lack of any Christian references was part of my sadness.
Excerpt #1 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.