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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Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.
Blessed are we, for we are filled by the cornucopia of Christ’s righteousness.
God’s love is axiomatic; it just is. It’s a truism without a logical explanation.
The only one rightful heir of the kingdom of God, inherits from us, our cross, and descends into the kingdom of the damned.
Christ strikes a blow first against the presumption of those who would storm their way into heaven by their good works.
Mankind’s “thoughts and ways” on the matter of pardon and forgiveness do not even come close to exhausting, let alone fathoming, God’s “thoughts and ways.”
God invites you to confess the skeletons in your closet so that he might bury them in the grave for good.
Our certainty is of Christ, that mighty hero who overcame the Law, sin, death, and all evils.
Christian hope means always hope in God and hope in Christ simultaneously without distinction.
This article comes to us from 1517 guest contributor, Karen Stenberg.
Only when we’re ready to accept the impossibility of human perfection can we move beyond the paralyzing myth that we are capable of anything good apart from Christ.