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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First words may be simple, but they affirm a deep, abiding truth.
You see, officers, this son of our congregation was dead, and has come back to life again; he was lost, and has been found.
The Son that He is sending into this world will need more than a mother; He needs a father.
When I revisit in my mind the very long list of stupid, mean, selfish things I’ve done, every one of them began with me saying something I shouldn’t have.
God uses our stupid as well as our best thought out plans and efforts
It’ll eat you alive, won’t it? We begin to think we’re victims, as if the whole world is conspiring against us to deprive us of what we deserve.
Barth's ideas resulted in a movement known as neo-orthodoxy, sometimes called dialectical theology, theology of crisis, or simply Barthianism.
By the time we pulled off the side of the road, they had spilled out and surrounded our vehicle.
Have we made Christianity too easy? No, God has made Christianity “too easy” because He has made it pure gift.
In the beginning I was the Word, and I as Word was the Beginning. By me all things were created, both in the heavens and in the earth, visible and invisible. All things have been created by me and for me (Colossians 1:16). Therefore, already in the opening word of the Hebrew Bible, Bereshith, I am.
We have violated not that of which we are ignorant, but that of which we are fully aware. If you want proof, simply look at how well we attempt to cover up our evil deeds.
The instrument of execution has been changed into an emblem of peace--a hawk become a dove, a sword hammered into a plowshare. Now every time God sees His bow, He who never forgets will nevertheless remember His oath never to draw it again to punish the earth by a cosmopolitan flood.