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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Show me. If I’m going to believe, I need to be convinced—on my terms.
This is the night from when all those nights receive their light. For this is the night when Christ, the Life arose from the dead.
The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
Like her Lord, the Church has dirt under her nails, the smell of coffin wood on her clothes, and a hunger in her belly.
Don’t let anyone tell you the academy denies the concept of truth...good gracious, I hope by the end of the semester they are still alive.
Then He went to the coffin. He touched it, like a carpenter sizing up the piece of wood He plans to turn into some sort of new creation, running His hand down its side.
But one key theme that kept surfacing again and again was love: Jesus loved people, the Church showed me genuine love, and above all, God’s love in Christianity is unconditional.
It is the strangest of morgues—people arrive dead as doornails and leave alive.
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
Over and over, generation after generation, sinners repeat the same mistake. "How is it possible that God can be a man," we ask.
Professional historians frequently assert that "miracles" are not a proper subject for historical investigation.
The essential Christian claim is that God came to earth in Christ and died for men to take care of their problem of sin and evil.