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 is the feast, the banquet to end all banquets. The LORD God is the maker and provider of this great feast which takes place for the resurrected faithful in the courts of Heaven.
For the God-man goes from borrowed donkey to borrowed upper room to borrowed cross and borrowed tomb. For you.
There is joy in Lent, but it is the kind of joy that comes in being made whole.
Christianity is not about principally about ethics. It was the Cross on the Hill rather than the Sermon on the Mount that produced the impact of Christianity upon the world.
The Bible is a book for the desperate. That is its target audience. Recognizing our desperation readies us to hear the consolation that only God’s Word can offer.
Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.
Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking God's love is like the love we experience in human relationships. But human love is a derivative of God's love. It is lesser.
For God to shine his face upon us is the same as saying, “Christ Jesus is with us.”
Freedom and reconciliation were significant themes for both of the Martin Luthers.
This tale of two professors has a common theme, plot, and denouement - the good news of the one true story, Jesus Christ crucified for you.
Fred Rogers did not teach children how to live through a pandemic, but he had many profound things to say about loving our neighbors and finding our identity in that calling.
The way through loneliness will lie in the blessing of solitude and the care of God.