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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That is the way of our Lord, the way of grace. He doesn’t abandon Thomas to drown in a sea of doubt.
The following conversation occurred between one of 1517's readers/listeners and Dr. Rosenbladt via email in February of 2016.
So what's the back side? What's the promise? We shall not have other gods, but we do have the one, true God—the promise of a God for us.
During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.
The manna God provides is never tasty enough. God never lives up to your expectations. So silently or audibly you wish for an easier way.
O bloody town of Bethlehem, How shrill we hear thee cry. Your mothers shriek while fathers weep The graveyard lullaby.
The mother of this prophet is visited by the Mother of God. In the coming together of these two pregnant women, we see the coming together of the old and the new.
Every time I place my trust in something smaller than God to give me the peace that only God can give, or prefer myself over my neighbor in thought, word or deed - I demonstrate that my lack of faith is disturbing.
What every heresy does, in one way or another, is ungods God, unchristens Christ, uncrucifies the Crucified. It strikes through the good of Good News.
There is truly only one commandment and only one sin. That one commandment is “You shall have no other gods,” and that one sin is idolatry.
Dan reminded me—in his words, in his patient suffering, through his unwavering faith in Christ, by his confidence in his baptism—that Jesus Christ does not abandon his own. No matter where they are, no matter what they’re going through, He is there.
As C. S. Lewis, in "The Magician’s Nephew", has Aslan sing the world and all its beautiful intricacies into existence, so the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus, hymns the heavens and earth into being.