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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Rather than making resolutions about how we’re going to accomplish great things in 2020, let's do something different: resolve how to do well at failure.
Christians are given a new name at baptism. We are given the Triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.
Into the suffocating prison of sorrow, God sends his Breath, his Holy Spirit to help us. We may suffer, but we will not be alone.
No matter how fast we run—the little Pharisee on our shoulder is still standing there, arms crossed, shaking his head, and telling us we could have done more. We could have done better.
The Holy Spirit is fixated on Jesus and it is the Spirit’s mission to bring us to faith in Him for He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Thanksgiving is a day set aside for tragi-comic sinners to come together and give thanks for the deliciousness of God's grace in the good news of Jesus Christ.
We long for the Great Thanksgiving that hasn’t happened yet.
Any day of thanksgiving is a confessional day—a day of expressing a short creed that sums up our entire existence: God gives, we receive. Thanksgiving as a day of confession becomes very obvious when we look at it from a Hebrew perspective.
To pray that God’s name is hallowed among us is to pray for the continual proclamation of the gospel in truth and purity that we would hear the word about Christ crucified for sinners.
We might not appreciate that God chooses to save us by his word alone, but our discomfort doesn’t make the promise any less effective.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?