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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Maybe for the first time you can begin to receive creation as a gift, a sheer gift from God’s hands. And who knows what might happen in the power of this grace? All possibilities are open.
Because peace is a gift and not a product, you can’t work your way into it. However—you can receive it by grace.
Viewing the Bible as literature is an essential and natural way of engaging the text. But there are also ways in which this practice can get lost.
The Church's hymns help us see our own world from another—and perhaps not so different—vantage point that illuminates the impact of the work of Christ and the general providing and protecting activity of our Creator in our lives.
The scope of catechesis from the Reformation was broad and included not only instruction at church but in the home and in schools.
What doesn’t kill you might actually be a cheapened law that leaves wiggle room and space in the door for your old man to stick his foot in and get in on the work of Christ.
Our forefathers dedicated Holy Cross Day to jolt the Church into remembrance that Christianity is not principally about ethics.
The gospel fires up within us the gratitude, joy, and love to pull off what the law never could get us to do.
No good will come to the cause of the Gospel by followers of Jesus being regarded as crazy dissidents who will not cooperate with the most basic social mechanisms.
In both Psalms, we hear the Messiah becoming sin for us, and thus he pleads on our behalf before the Father
Physicality is good. Some way or another, choose a full performance of Messiah and give it your full attention. More than one time. Consider it a devotional practice.
The unbeliever will search for relief from temptations in worldly prescriptions and pleasures. The believer searches for answers in the promises of the One who can bring true lasting peace in mind, body, and soul.