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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Whoever you are, your Father loves you differently than he loves other people. You are more than a grain of sand in the vast desert called humanity.
We sing, and in so doing, we are blessed as we are instilled with the word of God in word and song.
Above all, pastors must aim their preaching at the people God has placed in the care of the pastor rather than airing pious ideas that did not speak to their situations.
Indeed, the law said, “You shall love the Lord your God,” but the law cannot give me such love, nor can it take my hand to grasp on to Christ.
From all accounts, everyone in Nazareth would have just thought of Jesus as a very good boy who obeyed his parents and worked hard with his father as a tekton’s apprentice in the family trade.
It is the words the pastor speaks that send the dead out alive.
Christians are given a new name at baptism. We are given the Triune name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
Christmas is, therefore, the beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry, even while he awaits a number of years to gather his disciples and inaugurate his preaching of the kingdom.
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.
Her importance goes beyond simply managing the reformer’s household.
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.