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 first article in a special three-part Advent series on how Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king.
However knowledgeable you may become by reading Buddha or compassionate after following Gandhi, you will never find forgiveness in anyone else other than Christ alone.
In Scripture, laments are raw expressions of grief, but they always point to hope. What if our culture’s obsession with holiday lights is an unconscious way of crying out, “We need good news, and we need it now”?
The Lord has an answer to your tears, your trouble, your weariness, your enemies, your grief, your shame, your sin.
“Praying the Bible” sounds odd to the ears of most believers today. That’s unfortunate.
In the Bible, we meet the God who also does not prance around naked as a jaybird.
He shows up when we are at our worst to usher us back to his side, lead us to repentance, rescue us, and reclaim us as his own.
Sometimes, we get prayer dementia. We can’t remember what we were going to pray for, we can’t put the words together, and, frustrated, there is nothing we can do but sigh and groan.
C.S. Lewis, Grief, and the Holiday Season
The following poem was written by Tanner Olson to accompany 1517’s 2023 Advent Resources, The Clothing of the King. Advent begins this Sunday.
We must also address the stigma surrounding addiction within so many churches.
Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.