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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God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.
In Israel today, it's still possible to witness the same scene the disciples saw 2000 years ago when the Bedouin shepherds bring their flocks home from various pastures at the end of the day.
Heaven is yours now.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
This is the sound of freedom. The Eternal One died so that we who are dying might live eternally with him.
He declared you what you might not always feel you are, but what you were from the moment he knew you, before you were you, when he foreknew you.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
Do our petitions move God?
How’s your ticker?