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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The point of Revelation is to reveal consolation in Jesus, not to revel in chaos and confusion.
The Lion of Judah, Christ the King, Jesus of Nazareth, will not be away from us for one night.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This great victory, the true defeat of death, I receive not by my thinking, willing, or working, but simply by believing.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
The lack of history surrounding Psalm 130 allows it to endure as universally appealing even for our seasons of hopelessness and despair when we’re in “the depths.”
Jesus continues to do the same for me and for you as he did for his disciples. He still shows up for us. He still speaks his peace to us.
Jonah’s biggest blunder was a failure to understand that God’s grace is always undeserved and always falls on those who are unworthy of it.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.