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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How will they reach this magical moment, this milestone on the journey of life? Perhaps by chasing their dreams, pursuing their passions with a heart wholly devoted to the attainment of whatever goals they set for themselves in life?
I was asked to write one on Hebrews 4:14-16, to be read on Thursday, February 20. Among the finds that Luke and I discovered this weekend was that meditation.
What does Steve Jobs have to do with Theology? Very little. But that won’t stop me from trying to make a connection.
If you haven't seen this video clip yet (and even if you have), it's worth watching (again) regardless of your taste for Colbert's style of humor. In it, he trounces the typically smug fundamentalist-turned-liberal Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, who is so used to being fawned over by members of the media that Colbert's defiance leaves him at a near loss for words.
But there’s more to this movie than excellent Lego graphics and artistic; in other words, imaginative storytelling.
What do imagination, Lego bricks, and Sub-Creation have to do with apologetics?
What we confess concerning a corpse confesses much about how deep, or how shallow, is our understanding of the importance of the incarnation of Jesus, his death, and his (as well as our own) resurrection.
I hoped like mad they’d spit in my face and laugh me all the way out of town. I wouldn’t have even cared if a mob of them had beat me to death in a back alley. But heavens no, I couldn’t be that lucky.
One of the strongest elements in the evangelicalism of my youth has a place in Lutheranism that might be surprising to many. This is what our confessions call “The Mutual Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren."
A cemetery is a hard place to confess because the cemetery itself seems to confess, “You, O mortal, have lost.”
But this dying world is still the world of our living God, who graces us with tokens of a final renewal. As leaf subsides to leaf, and frost to snow, and snow to ice, there comes a day when the gold of nature sprouts anew.
The place where God appears or dwells ceases to be common ground; it becomes holy. Dust, rocks, vegetation, wood, metals, everything roundabout soaks in his sacredness.