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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Jesus is the vine. You are His branches. And God the Father delights to bring the inside out.
It’s God’s love that sets us free to love in the first place.
God has a strange delivery system, the foolish preaching of the cross and foolish preachers for Christ’s sake delivering it.
He continues to gather other sheep in, and He does it through the selfless serving and the gracious speaking of His people.
Forde’s work testifies to the liveliness and vitality of confessional Lutheranism, and its promise for the continuing need to preach Christ crucified in this, and every, age until the Lord’s return.
After more than a year of facing our collective mortality as a species, the promise of a physical resurrection is welcome news.
The promise you will make, which brings about the presence of Christ and creates rejoicing, is the peace Jesus brought to the disciples that night behind locked doors.
I can look at all of my failings and foolishness because I know who Christ is for me. I rest in his wisdom and life not my own.
Like the women who came despite their questions, your hearers will gather despite their uncertainties, and they will be looking for a word of honest hope.
If sin is only a matter of “doing,” then “undoing” and/or “redoing” would serve as the equivalent savior necessary to find redemption.
As we gather for Palm Sunday, John invites us to simply experience the wonder of Jesus, the Lord of all, who does His work in humility.
If Jesus is better than Moses, then everything changes. If Jesus is better than Moses, then the ultimate becomes the penultimate.