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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Sin will constantly break our hearts, but God's love in Christ Jesus will give us new hearts daily, in the abundance of his forgiving grace. This is love in its purest form, and he has overcome the world.
There has been a blood atonement for sin. Jesus is our propitiation. Jesus has expiated sin. Lent climaxes with this expectation.
The people should find their lives in your sermon, and no one’s life is unaffected by the coronavirus right now. It is the very fact that I can make such a blanket statement, free of all caveats, which makes it so necessary for us to preach on it.
This petition is proof that the Christian life is not a practice in perfectionism. Rather, it is a life of dying and rising, lived under the cross of Christ, in the continual forgiveness of our sins.
Joseph was not the father of Jesus, but then again, he was. Jesus was the true offspring of the heavenly Father, but even the Son of God needed a daddy.
Jesus does not give as the world gives. With Jesus, everything is guaranteed and has been finished from the start.
In the vortex of uncertainty and upheaval, what’s the best thing we can do? Seize the ordinary.
Paul says that the power of sin is the law. The more clearly we understand the law, the more sin oppresses and stings us.
The primary point of Joseph’s life (and every story in Scripture) is to point us to Christ. To tell us something about what God is like and how He interacts with His Creation.
Christ has forgiven you, and all of your worship, all of your prayers, all of your offerings are accepted because they are built on the foundation of Christ’s forgiveness.
The more we demand from Christ, the more of Himself He gives to us. When we demand a glass of grace, He gives us an ocean of Gospel.
This article is the second installment in an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.