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.

All Articles

No matter how loving we are, we don’t get bonus points with the Almighty for imitating Jesus. We love each other because we recognize that “this is one for whom Jesus died.
It can be argued that this scene sets a pattern for Christian activity on the first day of the week from that time until the present.
When guilt becomes our totem, it dictates our idea of right and wrong and enslaves us to the fear of what happens when we open our eyes tomorrow morning.
And your life, weary and broken as it is, is hidden by God in Christ—tucked away in God’s enduring and eternally given Word, in Jesus.
A Roman execution device isn't exactly a picturesque scene of divine love on display.
Out of His mind indeed, as He took our place between murderers and received the insults and torture of humanity.
Few smells are as pervasive as the smell of smoke. Anyone who’s sat around a campfire can attest.
When it comes to this world, our beds are most often a mess even when we do our best to make them in the morning.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
Jesus is the end of religion.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
We are called to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of the Answer incarnate, Jesus Christ, and in love respond to the questions that inevitably arise against it.