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 accent of Scripture emphasized that Christ is for you. Yes, you. He’s not for the perfect people of our imaginations. He’s not just for Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, or Paul. Christ is also for you.
Has the modern world taken too strong a dose of the gospel as its inheritance from the Reformation?
This tale of two professors has a common theme, plot, and denouement - the good news of the one true story, Jesus Christ crucified for you.
Jesus knows you and everybody else come from a long line of life wasters going all the way back to Adam. Jesus died for life wasters! Let go of your bootstraps. Stand back up. Your Father loves you.
Paul knew, and so do we: the law doesn’t change hearts or heal the world. More demands won’t do the trick.
God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.
What does being free from sin, which is obviously a good thing, have to do with being free from the Law, which sounds dangerous?
What more could God do to prove to us that he is for us and not against us than to give his own Son into this fallen world to take the cross in our place, exchanging his righteousness for our many sins.
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
To the extent that God is exclusive by offering salvation only through Christ we can say he is more gracious than other systems because he takes on our guilt upon himself while gifting us his righteousness.