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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After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.
The best synonym I can think of for Biblical meditation is "wonder." To meditate upon God's word is to wonder, as a child wonders at the stars.
What does it mean that holding to Jesus’ teaching will set us free? Which teaching? What will we be set free from?
We vote because we are citizens, and it is our duty. We serve our neighbors in love because it is our Christian calling.
As long as our illusions of control over storms and germs persist to govern our thinking, we will never be able to take the saving work of Christ as seriously we ought.
Solomon did not write Ecclesiastes to bum you out. He wrote it to set you free.
Everyone dreads what might happen if political control is captured by the enemy. Paranoia is the characteristic feature of this kind of under-realized eschatology.
Because peace is a gift and not a product, you can’t work your way into it. However—you can receive it by grace.
"Whom shall we fear?" We fear no one. We're not afraid of anything. Instead, we wait for the Lord with good courage. He will strengthen our hearts, as the psalmist writes (Ps 27:1).
Viewing the Bible as literature is an essential and natural way of engaging the text. But there are also ways in which this practice can get lost.
The Church's hymns help us see our own world from another—and perhaps not so different—vantage point that illuminates the impact of the work of Christ and the general providing and protecting activity of our Creator in our lives.
The scope of catechesis from the Reformation was broad and included not only instruction at church but in the home and in schools.