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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This is the night from when all those nights receive their light. For this is the night when Christ, the Life arose from the dead.
Have you ever wondered, of all the adjectives we could use to describe this day why in the world we chose the word “good?” Yeah, me too.
The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
Like her Lord, the Church has dirt under her nails, the smell of coffin wood on her clothes, and a hunger in her belly.
I’m still laughing now as hard as I laughed back then. And the salve that he gave me in that moment still works some strange magic on me to this day.
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.
Who should we baptize and when? How old does the person have to be? What if we get it wrong? Will something terrible happen to us?
Then He went to the coffin. He touched it, like a carpenter sizing up the piece of wood He plans to turn into some sort of new creation, running His hand down its side.
A single, fifteen minute sermon that proclaims Christ and him crucified for you is more important than hundreds of hours of lectures by experts on revitalizing your ministry.
It is the strangest of morgues—people arrive dead as doornails and leave alive.
Old Testament narratives foreshadowed the gifts that our Father gives us in baptism.
The arrangement was made with Abraham when God claimed for Himself all of his being, and put the seal of His promise upon the most personal member of his anatomy.