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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In his Gospel account, Luke challenges us to play "Where is Jesus?"
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
In those waters we are nailed to his cross and washed out the door of his tomb. Within his wounds we safely hide.
The redeemed are dressed in white robes.
Every Christian is abundantly rich through baptism.
Over and over, generation after generation, sinners repeat the same mistake. "How is it possible that God can be a man," we ask.
We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
He lavishly pours out His rest in the waters of Baptism, in the spoken words of absolution from the pastor’s lips, in the preaching of the cross and resurrection, in the consumption of heavenly cuisine from the table at which He is host and meal.
It is worthwhile because Jesus Christ gave baptism to His disciples as a means for making disciples after He had suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and buried and rose again on the third day.
A promise was made to my older brother roughly 50 years ago. He was just an infant and had no idea that this promise was being set upon him.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
You cannot fudge Glory in this life. You get there only on the Better Day that is coming and not one day before.