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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Whatever loss you’ve undergone, whatever grief resides in the hollow of your heart, however much it seems like God has abandoned you, God sees that void as the place he wants to fill with new life and mercy.
A father dies and leaves an inheritance to his two children, Jane and Grace. The family member handling the estate gives them each a letter containing the cheques for their inheritance.
We prefer this to be switched around. We want something to happen in us before anything happens outside of us.
This is the third installment in our special series on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Translation of Theses 5 and 6 by Caleb Keith.
Too often, we equate “repent” as the final warning to stop a particular sin before God ceases to love you and sends you to hell for your evil deeds.
It has been three years since Allyson and I honeymooned in New Orleans. We had a great time eating our way through the French Quarter, learning to drive in a city of only ways, and forgetting that real life existed for only a few days.
The only obedient son is shunned so that the disobedient one may return. Why? Because God loves sinners. He doesn’t leave them alone.
In the tiny Bible-belt town where I grew up, tragedy brought people together.
I can pretend for a little bit, but as soon as the phone is put away and it’s just me and my sin, I am fearful about what my walk says about me. I know what I should do, but I can’t quite seem to do it.
Writer’s Block, however, entertains no such fantasies. It goes straight for my ego’s jugular and pounds home the fact that I’m not good enough.
The force of our love is violent. It is love acted out as, “I will love you in a way that’s best for me, and you’ll like it, and celebrate it, and reward me for it.
No matter which side, it’s easy for all of us to build Bible verses into grenades aimed at obliterating the political other.