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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What do you think of when you hear the term “self-esteem”?
It’s by no means an ivory-tower theological question. It’s as real as the weight we’ve lost from the stress of our divorce. As real as the bottle of antidepressants on our nightstand. We believe in him. We love him. But every voice inside us and every shred of evidence outside us points to his abandonment of us in our hour of deepest need.
The devil isn’t a popular subject nowadays. The argument is made that we’ve progressed as a culture.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
What postmoderns see in modernism is a misuse of power through the control of dominant narratives.
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.
For all its stewing, regret ironically does not truly focus on the past. Often it is more concerned with the present and the future and how they would be if only we had done something differently.
They say girls in our society should have nothing to worry about. They should have the opportunity for education and choices far beyond generations before.
What we notice less often is that this same fear wonders about both the efficacy of the Gospel and the Law.
Love is the sum of the law. Love God with all your heart, spirit, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That means that if love can't be done when it needs to be done then get rid of the law, because it's not lawful.