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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For those of you unfamiliar with the Richter scale, our friends over at Wikipedia define it as a 1930s invention that "is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude."
Today, I almost died several times.
We want to know how God rules this world, how he is present in all things, how he exerts his control over the course of world events. We want to know why some get cancer and some don’t, why terrible things happen to the best of people, why volcanoes erupt and hurricanes strike and fires consume.
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
There are many funeral songs I wouldn’t be caught dead singing. Why? Because my funeral will not be about me.
We are continuing our summer series on a theology of worship through the lens of language. Before moving forward, let me highlight a few points by way of review.
Today, if you look closely at my left eye, you’ll see one tiny speck of powder embedded in the whiteness.
Why was Jesus crucified? Not to save victims, but to save sinners.
The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
Jesus takes that burden away in the “I forgive you and them” and gives us His “light” burden.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
I have my list. It may seem strange to you, but, when I think about my own death, I often think in terms of positive failures.