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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There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
We are no longer controlled by sin as He moves our lips to speak love and forgiveness. We are passive as He acts out His words and His salvation for us.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
God goes to work on us through His Word like a woodcarver chisels a block of wood.
“We all partake of the one cup, the cup of blessing which we bless. This is not seen as a bunch of different cups, but as one cup, the same cup that Jesus blessed at the Last Supper.”
While I was still an over-eager seminarian the professor warned me, “Mr. Riley, this is exciting stuff.
Freedom from the Law does not come through personal perfection, it comes through Jesus Christ. The answer is not a better you, but a you who is united to God through Christ.
Only a god could be wise. We are seekers, lovers of divine wisdom, but it is forever beyond our grasp due to human limitation.
You say: Since forgiveness depends on faith alone, why must one nonetheless do good works? Answer: If faith is of the true sort, it cannot be without good works, just as no good work can be where unbelief dwells.
Faith does not distinguish between worthy and unworthy, saint and sinner, great faith and anemic faith, it only focuses on Christ Jesus.
“Putting hope in the cross of Christ means putting hope outside of anything – mentally, physically or even spiritually – you do.”
We are all sojourners in a perilous cosmos, what is sometimes conceptualized as the theology of the pilgrim.