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.

All Articles

We prefer this to be switched around. We want something to happen in us before anything happens outside of us.
The Confessions instead look forward and provide a critique of the world and of all my various religions and idolatries.
God preaches a concrete word to us in the present tense. We hear the Good News that Jesus is God’s mercy for us.
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.
All other wonderful teachings of Holy Scripture from creation to Christ’s coming again are absolutely worthless without being understood in light of Jesus, death, and resurrection for sinners.
Where once we confessed reliance only in ourselves and our own power, now we confess reliance on Christ alone. So, for our relationship before God, our confession of faith matters.
I have a confession: I don’t believe the Bible is true because it says it’s true.
The question at hand was quite short, “Who is Jesus Christ?
Led by God’s Word we can grasp why this gap exists, grows, and threatens us. Simply put, we don’t take sin seriously. We don’t take the effects of our sinful rebellion on all of creation seriously.
Hus held that Christ alone grants salvation and that popes do not.
And your life, weary and broken as it is, is hidden by God in Christ—tucked away in God’s enduring and eternally given Word, in Jesus.
Your Big Brother, Yeshua… Joshua… Jesus, has done all things for your salvation.