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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The redeemed are dressed in white robes.
As an avid movie-goer, one of the ways Scripture comes alive for me is to picture the stories as if they were scenes and beats from a live-action movie.
The same can be said of the Reformation. I have often heard both Roman Catholic and Lutheran brothers and sisters bemoan the celebration of the Reformation.
I often dance around the idea of denominations. I've been Pentecostal and I guess Evangelical.
Have you ever really thought about how crazy your salvation is? You may have never thought of it in those terms, but truly, your redemption and rescue from eternal damnation is a jarring truth, one that should spawn tears of joy and shouts of praise.
Read your life like a Hebrew, from the end to the beginning, and you will see that the last is first. The dead are alive, the cursed are blessed, the humble are exalted.
We need pastors who carry that same concealed weapon in their mouths, who are outfitted with the same word the angels have: the word steeped in divine blood, shed for you. That is all we need, for the word does it all.
You became, for a time, ritually unclean. Not sinful. Not immoral. To be unclean meant you bore in your own body the effects of a creation in bondage to decay.
Fairy tales are but one chapter in the book we call storytelling. We may prefer reading other kinds of stories (mystery, science fiction, and so on).
We fly away to the judgment seat of God. There we shall appear before the One who knows all, before whom nothing is hidden. Do you really think you can conceal anything from Him?
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."
If you know me in the least, then you know of my fondness for the 2010 film Inception.