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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This is a guest article brought to us by Dr. James Isaacs.
Begin thinking of your church as a homeless shelter. See how it changes the way you see the weary pilgrim sitting in the pew next to you.
All God's fatherly goodness and mercy is concrete and real, born of a virgin, crucified for our trespasses, raised for our justification.
Only the ministry of the Gospel can forgive sins, even while civil government rightly carries out retribution for lawlessness and disobedience.
We can’t all afford to travel the world, but the more we read from outside our own context, the bigger we see the world.
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It can get ahold of a person and turn him all the way in on himself. What seemed a brief reflection lingers for hours, days, weeks, even years.
The whole Reformation, and the reason for Lutheran theology at all, is to improve preaching.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.
All I need to know about your spiritual condition, I can discover by watching you drive your car. What I’ve learned is that everyone is a lawbreaker, including me. It’s as simple as asking a few short questions about your driving habits...
The Holy Spirit keeps us in faith and pours us out into the world so others may also hear and believe.
While the Holy Spirit does work within us, He always comes to us from the outside, through the external Word and Sacraments.
In the biblical world, having a few extra inches on your waistline was not a reason for dieting but dancing.