The Reason for Lent
By Christopher J. Richmann
01/23/26
15mins

The Reason for Lent

This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
Is Faith Enough?
Heather Schulz
Heather Schulz
01/22/26

Is Faith Enough?

We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Why Christian Tradition? Why Confession
Donavon Riley
Donavon Riley
01/21/26

Why Christian Tradition? Why Confession

Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/14/14

"I Love You" is an Incomplete Sentence

We love because we find in the beloved something that is lovable. We see, we know, and then we love. Or, at least, we promise to love.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/24/14

Smut and Smug: Secret Religious Delight in Society’s Moral Degradation

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/21/14

Look Who I Found in the Grave

God must kill me. He’s got to slay me, put me six feet under, and shovel dirt atop my corpse. Then, it’s like, “Hey, I finally understand! You’re God and I’m not.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/19/14

Tripping Helen Keller

Why, given all the things we wish God had told us, but didn’t, does he “waste our time” by stating the patently obvious? Was there, in Moses’ day, an outbreak of violence against the disabled?
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/27/14

A Tale of Two Sodoms: The Difficulty of Escaping from Our Past

It shows the extent to which an environment of iniquity can seep into the souls of believers, transforming them from the inside out, so that even when they “flee to the mountains,” like Lot and his girls, they take Sodom with them.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/09/14

Chewing on the Bible

But unlike fish, there was actual pleasure in the prolonged chewing of this food. For the longer it remained in my mouth, the better it tasted, the more pronounced became its flavor, the more nourishment I received from each bite. This food is the bread on which Jesus survived during his forty days of temptation in the wilderness.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/02/14

I've Spent the Better Part of My Life Trying to Kill a Man

If I had hated him even while a child, in his late teens I grew to loathe him as the very antithesis of the man I wanted to be.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/31/13

Unlearning Evil: Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

“Let’s face it,” my mom once told me, while delivering a lecture on making the right moral decisions in high school, “sinning is fun.”
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/19/13

"I Would Have Surrendered My Bethlehem Hotel Room to Mary and Joseph" and Other Self-Serving Fantasies

But when I let my mind go there, in truth all I’m doing is this: bellying up to the bar of sentimentality to drink my fill of falsehoods that leave me intoxicated with feelings of saintly superiority.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/12/13

No-Man Remembered

Today, and every day, he wears a crown and every angel in heaven knows him by name.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/26/13

God Doesn't Celebrate Thanksgiving: A Turkey Day Reflection

Eat, yes, but season your turkey with the ashes of repentance as it preaches just how little your faith is, just how little you trust God, just how little you believe the Father is good to you.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/22/13

Norman Rockwell's Nightmare: The Screwed Up Biblical Family

There is no whitewashing of evil within the biblical family. The sheer fact that it is recorded, that of all the events in these people’s lives, these were chosen to be chiseled into the stone of the church’s remembrance, tells us something.
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