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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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.
There was another criminal next to Christ the day he died. He was aware of who Jesus was, and why he was there.
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 see someone driving a fancy car, owning a big home, having healthy children and an attractive spouse. Instantly, almost without a second's thought, we assume they are successful. Life is good for them.
No, that is not a typo. I am telling you to put your trust in this Old Testament prophet. I want you to look at him and be assured of God’s love for you.
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.
The flower of youth, as lovely as it is, cannot withstand the hot winds of time. There is a beauty, however, that remains.
To forget ourselves is to remember another, that is, to act in such a way that benefits them. That’s the problem: we don’t.
In happiness, we dare never forget that it is Christ, and Christ alone, who has restored our joy.