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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Infamy allows us the opportunity to hone one of our favorite skills: to shrink a 343-page life story down to a single paragraph that narrates what happened on one day, at a certain hour, and in a certain location. We can whittle an entire biography down to a single Tweet.
As I sit here on Easter Sunday, the light is coming into my living room. My dog is sitting sweetly in my lap, enjoy the light scratches on her ear and getting in my face as to stop me from writing.
Around Easter my mind often drifts back to all of the annual ‘Revival Services’ I attended when I was growing up. Every year they began the revival with the Easter service.
As far back as I can remember, even as a small child, I have desperately tried to understand what God’s expectations or requirements are regarding my behavior.
If I’m going to join your church, there’s some things I’ll need to know first. I need to know whether you practice a Christianity that’s primarily a to-do list.
I am the Resurrection,’ says Jesus, not an abstract miracle or idea
With these words, Jesus at the same time acknowledges that earthly government is both divinely sanctioned and, at the same time, not to be conflated with the kingdom of God.
Is there ever a time in a Christian’s life when there is less need for grace? Think about it.
All this disciplined living is to be done in freedom.
We’ve all been there, waiting in line to check out, and the person ahead of us questions the price of something that was just rung up.
Did the Apostle Paul just say that “he fills up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?" That seems a little at odds with Jesus’ statement, "It is finished."
To be human is to be preoccupied with averting pain and despair. But despair gets a bad rap.