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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God cares for us because we’re created in his image, but he also cares for us because the second person of the Trinity, the Son, became one of us.
The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.
It is that Christmas carol, the curious “We Three Kings” that we are looking at today in our examination of the origin and meaning of Christmas carols.
As Christians, we are not cold ascetics, depriving ourselves in the here and hereafter. We are given good things from our heavenly Father in heaven, and even a foretaste of the things to come.
On the other side of Christmas, we find (1) senseless suffering and (2) unstoppable salvation. A sermon on these verses should be honest about both.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.
Our regrets and anxiety, self-abuse and addictions, violence and endless lists are signs that we don’t have an answer to the question: "Why am I here right now, alive, existing?"
One gloomy, silent night, God stepped into our darkness. The Word had not only spoken but was now made flesh.
If Christmas is about Jesus, and it definitely is, then the real question should be: What’s Jesus all about?
Her importance goes beyond simply managing the reformer’s household.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).