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’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
The existence of aliens can not negate the promise given to us by God courtesy of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
What I desperately needed was not to preach to myself, but to listen to a preacher—not to take myself in hand, but to be taken in the hands of the Almighty.
When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.
Christ's words of exclusive salvation are not just a warning but a sure promise for you.
Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
Only by accurately and honestly reporting the views of those with whom we disagree can we then properly address and refute them. This is the approach Solberg has taken.
If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.
Some explanations are better than others, but they remain our explanations—except if we had some perspective from outside, above, and behind nature.