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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Look to the crucifix. There you see God as God is, in Himself. You see God in action for you.
The gospel promise is that God in Christ knows exactly what your temptations are and still bids you find protection from them in him.
When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.
The devil is to be taken seriously, but we should also not give him more credit or more power than he has after being defanged by Christ’s resurrection.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But if you pause the story...then it is not just about Jesus raising Lazarus.
Despite the grave threat of martyrdom during his roughly thirty years of ministry, St. Patrick persevered and experienced enormous success.
The whole world's sin, the crushing horror of death's power, and even hell itself were unleashed on that hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was executed.
In the vortex of uncertainty and upheaval, what’s the best thing we can do? Seize the ordinary.
Can we fully experience the joy of the Festival of the Resurrection if we do not seriously stare boldly into the sad state of our own faithlessness to Him who promises to be faithful even when we are not?
When the story begins in creation and ends in restoration, all the moments in between are filled with the working of God.
Paul says that the power of sin is the law. The more clearly we understand the law, the more sin oppresses and stings us.
What I have come to see is that while anyone can make a conscious decision to walk away from God or deny him, a person can’t accidentally lose his or her salvation.