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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Looking at our dining room table most days, you might think we were running a cartoon factory out of our house. Drawings. Everywhere.
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.
Though they have never left the church, they have been lost all the while.
In Christian terms, this is a perfect example of the doctrine of vocation, where God calls us to serve our neighbor.
But that’s the way he rolls, isn't it? By misquoting, manipulating, and ripping God’s word out of context, the devil wields it as a weapon to drive us to doubt and pride.
I don't remember the first time I heard the gospel, but I do remember the first time I began to understand it.
The more I heard the song, the more I heard the heart of the Gospel in the song.
She wasn’t so much giving up on her husband as giving up on herself. She was giving up trying to be the person who changes another person. It was going to take more than her to reform the man she loved.
Today, people often bemoan the loss of children in the church.
It's difficult enough for us to bear anothers' burdens, but carry another person's sin for him? Why would we do that?
Their love story was a long time in coming. He was 82 and she 74. And this was the first, and the last, marriage for both.
There is something odd about the definition of God as a being that than which nothing greater can be conceived.