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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The miracle of Pentecost is not obvious; it is the miracle of faith created through the preaching of the word of the cross.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
Our Father works through us to meet the needs of others and to meet our need for Savior Jesus.
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.
The little psychologist within us is often hard at work to pinpoint the origin of life’s problems.
Jesus is the end of religion.
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
The Gospel predominates when hearers receive the saving gifts of Christ as God’s final word to them.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
We have to endure darkness before we’re ready for the light again. God is doing what he does best: he’s conforming us to his Son, to Jesus, who was buried in the darkness and rose again into the light on Easter.
I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
What did Christians do, both when they encountered a Rome in its glory, as when Christ was born, and in it decline, as when Constantine tried to pull stuff back together?