This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
01/22/26
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
01/21/26
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
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05/15/15
For the less we tell these stories of sin, the more it seems we are ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of bad people.
05/12/15
Asking whether one's beliefs are the right ones is terrifying.
05/05/15
Bloody, bruised, and burnt out—our friends, family members, and coworkers are walking out of churches, giving up on God’s family, and at the same time giving up on the message that the Church has been entrusted with.
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04/23/15
She had obviously heard about Jesus previously, maybe even from off-handed comments or even rumors. Her daughter was sick so she sought the gossiped-about Jesus as he was leaving for Tyre and Sidon.
04/15/15
In divorce God married me to the cross. I didn’t want it; indeed, I hated it. But upon my shoulders God laid it. The ring of nails. The veil of darkness. The kiss of death. When we are stripped of all the good we think we are and have, we come face to face with the evil within. We fight and wrestle and gasp and die and become nothing.
02/26/15
I don’t mean simply that I “loved the darkness rather than the light because my deeds were evil,” as Jesus says (John 3:19). While that is true, there was deeper magic at work. I loved the darkness because I feared all the good things in the light.
01/22/15
Scattered throughout all denominations are moms and dads whose greatest disappointment in life is that their children have seemingly abandoned the faith.
09/18/14
God uses our stupid as well as our best thought out plans and efforts
09/09/14
Being thrown in the pit was but one of the many smoking guns that the prosecutor could bring forth as evidence.
09/04/14
Focus on control and you’ll end up with nothing but confusion and frustration and disappointment. It’s not about who’s in control in this life but whose you are in this life.
07/29/14
The psalmist writes that our earthly lives last “seventy years, or eighty, if we have the strength.” As if proving the poet right, and showing the world that she did have that kind of strength, Alvena fought on to her eightieth year.
06/27/14
Every year, when this day rolls around, I turn over the stones of remembrance that litter my mind, to see what lurks beneath.
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