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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I believe it’s no small charge to assert that there’s a massive problem in the majority of America’s pulpits.
Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands, I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son.
The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.
I recently began seeing a chiropractor for what turned out to be a compressed disc. He took routine x-rays to facilitate his diagnosis, and on the day he was to go over the results with me, I was placed in a conference room to wait for our consultation.
It seems like the sky is falling every other day now. From politics to culture to religion to about anything else, there’s one purported cataclysm after another on the horizon.
Have you ever heard of Spanx? Although they’ve only been around since 2010, their predecessors have been around for centuries.
People have often tended, quite wrongly, to view me as saintly. I attribute that undeserved reputation to the fact I have always had a very strong sense of the kind of person I should be.
The common knock against “grace people” (or to put it another way, “Christians”) is that preaching too much grace will encourage licentious living.
My experience as a Christian did not revolve around Christ. It revolved around asking, “What is God’s will for my life?” Hunting the answer to this question was my god, and I paid homage to it every day.
Some form of the Rule of Benedict will not save or reinvigorate the church. The church already has what the church needs to do her work in the world: she has the Gospel.
You are God’s people. Yet you are nothing in the world’s sight. To be honest, often less than nothing. Don’t feel bad, I’m nothing with you.
Jesus didn’t lie. He was called to preach to Israel. He would send His disciples out into the world. But that didn’t mean His message wasn’t for all.