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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Press further on the historicity of the Bible, and we start to get fidgety.
In order to shore up wavering faith commitments, both for the disciples and for us today, Jesus used His actions during a day’s worth of ministry to evidence the hard truth about His Messianic identity.
Writer’s Block, however, entertains no such fantasies. It goes straight for my ego’s jugular and pounds home the fact that I’m not good enough.
Our meditation listens to the King of Kings when He says; it is finished.
I have a confession: I don’t believe the Bible is true because it says it’s true.
“The lack of assurance of one’s standing before God causes a person to do anything to make things right in a vain attempt to gain eternal certitude. ”
We expect that if it is God’s word, it must have fallen out of the sky on golden plates.
When guilt becomes our totem, it dictates our idea of right and wrong and enslaves us to the fear of what happens when we open our eyes tomorrow morning.
Much like Jacob wrestling with God in the desert, we find our intellectual hips continuously put out of joint as we engage the culture around us.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” But the fool also says in his heart, “There are many gods.” And we, dear friends, are the fools.
At times, evangelical Christianity can be a paradox. For as much as Protestants have spurned Roman Catholicism, they’re much more Catholic than they’d ever like to admit.
Nicodemus, like us, does not really have phantoms and dragons in his head. He has just one demon, one virus, one malady: he lives in fear.