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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Even now we sing as we live in His gifts, and await His second Advent—His second-coming.
Christ intercedes on your behalf before the Father for all the sins that work guilt deep down in your soul.
The text says there was no room for them. And this should give us cause for a little head-scratching.
A friend of mine recently expressed to me his rather unique thoughts on Narcissus.
She was the kind of woman in whom I see myself, in whom thousands of us see our own reflections. So often our lives seem pointless, a vain existence in a world that worships vanity.
What comes to us at Christmas is not a great seasonal bargain to enhance our happy holidays. It is the priceless gift of God’s Son.
Blessedness comes to us camouflaged as simple earthly words, water, bread and wine.
Christ rose from the grave so that the eternal Light of Christ would be your forever identity.
God graciously bursts our foolish plots by coming our way, into our very flesh, and being God with us.
We are all sojourners in a perilous cosmos, what is sometimes conceptualized as the theology of the pilgrim.
Over the last few weeks it’s been painful and disappointing to hear the stories of victims that have been abused and assaulted by powerful celebrities, executives, and politicians.
“Obey God and he will bless you,” says the wind and the reed is bent over and bruised throughout. “God will never stop loving you but you can disappoint him,” says the wind and the once lit candle is now a sad smoldering wick.