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 Father, then, “has qualified you” through the work of Christ to share in the family inheritance. This inheritance is the Family of God itself and the family of the triune God Himself.
According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.
[This text] describes a journey to a foreign region where Jesus engages in a confrontational conversation with a legion of demons, performs a violent and scandalous exorcism, and leaves behind a community gripped by terror. Apparently, the only thing more frightening than a naked, graveyard-dwelling demoniac is this visitor from Nazareth who reigns over everything.
Today’s advice for the anxious and worried would have likely horrified Luther.
The minister’s clothing represents his office of service, derived from the ministry of Christ, and never himself.
Our stories are decidedly unserious when viewed through the lens of the seriousness of God’s affairs. Jesus put the matter succinctly: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). Human affairs are not serious in and of themselves. Rather, they are consequential because they garner meaning and significance within the overarching story of God and man.
If I don't preach Christ, then there's really no reason anyone should roll out of bed on Sunday to hear anything I have to say.
How are things at your church? Are people getting saved in droves, are there mass baptisms every Sunday, is giving at an all-time high, and are your members model citizens and pillars of the community?
Where contrition is evident, the conscience has already been prodded, piqued, finally terrified. More Law only serves to confirm the lie this person is already at risk of believing: that the last work of the conscience is also God’s last word. But God’s last word is the word of absolution, not the confirmation of the conscience’s testimony, but now its contradiction.
Pastors are built from the same stuff as everyone else. That’s good, and that’s bad.
When we say “forgiveness,” we mean, “Jesus.” When we say, “righteousness,” we mean, “Jesus.”
Christ and the Evangelists, along with saints Peter and Paul, show a deep attachment to the Book of Psalms...it was because the Psalms were about the Messiah, the Christ of God.