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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There were pictures of her bathed in the sun of South Padre, sand between her toes, arm-in-arm with beautiful friends
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
When it comes to this world, our beds are most often a mess even when we do our best to make them in the morning.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
I don’t know about you, but I am perpetually of the mind that God is disappointed in me.
For most of my Christian experience I was taught and I taught others that church was primarily a place to go to serve, to use your gifts, to bless others.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
Whatever we call “god,” how we act out our “religion,” what we call “living,” if its name isn’t Jesus, it’s a sham.
Bring your black eyes and bruised hearts. Bring your criminal records and soiled pasts. Bring your same sex attraction and internet history. Jesus isn't afraid of your sin or your righteousness.
We are called to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of the Answer incarnate, Jesus Christ, and in love respond to the questions that inevitably arise against it.
God only baptizes babies. He only saves babies. He only resurrects babies.
Pictures of God’s grace for us in and through His Son, Jesus, can be found in the most unlikely places. Recently, I witnessed one such picture of God’s grace during WrestleMania 34.