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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God’s words do things. When God blesses you, you are blessed.
The Lion of Judah, Christ the King, Jesus of Nazareth, will not be away from us for one night.
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
Moltmann is gone now, but his theology will continue to provoke and provide.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
In our catastrophes - whatever they may be, however large or small they are - we cry out for rescue, deliverance, and salvation.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.
What we do much less of, even in Christian circles, is recognize just how pervasive sin is, such that it has thoroughly corrupted us.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.