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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How should we read Paul, ya’ll? Why reading the Bible like a Southerner makes sense of confusing passages.
The veil was not torn to let us in but to let God out.
I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
The law demands love, and love has no limits, no end, it is never done.
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
The absence of a feeling is not the absence of Christ, but as emotional, rational, and spiritual beings, we cannot say that the presence of Christ necessitates the absence of emotion.
We are no longer controlled by sin as He moves our lips to speak love and forgiveness. We are passive as He acts out His words and His salvation for us.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
Jesus is our food and drink, our home and property, our all in all.
Jesus is our food and drink, our home and property, our all in all.
Repentance is not a call to improve. It is a call to die.
God goes to work on us through His Word like a woodcarver chisels a block of wood.