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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Wisdom speaks in proverbs, parables and riddles. And the simple continue to wander right past her words of life.
Though they have never left the church, they have been lost all the while.
When I first began to hear that the Bible’s good news was a whole lot less about me and a whole lot more about Christ, I just didn’t get it.
In Christian terms, this is a perfect example of the doctrine of vocation, where God calls us to serve our neighbor.
With the proclamation that grace and peace come through the bloody suffering and death of Jesus, we're awoken to the fact that God's grace covers all our sin and His peace calms our busy heart and mind.
I don't remember the first time I heard the gospel, but I do remember the first time I began to understand it.
In the twinkling of that eye the perishable will become imperishable, and our bodies will be changed and become more glorious than we ever could have imagined.
He does not offer a linear route or a series of actions. He offers Himself. In very simple straightforward words, He declares, “I am the way.”
She wasn’t so much giving up on her husband as giving up on herself. She was giving up trying to be the person who changes another person. It was going to take more than her to reform the man she loved.
The God who calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves will seem hopelessly out of touch with your insulated life of self-sufficiency.
Today, people often bemoan the loss of children in the church.
It's difficult enough for us to bear anothers' burdens, but carry another person's sin for him? Why would we do that?