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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True faith, saving faith that receives the good news about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a faith created in us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.
You are God’s people. Yet you are nothing in the world’s sight. To be honest, often less than nothing. Don’t feel bad, I’m nothing with you.
Beware the lament, dear readers, that is not soothed with the good-goods of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t lie. He was called to preach to Israel. He would send His disciples out into the world. But that didn’t mean His message wasn’t for all.
Even a sinner who is crushed by the weight of her offenses, who feels in her bones the weight of judgment, shame, and doubt can expect to receive God's good word.
The angriest people I meet are former Christians.
The fact is no one dies with dignity.
Have you ever wondered, of all the adjectives we could use to describe this day why in the world we chose the word “good?” Yeah, me too.
The creation is one of God’s good gifts and being cut off from nature and wild places, as we often are in the modern world, is probably not so good for us.
Like her Lord, the Church has dirt under her nails, the smell of coffin wood on her clothes, and a hunger in her belly.
If he was not flesh, who was hung on the cross? And if he was not God, who shook the earth from its foundations?
What on God’s green earth does dynamite, a chemical explosive, have to do with the Gospel of Christ?