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 desires that all men might be saved. The problem, the stumbling block, does not lie with God. The problem is one of man’s heart and spirit.
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).
Maybe for the first time you can begin to receive creation as a gift, a sheer gift from God’s hands. And who knows what might happen in the power of this grace? All possibilities are open.
Because peace is a gift and not a product, you can’t work your way into it. However—you can receive it by grace.
Imagine a world where love is given to the least. That is what Jesus is inviting His disciples to do in His parable this morning.
It is the Word of the Lord and His Word accomplishes what it says. Our favorable or unfavorable circumstances neither help nor hinder the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
God seeks us so we might find Him, but He does so in ways that do not always make sense to us.
The wisdom of God became man, lived, died, and was raised for the justification of sinners, great and small.
The scope of catechesis from the Reformation was broad and included not only instruction at church but in the home and in schools.
What doesn’t kill you might actually be a cheapened law that leaves wiggle room and space in the door for your old man to stick his foot in and get in on the work of Christ.
Christians have the rare faculty, above all other people on earth, of knowing where to place their care, while others vex and torture themselves and at length must despair.
In this parable, notice how Jesus invites us to consider that forgiveness is something more than a moment. It is a way of grace that extends throughout an entire kingdom.