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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The desire to go home—or to find the place where one truly belongs—is latent in every human being.
Jesus is the Word of God. God’s Word—on two legs (John 1:14). I’d read it in the first chapter of John’s Gospel many, many times.
Divine election hacking happens with the proposal that God’s Word is irrelevant and powerless, weak and impotent.
The salvation of wretched sinners by an omni-holy and forever-righteous God is, by all accounts, a categorical impossibility.
Thank God for heroes: they inspire us to be better, to help others, to live and work for the good of our race. And thank God for villains, too: they incarnate our shadow side, our nocturnal soul, the dragon within us that must incessantly have its throat slit on the altar of repentance.
My email was once hacked and read, then used to send emails to contacts in my address book.
Since Adam, we are all illegal and undocumented aliens in God’s country.
Perhaps the answer to creating a healthier church and a more invested people is found in preaching more clearly the full freeing Gospel.
What do you think of when you hear the term “self-esteem”?
Finally, we draw near the end of this three-part article on Revelation 1:10-20.
Let’s take a walk together. And as we do, I’ll tell you a mystery.
The white hair of Jesus’ head teaches us that the Gospel is an ancient mystery.