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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We're ALL sinners in need of a Savior. We're all saints whose Savior forgives ALL our sin. We're all the same in relation to Christ crucified for the sin of the world.
What a person quickly realizes when sin, death, and Satan attack in concrete reality is how inadequate and ill-equipped they are to fight them off.
There is true help in the midst of our pain. Someone who suffered as we suffer, who embraced all our pain in his suffering and death on a cross.
His resurrection reveals that Jonah, and all of us, even the evilest people, are salvageable, even from suicide, in Jesus' death and resurrection.
God hides from us on purpose so he can be God for us without limits or measures in the way of faithful, loving-kindness.
The easiest way for us to contend with our sin is to become an agent of sin. We slice and cut others to pieces for all the world to see.
We live in the strength of our baptism again and again and again, returning to it every day according to God's promise. 
We don't have to worry about making progress towards God because he's already come to us, named us as his own, and promises to never leave or forsake us.
We confuse salvation and vocation in our quest to determine who is in control of our salvation.
One moment, we pray for our rescue from sin and death. The next moment, we beg our Father to do unto others what we hope he will never do to us.
It may seem like a radical statement, but in Christ Jesus, there’s nothing wrong with you.
God has closed the religious gym. We don't have to show up for church determined, this year, finally, to make a change for the better.