This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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The stilling of the seas is not so much a parable of words but a parable of actions. Jesus shows his apostles that they were seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not understanding who he was.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
Understanding the doctrine of the hypostatic union can help us understand what God is up to in the Incarnation.
These last words of the Old Testament Scriptures prepare us for the incarnation and beyond.
The Gospel outpaces all would-be and eventually fleeting identity-makers and brings in the truth of a renewed-in-Christ humanity.
Jesus offer us this vision of violence not so we might be drawn into it but so we might be drawn through it to come closer to Him.
Through the means of grace, Christ grants us a share in all the blessings of this ancient hope.
As I sat there in the dark, empty church with my hands buried in the guts of a copy machine I was powerless to fix, I couldn't help feeling sorry for myself.
We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.
A new life in Christ Jesus is our hope. Not only that, Jesus is our access to God.
His kingdom is not one of force and might for our exploitation and his gain, but one of his patience and long-suffering for our benefit.
When a king dies and his throne is up for grabs, we worry about what will happen next. But, heaven's throne is always occupied by the One who was raised from death for us.