The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
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.

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When I hear people describe the god they don’t believe in, no longer believe in, or can’t bring themselves to believe in, I often nod in agreement. Yes, as a follower of Jesus, I do not and would not believe in that god either.
The kingdom of God is not a place, a thing, a concept, a philosophy, a spiritual force, or a state of being. The kingdom of God is a person.
Look inside yourself to answer, “Are you a Christian?” and what will you find?
David and Job both know that prayer puts a cigarette lighter to all prim and proper books of religious etiquette. It is honest. Heated. Emotional. Raw. And the psalms are packed with it.
All major and minor reformations happen not because people react but because God acts. He reforms. He looks down from heaven, has mercy upon his starving children, and ends the famine of the Word by sending the rain of the Gospel.
We show up to this crowded sacred shindig on Sundays, all wings and halos and blue jeans, and shimmy our way into the sanctuary, late to church but not late to church, for how can we be late to a service that never ends?
Our very lives as parents and children implicitly proclaim this higher and lovely truth: we have no value to God based upon our usefulness.
Jesus knows your name. Whether you’re a boy named Sue or a beggar named Lazarus, the God who named that forgotten man has not forgotten you.
As our first parents had a bond with the animals, as Noah had animals with him in the reboot of creation after the flood, so after this old creation comes to an end, we will enjoy a new creation that includes animals.
One of the first steps in recovering from a broken marriage is to find ways to heal the divorce that’s happened within our own souls.
Peter showed his soul on the night when he denied knowing Jesus. Or, as I prefer to think of it, when he finally told the truth.
Far too many Christians read the Bible as if a dam has been built between the waters of the Old Testament and the New Testament.