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.

All Articles

The desire to go home—or to find the place where one truly belongs—is latent in every human being.
It’s been my experience that All Saints’ Day, celebrated on November 1st and observed on the first Sunday following, gets overshadowed by the celebration of Reformation Day.
On this day, the church remembers all the saints who have gone before us.
The striking truth of this festival is not that the church remembers the saints who have gone before us, even though we rightly chime the bells and speak the names of those who in the past year have flown away (Ps. 90:10). The real joy of this day is that those who have departed are counted together with us as the church and we are counted together with them.
Perhaps the answer to creating a healthier church and a more invested people is found in preaching more clearly the full freeing Gospel.
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
Christians have long enjoyed an absurd love affair with white-washing biblical saints.
The church is a home for the family of God. It’s not a mall, a café, a coffee shop, or Amazon. It’s where we usually don’t get what we want, but what we need.
Where once we confessed reliance only in ourselves and our own power, now we confess reliance on Christ alone. So, for our relationship before God, our confession of faith matters.
Perhaps you’ll forgive my reticence to care very much about all of this End of Days talk as it seems that opinions on the matter are very personal and can be really intense.
In God’s eyes, the last day has already happened in Jesus. We’ve already been made alive in Jesus, raised with him, and seated with him at the Father’s right hand.
Hope doesn’t bury its head in the sand but stares, open-eyed, into the truth of this life’s worst horror, and says, “I know the God who went through something even worse, and came out on top.