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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Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
Take courage, you who were lost: Jesus comes to seek and save that which is lost. Ye sick, return to health: Christ comes to heal the contrite of heart with the balm of his mercy. Rejoice, all you who desire great things: the Son of God comes down to you that he may make you the co-heirs of his kingdom.
Rejoice with Mary as she would rejoice with you. Be blessed, like her, with humility from God, so that you may serve joyfully and willingly wherever and in whatever role God has placed you.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
By his first Advent in the flesh, through his second Advent with bread and wine and water and Word, we await his third Advent at the end.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
All our sin and shame is answered for in the death and resurrection of our Lord.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
While the world is full of horizons and endpoints, for Christians, there is always tomorrow, and there are people in that tomorrow waiting for us as we wait for them.
We ache in eager anticipation as we see Christ in action and as we take in the snapshots of his life, death, and resurrection.
We live again, not so that we will now pay our debt, but to proclaim that we live because our debt was paid!