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 epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Through water, blood, and word, the Spirit never stops pointing us to Christ, and even more, giving us Christ.
By making a big deal of every baptism, of every confirmation, of every rite of matrimony, the Church takes a stand against the intrusion of consumerism, secularism, identity politics, subversive subcultures, gender dysphoria, and the like.
Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.
When we cry to the Lord in our trouble, he will send us a preacher with words that deliver us from destruction.
The one who embodies the dove, that is, the Holy Spirit will be mounted upon the staff of Calvary.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
The power of the Word of God is the power of God himself, for he is always faithful to his Word.
A group of unassuming apostles was given a graphic illustration of how the Lord would use them to turn the world right-side-up through the upside-down logic of grace.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
We did not say “Goodbye” to our son on the day of his burial. We said, “Luke, we’ll see you soon.”
Don't lose hope. Don't avoid church on Sunday morning.