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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If there were ever any doubt about God's commitment to humanity, the incarnation removed that doubt. God became a man forever. And thus he is our brother, our kinsman redeemer, the God who would move heaven and earth to save us.
Sometimes it’s important to go far away to learn of holy places back home.
The Word of the Lord is sure. The enemy is defeated. Salvation is waiting for you.
God is often hidden in history, even as we make it now, but He is always manifest where He has promised to be.
Lent means that we do not have to look to ourselves but can look to our neighbor in love as Christ has loved us.
Belonging to Christ means we have a place where we fit, a resting place where we are at peace because we know our Lord accepts us as His own.
Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
God saves us through people. He saves us through means. He puts a voice on the gospel.
Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.