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 Pastoral Prophet: Meditations on the Book of Jeremiah written by Steve Kruschel is available for preorder through 1517 Publishing. The following is an excerpt.
While faith forms the relationship with God and love the relationship with the neighbor, hope forms the Christian’s relationship with the future.
How we feel is so often conditioned upon what we are experiencing. Faith grabs hold of something outside our experience, something objective and true that is not changed by circumstance.
The Easter season is designed to cultivate our resurrection thinking throughout the year. When God looks at us each day, He sees us through the lens of Christ’s resurrection. We should look at our lives the same way.
In our liquid world, strung out on the meth of evil, full of poor souls fighting to stay afloat, where are you, O God? Don't you care that we are perishing?
When Christians die, heaven does not “get another angel.” We cannot become angels any more than we can become giraffes or ocean waves or stars. We are people and will remain so after this present life. God did not make a mistake when he made us human.
Spoiler alert! Jesus rose from the grave with the assurance that all believers will rise bodily with Him on the Last Day. And truth be told, Easter wasn't the first spoiler.
When God's Word went to the cross and made full payment for all our sinful, self-serving, self-seeking activities, and then rose from the dead, Jesus added an "always and forever" to our days and life.
Instead of remaining silent when we wonder if someone is struggling with suicidal thoughts, and rather than judging for ourselves whether or not suicide is an unforgivable sin, let's lean on God's Word.
Long ago, the people of Israel began to sing words of encouragement to each other in times of distress. In their songs, the psalms, are three Hebrew words that provide stability for us. They are more than just words—each one encapsulates the way of God with his people. They serve as helpful handholds in times of stress and upheaval. The words are these: רָפָה (be still), קָוָה (wait), and שָׁמַר (watch).
Shaking off our sleep, bright and clear, we will open our eyes and huge smiles will come over our faces as we see the familiar faces of so many friends.
Is there, or should there be, a Christian response to COVID-19? I think the answer is yes, but not in the sense that Christians have a silver bullet or cure. Christianity and Christians do, however, have something to offer the world in an era of uncertainty. They have the sure promises of Christ.