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.

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The dying words of Jesus were not, “Make it worth it,” but “It is finished.”
No, when the Lord is ready for battle, of all creatures, he commissions Mary’s little lamb.
O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus he says to these bones. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
Israel’s priests were ordained with the blood of a sacrifice applied to their ear, their thumb, and their toe, for they were to hear God’s word, handle His holy things, and walk in His ways. But none was perfect, all were flawed.
So what's the back side? What's the promise? We shall not have other gods, but we do have the one, true God—the promise of a God for us.
The manna God provides is never tasty enough. God never lives up to your expectations. So silently or audibly you wish for an easier way.
The mother of this prophet is visited by the Mother of God. In the coming together of these two pregnant women, we see the coming together of the old and the new.
As C. S. Lewis, in "The Magician’s Nephew", has Aslan sing the world and all its beautiful intricacies into existence, so the Lion of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus, hymns the heavens and earth into being.
Jesus was not killed in Bethlehem as a baby, or in Galilee or Samaria as an adult. He couldn’t be, for it was necessary for him to die in Jerusalem, where Moriah is.
And there was heard, all round the world, the boom of a pounding hammer. And there resounded, all around the world, the cry of a righteous man who prayed for an unrighteous world.
The soles of the holy feet of God traverse the soil of the holy land of promise.
What James really desired was to be beside his Lord Jesus. He wanted to sit not twelve seats away, not six, but smack-dab beside him.