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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It is your privilege—we may even say “right”—to call upon this Father and to call him Father.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.
What we do much less of, even in Christian circles, is recognize just how pervasive sin is, such that it has thoroughly corrupted us.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
Elsewhere makes promises that can’t be kept, but God’s promises are secure, reliable, and certain.
It's easy to have courage when things go well.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
Regardless of background or beliefs, every American I talk to seems on edge, as if the sky were about to fall. But the sky is not falling.
Regularly reading and hearing God’s Word helps us to keep a song in our hearts.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?