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 beauty of this season ought to draw preachers into the Scriptures own poetry, rich imagery, and paradoxical language to present the holy mystery of Christ’s incarnation.
The eternal Word of God became a mortal human being, but not in some far-off heavenly realm. No, He took up residence among us.
Christmas is a season of irony and song that helps us to know the sacred past and the truth of the Gospel of our salvation.
Christmas wrecks all attempts to penetrate God’s hiddenness and seek Him out in Heaven. He comes to us clothed in our humanity.
Rejoice with Mary as she would rejoice with you. Be blessed, like her, with humility from God, so that you may serve joyfully and willingly wherever and in whatever role God has placed you.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
All our sin and shame is answered for in the death and resurrection of our Lord.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
From the beginning to the end of his letter, John really wants one thing: for us to be in Jesus.
Through water, blood, and word, the Spirit never stops pointing us to Christ, and even more, giving us Christ.