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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This is why a Christian must keep learning to forget himself so long as he lives.
Heaven is not our ultimate hope. Our promise is not to live forever riding on rainbows and soaring in the clouds.
The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
In the twinkling of that eye the perishable will become imperishable, and our bodies will be changed and become more glorious than we ever could have imagined.
Then He went to the coffin. He touched it, like a carpenter sizing up the piece of wood He plans to turn into some sort of new creation, running His hand down its side.
You are changing as your eyes move over these sentences. You are aging. You are on your way to death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.
The Lord has a special place in his heart for those whom the world forgets. For the anonymous. For the rejected.
Jesus simply can’t help himself. Over and over in the Gospels we find Jesus leaving a wake of physical restoration.
King has some kind of belief in God, but was probably under no inner compulsion to do anything we would term evangelism.
Because I do care now, and will care even after I’m with the Lord, here are some things I hope and pray are not said at my funeral. I care about those who will be there, about what they will hear.