The Hagia Sofia church has stood defiant for 15 centuries before empires and earthquakes. Built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 537AD, it was the centre of that world's worship until Ottoman Turks took the city and converted it into a mosque in 1453. The Ottoman emperor Mehmet the Conqueror gave his soldiers just three days to remove all signs of Christianity from within the magnificent cathedral. Beautiful gold leaf mosaics and the faces of flying angels were covered by plaster and paint in an attempt to Islamize an iconic faith. Can a brush obliterate belief? Six hundred years later, in the early 20th century, the church's Christian images were uncovered and protected by order of Turkey's progressive, post Ottoman leader, Ataturk. The Muslim conquerors also changed the angles. While the ornate Christian pulpit faced east (ad orientem) symbolic of the sun rising like God's new salvation Day, the Muslim muezzin's pulpit faced south-east, towards Mecca, in the Arabian sand. East or south east, sun or sand? Does it matter which direction we're facing? It's just a matter of degrees, isn't it? It makes all the difference in the world. Just as 'the difference between none and one is a difference of millions…none means nothing; one means everything….If we think there is no God we might live as we please. If we say there are many gods we could afford to offend one or two of them without disaster or despair. But if there is one God, and only one, everything depends on my relationship with Him. And if am separated from him by sin, and if there is no mediator, then I am the most miserable man.' (F.W. Boreham). The Mosque's message is, 'Do'. The Christian Gospel says, 'Done'. The Muslim call is 'Try'. The Christian command is, 'Trust' in Jesus, the sun of righteousness, who has risen with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2). The angels and angles in the church of holy wisdom remind me how, in the matter of the soul, 'there are many angles at which a man may fall, but only one at which he can stand.' (G. K. Chesterton)