The Radical Kingdom - Part 3 — Art Katz

Well, I'm grateful to have made it through these first two sessions. I look forward to this conclusion. And it's something that I've never before spoken. It's a mystery. And I pray that you're sufficiently alert to consider it and to receive it.

I'm really taken up by it. It's remarkable. I just want to proceed it by some references to martyrdom, and then I'll go into it. And then, depending on the time and the disposition and how the Lord will lead us, you still have a need to ask some questions.

We could conclude with some questions and answers. But it may be that some of your questions will be answered in this final session, or the Lord just wants you to take them home. Ponder them yourself and search the Scriptures yourself.

So I just ask you to be led of the Spirit, and not just automatically want to divest yourself of a curiosity. We have to learn to bear the burden of unanswered questions and to receive the answer in the time and the way that the Lord often wants to give it, and not just at the convenience of the place where the question has arisen.

So let's be real sensitive how we shall move with the Lord in the conclusion of this last session. So let's pray together. Precious God, we're grateful. We can see that we have been led by the Most High.

This has been an unfolding of your mind. Who has been your counselor? Who has known the mind of the Lord? And what shall we say, Lord, for what I sense is before us now in the mystery of something that you want to express, and in that you have been so faithful to bring us this far, bring us all the way through in these immediate days.

We just want to acknowledge, Lord, that we count ourselves as privileged to have been, my God, in the place of hearing, in the place of dealing, in the place of transaction, in the place of apostolic and kingdom call.

Come now, my God, as you are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Bring now the conclusion to what you have begun. Seal it. Let it be perfect. Let it be, my God, the piece of history that we have asked of you.

Be with me now, Lord, to move through this material in the way that it shall please you by your Spirit. Give us hearing ears again, I pray. We thank you and praise you for all of your goodness to us, the richness of the counsel of God.

Martyrdom as the Normative Witness of the Church

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Someone has written that for anyone to proclaim the absolute kingship of Christ and the necessary exercise of dominion by Christians in terms of God's law is to declare war on the world and to incur its wrath and hostility.

I want to say that if we have or are taking seriously what God is speaking to us, in these immediate days we will put ourselves on a collision course for suffering. So long as we're content to play some lesser kind of game, this will not be any threat or risk.

But the moment that our intent is serious to see a kingdom realized and the righteousness and the law of God made known to men and the warning of an imminent judgment, you can be assured that reproach and persecution, suffering, if not martyrdom, will be our portion.

And I'd like to make this a complete topic and I regret that we don't have the time for it in itself, but I just will throw it out to you to consider. And I think I made a passing reference in the beginning.

Martyrdom is God's normative intention for every saint. It's not the experience of the few. It's not some kind of, what shall I say, minority experience for those who didn't play their cards right or those who had some particular election in God to suffer.

You shall be witnesses unto me. The Greek word is martyria. You shall be martyrs unto me. True witness is martyrdom. And I don't believe that we're living truly unless we're prepared to die truly. One of the reasons why we're not living truly is because we have no anticipation of a martyr's death and therefore we have not seen to a martyr's preparation.

The issue is not so much as whether our lives are going to ultimately be required of us, but that we ought to live in the anticipation that they will. And I believe that this is true apostolic expectation and of course it is absent from the church.

It won't be if we take God seriously. Nothing has changed. The world is still at enmity with God. We will not have this man to rule over us. It is still the world's mindset. Man wants to exercise his own dominion and is happy with any man who diminishes or denies the kingship of Christ.

But he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet. And so the issue is joined and there are going to be sparks and increasing conflict and collision. I don't have time and I've got the material with me, but not the time to read it.

Of the last epistle of Jacob Hutter, the founder of the Hutterites, one of the Anabaptist screams of men who suffered this kind of persecution and martyrdom. And when you read the swelling apostolic phrases of that literature, you see that they saw that martyrdom was the logic of their faith.

It was the inevitable conclusion to which their faith would bring them and they anticipated it with joy. It was not some kind of dread anticipation, but a joyous climax. So something is grievously wrong.

Either they were weirdos who had a very peculiar mindset or we ourselves are out of tune with God. But I don't have the time to read those things, but only to say that they saw the collision of kingdoms, they saw that their position would lead unavoidably to suffering and tribulation and finally to martyrdom, but it could not be otherwise.

And that this kind of suffering and death was not only not an argument against God's grace, but the actual proof that they were true disciples and on the right path. And these are just brief references, but in two examples that are given us in scripture, there's a kind of revelation that I want to bring to your attention, though I can't do it full justice.

The Cross Reveals God’s Nature Through Meek Suffering

One is in the crucifixion, the suffering and the death of Jesus, in that something is revealed in his martyr death, if I can use that phrase. I came up with a definition of martyrdom. It's adversity meekly suffered.

See, Paul preached Christ and him crucified. And his crucifixion and death, though it was suffered alongside the death of a criminal, was other than that criminal's death. It was Christ and him crucified.

Which is to say he did not die bawling, he didn't die screeching, he didn't clench his fist at the authorities, he didn't spit out curses at those who were jeering him and crying out, come down from the cross and we'll believe you.

He died with such a magnanimity, he displayed in his death what God actually is in his nature. See, suffering reveals. Even the world knows it, but we've forgotten it. And the great schools of acting always knew that if you want to be a great actor, you've got to suffer.

Why? Because suffering reveals. Adversity brings something into the pit and the marrow of the being of man where he really lives. It strips the veneer, it takes away the things that are external and brings you face to face with the things that are ultimately real.

That's the nature of suffering. So what we reveal in suffering is what we really are. And if we're going to bawl and squall and cry out, why me? It's not going to be the revelation of the nature of God and the meekness of God that has such a powerful effect when it was demonstrated by Jesus on the cross that some dumb Gentile clod, a centurion who was schooled in professional murder and had nailed up any number of men and watched them squirm in anguish on the cross, when he beheld the way that Jesus died, he cried out, Truly, this is the Son of God.

It was forced as revelation in his Gentile consciousness that somehow was denied Jews who were anticipating the Son of God. That was revealed in the suffering and the death of Jesus on the cross. The same kind of thing, in kind, is revealed also in the death of the first martyr, Stephen, in the book of Acts, in the seventh chapter.

And I'm a believer that the great principles of God are most cogently expressed in their first reference in scripture. You want to know what the true church is? See the first expression in scripture. You want to know what martyrdom is?

Read about the first martyr. There is something here that is universal, eternal in its principles. In the man who died in the way that he did, whose death was the consequence of his bold speaking and witness without compromise, because he did not choose his own words, but because his life was given to another, he spoke the words that were given and it brought him to a collision course and to a martyr's death.

But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, Acts 7 .55, gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

For me, this is not just a statement of a man in his last moments of extremity, it's the statement of the man in all his moments. Because his dying did not exceed his living. Because he was full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently up into heaven.

That should not be our posture in our death, it should be our posture in our life. And if it is not characteristically and consistently our attitude of seeing as we live, it will not be our attitude of seeing as we die.

Our dying shall not exceed our living and our living shall not exceed our dying. We need to be so full of the Holy Spirit that we see the heavens opened. That in fact, our dying opens the heavens. And this they could not stand to hear, they cried out with a loud voice and they gnashed upon him with their teeth and they crushed him with stones.

One at a time, sinking into his flesh. You know what we feel like when our toe is stubbed by another. But how about dying by inches, a stone at a time. Experiencing the crunch and the thud in our own flesh and the trickle of blood that goes into our own mouths and eyes.

And looking at the rage and the angry faces of those who are throwing death at us. What will be our final reaction? Will we curse them? Will we bite our lips to hold back the venomous scream? The desire for vengeance?

Stephen’s Death, Paul’s Conversion, and the Witness of Affliction

Or will we say with Stephen, who called upon the Lord to receive his spirit and cried out in his final breath, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And having said this, he fell asleep. You see, it took a great death to bring about the conversion of a great apostle.

And I believe that it was the witness to this death that set the stage for the conversion of the apostle Paul who could not kick against this brick. Because he saw a busboy die more magnificently than he was ever able to live as a Pharisee.

He saw something in the revelation of the death of a man who was ordinary and had no theological or academic distinction. He was a waiter on tables. Dying more gloriously than he was able to live for all of his Talmudic and religious knowledge.

Till he came to such a point that he couldn't stand it any longer. It broke him. It took the death of one to bring the life of another. It took a great death to birth a great life. And I think that in these things we have a foretaste of what is our final destiny and our mission as witnesses unto him.

It's going to be our suffering and what we reveal in our suffering as final witness to the dumb clouds who are going to watch our crucifixion. That they might cry out in seeing us truly. These are the sons of God.

Are you preparing to die magnificently? And to rejoice for the privilege? Do you understand Paul when he speaks about the crown that awaits him? Or is it for us just some kind of idle biblical metaphor that has no really cogent practical meaning?

Do we count our present afflictions as momentary and light? Because we see the things that are invisible and eternal? We need to come into this kind of mindset, this kind of apostolic frame of thinking and seeing because we are on a collision course for martyrdom.

Now that's a whole subject in itself but I don't want to say anything more about it. I just leave that much with you to contemplate and to pursue and bring further. And I want to come to the real substance of my concluding talk around one scripture and it's a mystery and it's in Ephesians the third chapter.

Ephesians 3 and the Cosmic Mission of the Church

It talks in the ninth verse about making all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which was from the beginning, which from the beginning of the world has been hidden God who created all things by Jesus Christ to the intent that now under the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I want to say that the issue of martyrdom and the issue of suffering is more than the issue of our overcoming. There's something larger, far more cosmic and eternal and that is the fulfillment of Ephesians 3 .10 that through the church the manifold wisdom of God is to be demonstrated to the principalities and the powers.

Now this is going to be for you a complete mystery and you'll look blank unless you have some cogent sense of what the principalities and the powers and the rulers of darkness are. And yet it's not surprising that there's very little comprehension of what that refers to in the understanding of most Christians.

One writer, William Stringfellow, says this about principalities and powers. Americans, including professed Christians who have biblical grounds to be wiser remain, it seems, astonishingly obtuse about these powers.

They seldom impute to them personality or integrity as creatures and commonly deem institutions and similar principalities as subject to human sponsorships, patronage and control. Yet to be ignorant or gullible or ingenuous about the demons to underestimate the inherent capacities of the principalities to fail to notice the autonomy of these powers as creatures are best their usurpation of human life and their domination of human beings.

Just to put this into common English, what he's saying is that far more than we have ever recognized there is a play upon institutions in the world through a spirit realm called principalities and powers that influences them far beyond any dimension that we have suspected.

That there's no way that we can even understand what is happening institutionally and in our culture if we do not reckon on the operation of the principalities and powers of the air. That influence and adhere in the institutions of the world.

And that if we just address ourselves to the institutions we are naive, we don't recognize behind them the sinister forces which are at play within them. I'm coming to this kind of increasing comprehension of the principalities and the powers as they influence institutions.

Especially academic institutions because they've had a little experience in them. And as I go on in the faith I'm increasingly smarting or sensing the satanic influence and content even in the things that are not outwardly or blatantly sinful or perverse.

Even the things that are applauded as estimable or ethical or doing some service to humanity. I see the insidious and evil influence of the play of the principalities and powers of the air upon these institutions.

They're phony. I see the falsity. I see the lie. I cannot rejoice in the graduation ceremonies. I see the hulky business. I see the so-called rhetoric, the phony speeches, the lie. And I know that the prince of the lie is behind the whole lie of the subterfuge of the academic world.

How much more than other institutions of government and culture because we are naive and have not seen the sinister influence of principalities and powers of the air. Any social concern of human beings which neglects or refuses to deal with the principalities with due regard for their own dignity that is to say not that they're dignified but that they exist, that they are authentic is delusive.

While any social change predicated upon mere human action whether prompted by so-called social gospel or motivated by some pietism is doomed. In other words, if you just address yourself to institutions, if you think that you're going to bring about some amelioration or some change just dealing with them horizontally and laterally and not reckoning on what is invisible but in the spirit realm your efforts are doomed to failure.

Our eyes need to be opened that behind the cosmos are the invisible realities where the action really is. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness.

We need to have our eyes opened apostolically to see as God sees or we're spinning wheels and we're just ventilating ourselves and our energies will amount to nothing. Now God says that through the church, we deserve something for the church that was not even given to Jesus himself and that is to demonstrate to the principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God.

This has not to do with atonement or even the issues of government or society or the world but it's something that fulfills a moral requirement of God. It's a mystery. And just because it's a mystery you need not think that it is some kind of secondary or tangential matter.

I want to say that this mystery is at the heart of the moral cosmos of God and it is the ultimate mystery for which we have been chosen and that if we miss this mystery and do not consciously understand it and address ourselves to it, we will miss also the lesser things that will have practical consequences in the earth.

We need to see that God has chosen us to make manifest his wisdom in a certain kind of demonstration that is the cap or the completion or the consummation of the whole purpose of God that was established from the beginning at the cross of Christ Jesus because that's where the manifold wisdom is.

Failure too of the church to consciously comprehend and appreciate this mystery will affect also the realization of its activity in earthly things. The mission of the church like the work of its exalted head is not confined to the earth.

Its field is the whole cosmos. Talk about a man speaking by faith. That's me right now. Of all places in Minnesota with a bunch of rank and file men to speak to them that if we miss understanding that our field of activity is not just the earth or the world but the entire cosmos, we miss the ultimate mystery of God and the fullness and the purpose that God has imputed to us as the church.

I have never before heard anyone address this question. I'm hearing it for the first time out of my own mouth and I'm believing by faith that we have come to an hour and a moment in which God now wants this spoken.

We need to see it. We need to comprehend or to apprehend the reason for which we have been apprehended in Christ. It is more than the issue of atonement. It's more even than the issue of the amelioration or the transformation of society.

It's even more than the issue of the kingdom come. It's an issue beyond the earth. It's an issue beyond time. It takes place in the realm of heavenlies in an internal realm and yet it has got to do with the very heart of the whole moral issue of the cosmos and the reason for which God sank that cross into the earth with a loud thud.

God is waiting for completion, a demonstration through the church of that manifold wisdom to the principalities and the powers. It is a demonstration of the manifold wisdom of God, the foolishness of the cross, the weakness of God that contradicts satanic wisdom emphasizing power, force, violence, intimidation, divisiveness, selfishness and so on.

That's the demonstration. It's the demonstration of the power of forgiveness, of meekness in suffering unjustly. It's attaining the true destiny for which God brought forth the church with spiritual ends and it goes to the father most reaches of the universe.

It reminds us that our faith is not a private matter but is integrally related to the design of the cosmos itself. I'm not saying these things to be fancy or that I'm trying to find some cunning new doctrine or to elaborate some rarely spoken thing.

I think that this is nuts and bolts and is at the heart of the whole mystery of the gospel and the mystery of the church and the final and utter consummation that God intends through the church is this demonstration to the principalities and powers.

And yet it has a remarkable practical consequence because God wants that demonstration to be made on the same basis by which Jesus made a spoil of the enemy. That's the wisdom of God. It's a response to adversity in meekness.

The Cross, the Spirit, and the Lamb-Likeness of God

It's the same thing as what is spoken of in the scripture where it says that Jesus by the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God. This is the heart of Jesus at the cross. He offered himself, the lamb, without blemish, spotless, to God for the purposes and the glory of the father is the same formula and the same way by which we ought to offer ourselves by the eternal spirit.

The cross and the spirit agree. And the cross and the spirit, therefore, are the final and the ultimate revelation of what God is. What God demonstrated on the cross is what God is. It's Christ and him crucified.

It's the lamb slain from the foundations of the world. It's the lamb likeness of God demonstrated under ultimate adversity and suffering. And that's what we need to demonstrate to the principalities and powers.

And every time we're brought to a place of challenge, every time we're brought to a place of reproach, a place of persecution, a place of shame, a place of suffering, a place of accusation, a place of death, what we reveal in that moment through the character that is shaped in us being full of the Holy Spirit and seeing the heaven opened is that demonstration to the principalities and powers through the church.

Why is this God's ultimate ace, so to speak? Because it's through the church. It's guys like you and me who were roused about, drunks, fornicators, a bunch of crap that had nothing to distinguish us and God saved us out of death.

And God cleaned us up. And God gave us holy motivation. And God formed us into a body together, we who were reckless individualists and Jews who could not tolerate Gentiles and vice versa. And he's made of us one new man and one people, the church.

And it's through the church, this church, this creation of God, this ultimate masterpiece of God that the final demonstration comes to the principalities and powers of the air. And when that comes, all that God has intended in his heart from the first through the cross is fulfilled.

The final vestige of power, of usurpation of the enemy is once and for all and utterly destroyed. What began as the bruising of his head ends as his final destruction through the demonstration that comes by the church of the manifold wisdom of God, his meekness in suffering.

And we shall not fulfill it except we are prepared for it. And we are failing as ministers except we are presently preparing our people for suffering. Unless we show them and understand ourselves what is the high calling in Christ Jesus which goes beyond the issue of atonement and goes even beyond the issue of the kingdom, beyond the earth and beyond time into the heavenlies and into eternity itself, into the very heart of the cosmos in this demonstration is the faith.

It's a mystery. This is the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known. Can you believe that? God created all things in order that this manifold wisdom of God might now be made known.

Here, listen guys. You just have to bring yourself to where God is. There's nothing that I'm saying now that commends itself to your reason. There's nothing here that you'll approve of because it's reasonable.

It has nothing to do with your reason. It has nothing to do with what you like or don't like. It has everything and only to do with God and what He likes. But you need to understand it. You need to agree with it.

You can read it again for yourself. It's Ephesians 3, 9 -11. This is the mystery which for ages has been hidden by God in God who created all things in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church.

To Him be glory in the church. Can you think of anything more hideous than that the church should be a means to our ends? A means for the elevation of ourselves, the fulfillment of our ministries by which we receive acknowledgement from men or financial or monetary security or some kind of Sunday or other benefit?

That is a hideous distortion and caricature of God's intention through the church. Unto Him be glory in the church.

He created all this in order that.

This mystery might be fulfilled through the church to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places. I don't know why. I don't know why it's important to Him. Why He needs to make this demonstration. I only know that it pleases Him and that's all that I have to know.

Do you know it? That now might be made known. It's a mystery. And yet because it's mysterious does not mean that it's impractical. It does not mean that it's unrelated to the substantial calling that we have to usher in a kingdom and to pursue righteousness.

And I know that I know that I know except that we understand this mystery and lay hold of it we're going to fail also in the practical and the earthly things. We need to see what is ultimate if we're going to be effectual in the thing that's immediate.

We need to see what's eternal if we're going to be effectual in the thing which is in time. Because you cannot cut this asunder. You cannot hack this up into nice convenient dispensational pieces. It's all one continuum in God.

Through the church. Through the church. Through the church. I'll tell you if we have not had sufficient motivation to be such a church this is enough reason to be it. True church that makes manifest this mystery.

Because nothing less than a true church can. A whole church that is apostolic like its founder. A whole church that lives in the meekness of the spirit of Christ. A whole church that embraces suffering with humility.

A whole church that lives in the spirit of forgiveness and is able to love the enemy and does not dismiss that as some dispensational thing for a future millennium. It loves the enemy now. It suffers patiently now.

It endures misunderstanding now. T. Austin Sparks a great set of forth of the faith of God and an influence on Watchman Nee writes that the cross lies at the heart of every disappointment triumphantly born.

And every adversity meekly suffered. That's what the cross is. That's what the genius of the cross is. That's what is the manifold wisdom of God. And it contradicts the manifold wisdom of Satan. Satan says if your flesh is pierced if you are falsely accused if you are shortchanged, if you are denied you have every right to shriek and howl and get even.

Isn't that what the Arabs are doing now with the Jews? Isn't that the whole thing that is rending South Africa between black and white? Isn't that what has been the justification of every bloodbath in the history of man?

Looking out for number one and giving those guys what they deserve. The Huns or whatever you want to call them. The whole history of mankind is the history of retaliation. The whole history of mankind is violence and brutality.

The whole history of mankind is acting out its life in keeping with the wisdom of Satan rather than the wisdom of God. But God is saying that at the end of the age He is going to have a people a heavenly body who are going to show forth in suffering not anger or bitterness or vengeance but patient and meek endurance.

They're going to suffer and triumphantly bear it and pray even for those who are persecuting them Lord lay not this sin to their charge. And when hell sees this when the principalities and the powers see this they are finished.

It was one thing to see it in Jesus and it bruised their head but to see it in a church of men who used to fight and rape and loot and hire and shrink and to see them in the same land likeness is the final and ultimate demonstration of the manifold wisdom of God.

Are you consciously moving toward the fulfillment of this mystery? I'll tell you I came back from my last trip overseas wounded and convicted of God for impatience and arrogance of spirit. You say, what horrendous thing did you do?

Nothing! But in little things I showed an impatience and an edge. So while my mouth was speaking peace out of my own life was yet issuing another kind of spirit which is the spirit of impatience which in the last analysis is the spirit of murder.

I've come back and I've said to God Lord I don't want to go out again until you have brought this to the cross in me. I want to know the meekness of the Lamb in my own life and there's a whole church that needs to know it and needs to demonstrate that manifold wisdom.

Meekness Applied in Marriage and Daily Conflict

If I can give you a little recent anecdote in my marriage there have been many anecdotes most of them painful because I'm a man for the truth and I'll tell you what I'll step over my own mother I'll crush and I'll bludgeon for the truth's sake and somehow my wife has not altogether appreciated that over 18 years and somehow however keen my discernments have been of her carnality and error and shortcomings she has not changed.

The truth as bludgeon has not worked a thing you know why? It was in the wrong spirit. It was the wrong moral base. We've had separate bedrooms for some time and you know what happens when a man is denied in his flesh and the impatience and the irritation and the anger and the self-justification that comes that you pounce on your wife when you find her justifiably in a mistake and let her have it.

But I came down one day I forgot how this took place it was just a few days ago. Inger is still stunned and marveling over it and I said to her in such a quiet and measured way I don't know where this statement came from.

I said you know you're a rather disagreeable woman. She didn't say anything to me then but she has not stopped talking of it since. She said that one statement has done more to penetrate my soul and convict me than any of your scathing condemnations and critiques of my carnality over the years.

Do you know why it was effectual? Because it was spoken. It was spoken in the spirit of the Lamb. It was not spoken in a reaction to my woundedness or my being denied. It was truth spoken in love in another spirit and something happened to my wife a release because something was touched in the heavenlies in the principalities and the powers that have long had too great a sway in her life.

Something had to be loved something had to be moved something jerked in the orbit of the cosmos way up there in the invisible realms that touched a little Danish woman right here in Minnesota because in a moment when I should have spoken with greater anger, irritation or personal pique something came out that was of another kind in the manifold wisdom of God and since that time my wife has not been all that disagreeable.

It is a practical consequence but there is also a mystery. We've got again and again and again by the eternal spirit to offer ourselves without blemish to God. That's the mystery. That's the wisdom. So every true operation of the cross is an operation of the spirit so that God is all in all and brings to the core of the cosmos by every such act of the church His quintessential self the nature of the Lamb.

See I'm glad this is being taped because there is no way that you can receive this in one hearing. I don't know that I understand it in one speaking but I know that what I'm speaking is true because the life is offered by the eternal spirit something is revealed that is both the spirit and the life which is the nature of God himself ultimately right at the core of the cosmos where the principalities and powers are.

Every time we act in adversity, in weakness rather than in anger or self-justification. Is your church experience shaping this character in your life? Then your church is wanting and is outside God's intention for it as church.

Because if our character is not being shaped in the church where is it being shaped? And it will not except that we see this mystery and desire to be apprehended by him for the reasons for which he intended that we be apprehended.

That God might be all in all. Where Jesus was on the cross is where God is. It's the ultimate revelation. God is like that. That's the image of the invisible God. That's God's nature. And we reveal it also.

And every time that we come to the place of stress or a cross situation. And we act as if there's a heaven opened. And we can say to our persecutors or of them Lord forgive them, they know not what they've done.

I'll tell you, if we can't react to our wife who is our persecutor. How shall we react to the world who will become our persecutor? God gives us such wise as basic training. And if we flub it there, we're not going to make it in the world.

Because the things that are little and domestic and daily in that hand are the issues of the things that are ultimate in the cosmos. That's the mystery of the faith. And I praise God for such a faith.

I praise God for such challenge. I praise God for such a high calling. Because I was made for this. And anything less would leave me bored stiff. Anything less is not sufficiently demanding. It does not require of me what this requires.