'There is a kind of high comedy about our faith. There is a kind of high comedy about our seeing and not seeing, about waiting, about being human but not quite human. We wait for him to come - more than we know, each of us waits for our heart's desire - and he comes only in metaphors, in shadowy glimpses through the tall and bleeding trees; in long silences through which some words should be spoken and are spoken but never quite audibly enough for us to be sure we've heard them right: "The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee preserve they body and soul unto everlasting life"
Body and soul, we wait for the new life to make us everlastingly alive, new blood to flow through our dusty and sorrowing world, soft as rainwater and almost without taste but with the faintest tinge of sweetness to it. He was a fine man, our Lord and General. He was everything a man should be. He was everything we all should be and from the deepest part of ourselves yearn to be - loving, brave, just - but are not yet, not by a long shot.'
Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.103.
