There is in each of us a dis-ease, a sense of unfulfillment of some high destiny unmet, of some lofty vow broken and shattered.
We are sinners!
We long for some word of forgiveness which will make us whole. We sense we have a homeland, but we are exiles. We perceive that we are of royal lineage, but our lives are being spent cheaply and shabbily and our purposes and ends are too narrow and parochial. We would be restored to our true estate. The old cry is in our literature, our TV screens, in the shame and shambles of public corruption as people seek security in money or influence. It is in the flight of our young into themselves and out toward some Nirvana of drug-inducing ecstasy. Paul has stated the case for so many of us; “for the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24)
Gardner Taylor: (The Company of Preachers, p. 111)