We do not have this Word in our hand; we are in its hand. Step by step we continue to be dependent upon its opening itself to us as it does to others. By virtue of its visible demonstrations of power, it will do that, often where we do not expect it, and perhaps not at the very place where we would like to fit it to our wishes and plans — not to “race, folk, and nation,” as the German Christians declared at that time. Instead it will bind itself to the “incompetents and the inferiors” whom the German Christians wanted to get rid of.19
