Entering Into Nobility

“The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.”  by Isak Dinesen from Out of Africa

As ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ we are called to engage our nobility, that peculiar right given to those in the royal court that, as Isak Dinesen so eloquently writes, is marked by the ability to in fact understand tragedy as a ‘fundamental principle of God’.

I lost a friend this week, perhaps two. Lives given over to the gospel. And all of heaven is holding court – spattered by blood – silent and honoring the sacrifice.

I can do no less.

And I am reminded that the call to walk with Jesus is in fact a call to give our lives away.

How is it, that we barely get this?

Entering into our nobility as sons and daughter of The King would have us willingly and gladly entering into tragedy – going where the broken are, investing when we might rather run, looking hard and long into the face of all that is wrong in the world.

While God may be found in the good and the nice, he is most alive in the darkness and the downtrodden and the dangerous.

Will we go there with him?