Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, once equated religious experience with the exceptional, with the ecstatic. Later, he came to accept his ordinary moment-by-moment encounters with others as the very heart of everything that was spiritually genuine. Unlike this Jewish sage, the writer of Hebrews believes in a God who may be personally known, with whom one may actually speak and upon whom one may totally rely. Although such contact does not relieve a believer of daily obligations or lift him out