God makes possible what the world takes to be impossible. I have learned from Karl Barth that we must begin, as much as we are able, not with what we think is possible, but with the real that staggers and shatters our unbelieving notions of the possible. Thus, for example, the biblical testimony testifies to the emancipation of the slaves from Egypt and to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. These astonishing turns occur in the lived reality of the world but are beyond human explanation. They