A need for someone to carry the kingdom in her spirit

A saint is a person who understands the times yet carries the kingdom in spirit

When we look back over the history of mankind, we see a forest where trees once grew but where the storms have passed, laying it waste. In this, in the whole unhappy course of humankind, our dear God is still the manager who allows people—who must belong to him—to be his saints. These are people in whom he is a power and to whom he simply says, "You must go my way and demonstrate that, even under evil conditions, a way is to be found which can be traveled without becoming entangled."

Always, when things are to move forward, God must have saints who also stand in their
own times; who understand the times; who know how to live among the people of the times; but who, even though the times be ever so perverted, still carry the high thoughts of the kingdom of God in their spirits.

Selah.

Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Thy Kingdom Come.