Excerpt from Dominion by Addie E. Citchens, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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I'm just a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody.


FROM THE MINISTER'S DESK

Sabre J. Winfrey

June 4, 2000

MORNING MESSAGE: We're Not Worthy

SCRIPTURAL BACKGROUND: "And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne, a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?' And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it." Revelation 5:1–3 NKJV

SABRE POINTS: What does the inability of anyone to open the book of judgment tell us about the Christian in the time of John? ___________________________________________________________
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We know that sin was passed to us through our brother Adam, and we know only the Lamb has walked the earth without sin. Why is John so distraught that none other is worthy to open the book of judgment? How are his views reflective of the Heavenly Father's? ___________________________________________________________
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Revelation proselytizes the end of history as we know it. How can that acknowledgment make us stronger in our day-to-day walk? ___________________________________________________________
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The wages of sin is _____________________, but the gift of God is __________________.

PRISCILLA

The duration of Sunday devotional depended on whether or not the Holy Spirit drove Rev into falsetto. As he walked from behind the pulpit to stand between the enormous sprays of magnolia on either side of the altar, I could tell he was headed there.

"Whoooooooooo is?" he croaked down deep and then slid an octave up. "Whoooooooooo is? Who is worthy?"

Rev favored a low bass in his arrangements for contrast and fiddled with every aspect of musicianship. Of course, the sanctuary had been constructed for acoustic excellence. The altar, bandstand, and pulpit lay in the valley with the pews rising on an incline, so that his honey voice floated up to make me shiver. Witnessing him in his element dampened my twenty-five years of fury at Melvistine Evan's beastly self for encouraging me to sit down out of the sanctuary choir when she complained I couldn't get the precision rock right because of my limp. Anyway, Rev sang the first two lines, and Melvistine's hungry eyes were edifying him, and I thought proudly (despite our problems), That's my man.

In the early days before the computer, I typed all of the church's programs using a big blue typewriter he let me pick out. I enjoyed key clacking and ink smudges, the tidy paper begging to be used, the busy hum of the machine. I would close the study door and let him tend to the boys, except for whomever was nursing. It made me feel important, even though the sermons I produced based on his notes would end up being used as guideposts or maybe not at all, depending on how the Spirit moved him. I was so proud, proud to be his wife and the mother of his children. Then, I thought we were in this thing together; it took a long while and a harsh fall to see it had never been about us, but about him. And even after realizing why he had hired Linda to be his secretary when she couldn't type, spell, or figure her way out of a paper bag, I continued to research and create these programs for him, for the Seals.

But I digress. I was rocking just fine from my seat, and certainly, everyone could hear my beautiful operatic soprano and the precision of my tambourine, loudest when Melvistine called herself leading a song. Besides, sitting down, I looked better than every sister in here, even Katherine, or Kathareen as everybody said, who was barely thirty but recently widowed when her husband was mangled in an accident with an 18-wheeler. Brown and juicy, Kathareen still had all her teeth, had come up on a little money with the wrongful-death settlement, and always had a foot of somebody else's hair affixed to her head. Plus, Deacon Golliday always had to tip over with a pillowcase to cover the big, shiny legs she never saw fit to throw a pair of stockings on.

Excerpted from Dominion by Addie E. Citchens. Copyright © 2025 by Addie E. Citchens. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.