"It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”.
“The awareness of a spiritual tradition that reaches through the centuries gives one a certain feeling of security in the face of all transitory difficulties.”.“One act of obedience is worth a hundred sermons.”.They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.” They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. “The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs.How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?" “We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”.If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.” “Seek God, not happiness - this is the fundamental rule of all meditation.“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”.It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.” “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standard.” "In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity.“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”.We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.” “Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves.By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.” “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating."May we be enabled to say 'No' to sin and 'Yes' to the sinner.”.We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them." God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives God’s Word but also lends us God’s ear. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them. “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them.“Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”.this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.” What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are not an ideal world, but the real world.
He was hanged in April 1945, just one month before Germany surrendered. When his association with other Abwehr agents was discovered, Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death. Still, he continued to teach with the help of guards who smuggled out his writing, until he was transferred to a concentration camp. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his involvement in helping Jews flee the country. Having lost this opportunity, Bonhoeffer briefly sought asylum in the United States but, after concluding that it was wrong to abandon his friends, returned to Nazi Germany.įormerly a pacifist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became persuaded of the need for violence against the Nazi regime and joined a group called the Abwehr, whose primary mission was to assassinate Hitler.
Eventually forbidden to teach publicly and forced underground, Bonhoeffer taught seminary students for several years until even the Confessing Church grew reluctant to contradict Nazi leadership. Frustrated by the unwillingness of church leaders to oppose Hitler's anti-Semitism, Bonhoeffer created the Confessing Church, alongside Martin Niemoller and Karl Barth. Despite the mounting cost, Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Führer's influence. Hitler's rise to power just two years later marked a turning point in Bonhoeffer's career. After obtaining his doctorate in theology and working in churches abroad, Bonhoeffer became a priest and lecturer in Berlin at the age of twenty-five. Best remembered for authoring the Christian classics The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Germany and began his journey in church leadership during the rise of the Nazi regime.Īlthough Bonhoeffer did not grow up in a particularly religious home, he announced his plans to join the church when he was just fourteen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an anti-Nazi theologian and pastor during World War II.
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