Following several days of
soaking rains in mid-April, Spring in all its glory arrived with flowering
trees along with dusts of pollen.To
celebrate, I took a journey back to Arbreux, my former place in Shenandoah
County.I wanted to visit with my friend
John Sellers who bought Arbreux and who has been a faithful steward.But I also
wanted to see the daffodils I had
planted, believing as I did so that they would leave a legacy of my years
there.Alas, they were blooming in
glorious profusion, even in places where I I had forgotten I had planted them.Longfellow’s
line comes to mind:
“Nothing now is left.But a majestic memory.”
Newly
installed
in my front garden here is a faithful birdhouse replica of Chalet Arbreux.Officially
approved for blue-birds, already a
pair of tree swallows have moved in.The
guidebook tells me they may have just arrived from their winter home in
Argentina or possibly along the Gulf coast. I also read that swallows feed on
airborne insects, so perhaps the new residents will rid the nearby neighborhood
of gnats and mosquitoes.
On
my bedside
chest this month is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book “Life Together”.In
it, he sets forth the importance of
understanding what Christian fellowship in a koinonia community should be. The
word “Life” in his title means so much more to Christians living in community,
ergo, in the wider sense of the worldwide Church of the Faithful.In his book,
Abundant Living, E. Stanley
Jones taught me what it means to be fully living with his phrase “alive to your
fingertips”.Only the Holy Spirit can
indwell you and make it possible.Only
those who know Christ intimately can fully comprehend the meaning of new
“life”.
Bonhoeffer expands this thought with his portrayal of Christians
living in fellowship with the Holy Spirit as they read the Holy Book together:
“Consecutive reading of Biblical books forces everyone who
want to hear to put himself….where God has acted once and for all for the
salvation of men.We become part of what
once took place for our salvation.Forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea,
through the desert, across the Jordon into the promised land.With Israel we
fall into doubt and unbelief
and through punishment and repentance experience again God’s help and
faithfulness.All this is not mere
reverie but holy, godly reality.We are
torn out of our existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God
on earth.There God dealt with us, our
needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life,
however important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and
participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of Christ on
earth.And only in so far as we are
there, is God with us today also.
….It is in fact more important for us to know what God did
to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us
today.The fact that Jesus Christ died
is more important that the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ
rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised
on the Last Day.Our salvation is
“external to ourselves.”I find no
salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ.Only
he who allows himself to be found in Jesus
Christ, in His incarnation, His cross, and His resurrection, is with God and
God with him….We must learn to know the Scriptures again, as the Reformers and
our fathers knew them.We must not
grudge the Scriptures first and foremost for the sake of our salvation.But
besides this, there are ample reasons
that make this requirement exceedingly urgent.How, for example, shall we ever obtain certainty and confidence in our
personal and church activity if we do not stand on solid Biblical ground?It
is not our heart that determines our
course, but God’s Word.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Discipleship
“Those who follow Jesus’ commandment entirely, who let
Jesus’ yoke rest on them without resistance, will find the burden they must
bear to be light. In the gentle pressure of this yoke they will receive the
strength to walk the right path without becoming weary.…Where will the call to
discipleship lead those who follow it? What decisions and painful separations
will it entail? We must take this question to Him who alone knows the answer.
Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow Him, knows where the path will lead. But
we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure. Discipleship is
joy.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Intercessory Prayer
“A Christian community either lives by the
intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed.
I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how
much trouble they cause me. In intercessory prayer the face that may have been
strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom
Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner. That is a blessed discovery for the
Christian who is beginning to offer intercessory prayer for others. As far as
we are concerned, there is no dislike, no personal tension, no disunity or
strife that cannot be overcome by intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is
the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every
day.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the loss of loved ones
“There
is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should
not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first
that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to
the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the
other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God
in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us
preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Furthermore, the more
beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But
gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was
lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden
treasure of which one can always be certain.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Worry
“Do not worry! Earthly goods deceive the human heart
into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth,
they are what cause anxiety. The heart which clings to goods receives with them
the choking burden of worry. Worry collects treasures, and treasures produce
more worries. We desire to secure our lives with earthly goods; we want our
worrying to make us worry-free, but the truth is the opposite. The chains which
bind us to earthly goods, the clutches which hold the goods tight, are
themselves worries.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Loving Your Enemies
“Words and thoughts are not enough. Doing good
involves all the things of daily life. ‘If your enemies are hungry, feed them;
if they are thirsty, give them something to drink’ (Romans 12:20). In the same
ways that brothers and sisters stand by each other in times of need, bind up
each other’s wounds, ease each other’s pain, love of the enemy should do good
to the enemy. Where in the world is there greater need, where are deeper wounds
and pain than those of our enemies? Where is doing good more necessary and more
blessed than for our enemies?”
