Friday, December 31, 2010

Bonhoeffer

Today I have finished reading Bonhoeffer, a book unlike any other. Before I began I knew virtually nothing about him, but upon finishing I feel as if he was a close friend, a dear brother to me. Though I knew what the outcome of the end of the book (and his life) would be – his execution in a concentration camp - the nearer I got to the end I kept on hoping maybe there is a way he would live, maybe, maybe… But unfortunately it is now 66 years to late to do anything about the outcome. What a wonderful book to stir up some thoughts, dig further into ones own Christian living.
None could deny the kind of man Bonhoeffer was, even the concentration camp doctor writing about his last moments on earth said: “I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” I have to say Bonhoeffer pushes me to become a better Christian and to live a more Christ centered life, I didn’t think I needed a wake up call and I didn’t think this is the book to give me it but I got it. I wish on the day I die I can mutter those same words are were Bonhoeffer’s last 
“this is the end…for me the beginning of life.”
The church has only one alter, the alter of the Almighty… before which all creatures must kneel. Whoever seeks something other than this must keep away, he cannot join us in the house of God… The church has only one pulpit, and from that pulpit faith in God will be preached, and no other faith, and no other will than the will of God, however well intentioned.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Where books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too.
Heinrich Heine
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
C.S. Lewis

Two Kinds Of People

Listening to a song today I came across these lyrics 
“there are just two kinds of people, ones who say your just not able and the one’s who change the world”.
Makes me think of the person I was, I am and hope to become. I was always told by teachers and others I would never be able to achieve much… and here I am 4th year pre-med ready to graduate. Yet now I still limit myself with a mentality that oh that’s to hard, or oh I am not able to at this point in my life, but if anything after dwelling on those lyrics I see how wrong I am. Life should be taken by the horns - we might not be able to do the task but God won’t let us fail, He never does… and if we do, well all we did was prepare our self better for what is still to come. Nothing is ever lost, no experience wasted, no such thing as a dumb or hopeless dream… with God.

- Dear God, help us realize our dependence on You always and the mighty strength you give us that yet even though we don’t even know how we will or how we will be able to, we would do grand things. Help us dream big - the impossible, and have no doubt that we can (and will) achieve it. But never, never may we lose our dependence on You.

The Aware and the Unaware


I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.
When somebody is aware of that love, the same love that the Father has for Jesus, that person is just spontaneously grateful. Cries of thankfulness become the dominant characteristic of the interior life, and the byproduct of gratitude is joy. We’re not joyful and then become grateful, we’re grateful and that makes us joyful.
Brennan Manning

Entertainment Vs. Church

Most people never noticed this, neither did I until I found out about it today but for a brief time after September 11, 2001, all sporting events, comedy shows and commercials disappeared from television. The huge industry that entertains us and tempts us to indulge in material and world things, it self had to confront the reality of its irrelevance in the time of a tragedy. Instead spontaneously people turned to church for comfort. In those next few week church attendance went up by 25 percent!! Until the industries cranked up again and reclaimed our attention. 
Sad but true.

Prayer of Sir Francis Drake


Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Ordinary vs. Oddities

Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while normal people are always complaining of the dullness of life
G.K. Chesterton

How the Christian Church Begun

When the church began on Earth, the pastor was being executed as a criminal, the chair man of the board was out cursing and swearing that he had never even been a part of it, the treasurer was committing suicide, most of the rest of the church board members had run away, and about the only ones that showed any signs of faithfulness at all were a few ladies from the woman’s auxiliary - that was the church right out of the starting gate!
You planned evil, God planned good - and in the end God’s plan won
Joseph

We Need To Listen!!

O unbelieving generation… how long shall I put up with you?
Jesus Christ

God's Vastness!!

Modern physics helps us to conceive of the relative nature of time. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, a person traveling at the speed of light would see the entire history of the universe pass by in a single moment. One the other hand. a God who encompasses the entire universe can “view” what happens on earth and what happened fifteen thousand or billion years ago simultaneously (a word that doesn’t really apply to a timeless God). We see the stars as they used to be, receiving light on Earth that they generated millions of years ago. As the Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch speculates in his fantasy The Discovery of Heaven, if we had the technology to place a mirror on a celestial object forty light-years away, beamed images from Earth to that mirror, then gazed at it through a very powerful telescope, we would see right not reflections of what took place on earth eighty years ago - forty years for Earth’s light to reach the distant planet, and forty years for the reflection to reach Earth. Past and present merge. An omnipotent Being large enough to coexist on the Andromeda galaxy and also on Earth would experience time in a completely different way, experiencing at once both the history of Earth and the billion-year-old history of the galaxy, as well as years in between. If a star explodes in Andromeda, this Being takes note of it immediately, yet will also “see” it from the viewpoint of an observer on Earth many years later as if it has just happened. God is outside time, say the theologians, in a way that we are only beginning to imagine. Time, like everything else in creation, ultimately serves the creator.
Philip Yancey

Our Image of God

 Who one believes God to be is most accurately revealed not in any credo but in the way one speaks to God when no one else is listening
Nancy Mairs
[God] does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:10-14

Prayer

"When I come to God in prayer, do I bare the deepest, most hidden parts of myself? Only when I do so will I discover myself as I truly am, for nothing short of God’s light can reveal that. I feel stripped before that light, seeing a person far different from the image I cultivate for myself and everyone around me.
Philip Yancey