40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I’ve decided that my next reading commitment will be the 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Bonhoeffer was a pastor that was martyred for his Christian beliefs and the stand that he took against Adolf Hitler.  He is also someone that I have always wanted to learn more about.  I have skimmed the book and know that it is packed with Scripture (most important) as well as some good questions to contemplate and thoughts from this pastor that have stood the test of time.  I am looking forward to the journey!

A few thoughts from the introduction of the book as I prepare to jump in…

  • As Augustine once wrote: “You have made us for yourself, 0 Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. “
  • Toward the end of his life, in a letter to a friend written from his prison cell, Bonhoeffer confessed: “What is bothering me most incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed, who Christ really is, for us today” (Letters and Papers from Prison, 279). It is-or should be-a perennial question.
  • G. K. Chesterton once wrote: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
  • For Bonhoeffer, Christian faith was not meant to be at the periphery of life hidden behind the four walls of a church, and God was not to be relegated to the task of taking care of those things we don’t seem able to take care of ourselves-sin and death, for example. As he wrote from prison:[God] must be recognized at the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigor, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin. (Letters and Papers from Prison, 312)

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