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STAUBLOG: Bonhoeffer: The Times Aren't a Changing
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This world is not conclusion, a sequel stands beyond. |
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They took hand in hand and through the valley made their solitary way. |
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How did it happen that now for the first time in his life he could see everything so clearly? Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives in the same way one misses a plane?
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When there is no sun, you can see limitless stars in the sky. You are certain they exist. When the sun rises, you can no longer see them. In the same way, you cannot see God when you are blinded by the temptations of the world. Yet you know God exists, and He will reveal Himself in you.
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On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there –a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this? The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality.
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Basic beliefs about the Person and the nature of God have changed so much that there are among us now men and women who find it easy to brag about the benefits they receive from God-without ever a thought or a desire to know the true meaning of worship! I have immediate reactions to such an extreme misunderstanding of the true nature of a holy and sovereign God, for I believe that the very last thing God desires is to have shallow-minded and worldly Christians bragging about Him. Beyond that, it does not seem to be very well recognized that God's highest desire is that every one of His believing children should so love and so adore Him that we are continually in His presence, in spirit and in truth. Something wonderful and miraculous and life-changing takes place within the human soul when Jesus Christ is invited in to take His rightful place. That is what God anticipated when He wrought the plan of salvation. He intended to make worshipers out of rebels; to restore the place of worship which our first parents knew when they were created! |
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There is not a guarantee in the world. Oh, your needs are guaranteed, your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the most stringent of warranties, in the plainest, truest words: knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." That's the catch. If you can catch it, it will catch you up, aloft, up to any gap at all, and you'll come back, for you will come back, transformed in a way you may not have bargained for - dribbling and crazed. |
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John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters. His output alone (60 books, almost 40 of them novels or story collections) has been supernatural. More wizardly still is the ingenuity of his prose. He has now written tens of thousands of sentences, many of them tiny miracles of transubstantiation whereby some hitherto overlooked datum of the human or natural world — from the anatomical to the zoological, the socio-economic to the spiritual — emerges, as if for the first time, in the completeness of its actual being. |
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The spiritual capital built up by previous generations can be honored and invested by others who do not have the faith to renew it, though at some point it surely must be renewed. This renewal of spiritual capital in the business sphere and its specific enterprises is what the faith-guided company achieves. |
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Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life |
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What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? It's the gift of anticipation. And I'm a good servant. I'm better than good. I'm the best. I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves. I'm the perfect servant; I have no life. |
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He's always been ready to die. But nobody's prepared him for getting old. |
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Go where you cannot go; see where you cannot see; Hear where there is no sound. You are where God does speak.
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The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time. |
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The ways we miss our lives are life. |
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All beauty in the world is either a memory of Paradise or a prophecy of the transfigured world.
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The heart of man is naturally prone to sin. The weight of the soul is naturally that way, as the stone by its weight tends to go downward. And saints have a great tendency to sin. Although sin us subjugated in them, yet the body of sin and death remains. There are all manner of lusts and corrupt inclinations. Man is so prone to sinful ways that without maintaining a constant strict watch over himself, nothing else can be expected than that he will walk in some sinful, way. Sin is apt to catch us unawares. Besides that we continually meet with temptations. We walk in the midst of snares. And the Devil, a subtle adversary, continually watches over us, endeavoring by all manner of wiles and devices to lead us into the wrong paths.
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