A Prayer For Friday
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
§ “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
§ When Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”
§ “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits…Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
§ “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a person will gladly go and sell all that they have... It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leave their nets and follow him… Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs… Costly grace comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light…”
§ “Without Christ we should not know God, we could not call upon God, nor come to God. But without Christ we also would not know our brother and sister, nor could we come to them. The way is blocked by our own ego.”
§ “The first service we owe to our brother/sister is to learn to listen to them.”
§ “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
§ “Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.”
§ “Nothing that we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves. 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.”
§ “The weaknesses, sins and afflictions of my brothers/sisters affect each one of us. We bear with one another.”
§ “In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”
§ “The unity of the Christian church is not based on human unanimity of spirit, but on divine unity of Spirit.”
§ “Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.”
§ “The church is the church only when it exists for others… The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.”
§ “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
§ “Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”
§ “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
§ “I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”
§ O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you;
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me….
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before men and women.
Lord whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.
Amen.
