" Just as time-lapse photography makes visible, in an ever more compressed and penetrating form, movements that otherwise not be thus grasped by our vision, so the war makes manifest in particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the "world" . It is not war that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more "exhalted powers." But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all" Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This was a note written from a pastor to his students at Christmas time at the outbreak of World War II. As I lie in my comfortable bed with my cat near by, the windows open and a beautiful breeze rattling the leaves outside my window. It reminds me that , Canada, Puce, My world is not the norm and that at this very moment while I lounge, there is suffering, violence, war and strife somewhere. The war has just now brought these young pastors face to face with it, they find themselves forced to deal with it , though they would rather not. I wonder how I would respond forced into such a situation. The world is a fallen place and we have enough distractions in our lives to not have to deal with it, but because of the war, Bonhoffer explains, they could see things as they truly are.
The promise of Christ is therefore all the more real and desired.
Don't wait for "the war," whatever it may be in your life, to come before you get to know Jesus better.
This was a note written from a pastor to his students at Christmas time at the outbreak of World War II. As I lie in my comfortable bed with my cat near by, the windows open and a beautiful breeze rattling the leaves outside my window. It reminds me that , Canada, Puce, My world is not the norm and that at this very moment while I lounge, there is suffering, violence, war and strife somewhere. The war has just now brought these young pastors face to face with it, they find themselves forced to deal with it , though they would rather not. I wonder how I would respond forced into such a situation. The world is a fallen place and we have enough distractions in our lives to not have to deal with it, but because of the war, Bonhoffer explains, they could see things as they truly are.
The promise of Christ is therefore all the more real and desired.
Don't wait for "the war," whatever it may be in your life, to come before you get to know Jesus better.
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