trampling over death by death

To put it succinctly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and a theologian in Germany who was involved in a conspiracy to kill Hitler. He was arrested by the Nazis and, over a year later, executed 3 weeks before the war ended, and 2 weeks before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies. As he walked out of his prison cell to be hanged, he turned to his prison mate and said, "This is the end--for me, the beginning of life."

As I read the account of Bonhoeffer's last days, I saw him living - and dying - with complete and unquestioning faith in the incredible gift Jesus has given us:

He has given us life.

He has conquered death

We have nothing to fear.

We will be with Him, the Creator of the universe, forever.

Death shows that the world is not what it should be, but that it needs redemption. Christ alone overcomes death. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." - Revelation 1:17-18

HE IS RISEN! 

And because He's alive, I live.

the land of if only

Now that she's not here anymore, I miss cooking and baking with my mom. I miss being in her kitchen and feeling like it was my kitchen, too, that it was ours together, with the difference that she had decades of experience and knowledge to pass down to me. I miss learning from her and creating with her.

Now that he's not here anymore, I miss playing my guitar with my dad. I miss hearing him say, "Can I show you something?" and then taking my guitar from me to show me what 45 years of playing can do to my fingers. I miss hearing our guitars play together on Sunday mornings, and feeling proud that he taught me.

I think I can hear my neighbor snoring at night. I'm not sure, but there's a grinding sound that comes through the wall at regular intervals, and I know it's an older couple who lives next door, so I think it's a very likely possibility.

Which adds a nice bass line to the soprano schizophrenic cat that sits exactly below my window and meows, just meows, meows, until I open my window and it scampers off. The other night it growled for about 10 minutes. Just because. I don't know what the voices inside its head are telling it. And I don't know why it has to sit beneath my window while it has these conversations with itself.

I can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else
but in the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself
                   - The Weepies

I think that last part is baloney, because I don't think I would be able to take many steps by myself. But it's true that wherever I am I seem to want to be somewhere else, only to look over my shoulder and wish I was back where I came from.

I don't want to do this anymore.

New Year's resolution (2 weeks late): I want to have eyes that look for the good things I have in my life, wherever I am. I want to recognize the blessings I have and give thanks for them. I want to not want so much.

"Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

self-centered love

Shouldn't it be an oxy-moron?

I have read this passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together multiple times over the past few months. But every time I read it I see further just how imperfect my love is, how I love out of my own broken cisterns, and how I love selfishly.

There is...a "merely emotional" love of neighbor. Such love is capable of making the most unheard-of sacrifices. Often it far surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion and visible results. It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence. But it is what the apostle Paul is speaking of when he says: "If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames" (1 Cor. 13:3)--in other words, if I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion--"but do not have love (that is, the love of Christ), I would be nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2). Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons. It loves them, not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself. It wants to do everything it can to win and conquer; it puts pressure on the other person. It desires to be irresistible, to dominate. Self-centered love does not think much of truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved. Emotional, self-centered love desires other persons, their company. It wants them to return its love, but it does not serve them. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving....Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my emotional desires. All this may instead be hatred and worst kind of selfishness in the yes of Christ. Only Christ in his Word tells me what love is. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the word of Jesus Christ alone. Where Christ tells me to maintain community for the sake of love, I desire to maintain it. Where the truth of Christ orders me to dissolve a community for the sake of love, I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my self-centered love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother or sister. It originates neither in the brother or sister nor in the enemy, but in Christ and his word. Self-centered, emotional love can never comprehend spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above. It is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love.

How much I fall short!

Lord, forgive me for my self-centered love, and teach me Your love, which is so contrary to my human nature and the emotional love of this world.