From The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoting Martin Luther. I got this from “On the Way.”
Plunge Into Deep Waters
Martin Luther
Discipleship is not limited to what you can understand – it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own understanding…. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. In this way Abraham went forth from his father, not knowing where he was going. You cannot find it in yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man. Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire – that is the road you must take.
Category Archives: quotes
Joining God’s Dream
Quote:
“For each of us there comes a moment – or a slow series of moments – when we sense the God of the universe as a personally felt presence. Something cold in us warms, something stiff in us loosens, and we sense within ourselves a turning, an allowing, a yes. “Yes, God, I am ready to hear you. I am ready to deepen my connection to you and to your family. I am ready to be completely yours.”
“And we change, not because we decide to change but because we have said yes to the very nature of God, which means we are no longer separate from but together with. Together with God … together with all God’s creation … together with God’s dream.”
Kayla McClurg
From the daily “On the Way,” found at “Inward/Outward”
A profound suggestion…
Man! Stop and think about this (and it has nothing to do with Socialism, Communism, or some other “ism”).
From today’s ‘On the Way’
The Option for the Poor
Gustavo Gutierrez
“If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines – then my world changes. This is what is happening with the “option for the poor,” for in the gospel it is the poor person who is the neighbor par excellence….
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
Source: The Power of the Poor in History
Quote…
“Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.”
~ Doris Mortman
Quote
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and
demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of
justice and mercy.”
– Wendell Berry
A False Assumption
“If you are truly humble, you will always be ready to seek (and accept!) help from others. The present genteel, self-loving brand of piety assumes, ‘I don’t need anybody; I can set things right with God myself.’ But as long as you quietly try to work out your own salvation, you won’t get anywhere. Only when you recognize your need for others and reach out and open up to them will things move forward.”
J. C. Blumhardt
Source: J. C. B., in Friedrich Zuendel, “The Awakening”
Daily e-mail from the Bruderhof Communities
Quote
“People do not live in the present always, at one with it. They live at all kinds of and manners of distance from it, as difficult to measure as the course of planets. Fears and traumas make their journeys slanted, peripheral, uneven, evasive.”
– Anais Nin (1903-1977), American writer