A home is a kingdom of it's own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that true spiritual fellowship within a Christian community is a divine gift, not something that can be assessed or claimed by individuals.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on the nature of the Christian community and its relationship to individual sanctification, suggesting that both are gifts from God beyond human evaluation. He points out that what might seem insignificant or imperfect in our eyes could hold immense value in the sight of God, urging Christians not to obsess over their spiritual status or the perceived strength of their community but to trust in God's greater understanding and purpose.
Themes
CommunityGodFellowshipSpiritualitySanctification
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a church sermon to illustrate the importance of valuing community fellowship.
More from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
All quotes →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.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let’s see something to prove it.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Similar quotes
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand RussellRead
I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.
George WaldRead
Every man is somebody because he is a child of God.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
An American of the present day reading his Sunday newspaper in a state of lazy collapse is one of the most perfect symbols of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen.
Irving BabbittRead
This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.
John F. KennedyRead
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused - hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.
Charles De LintRead