bonhoeffer

There is much to say but little time as I am about to go on a school trip for fall break so I'll keep it short. Its been far too little posting, not due to lack of things to say but lack of time to weave them together into text and post them between going home all last weekend and leaving again now. My very wise friend kimberly reminded me today that prayer is not a means to an ends-it is an ends in itself. Regardless of what it does for me or who I am  praying for, Jesus is so worth praying to and with. It is not preparing for some higher better thing, it is the higher thing. The highest thing. Union with Christ. Bonhoeffer also has something quite beautiful and convicting to teach me:

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but mush weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary we keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize, it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

This entire chapter (the first one in his book Life Together) literally slammed me. Both with conviction and deep, deep relief and joy because it pinpointed to source of my frustrations and discouragements and disillusionments so that I keep thinking that we, as Christians are not what we are supposed to be that we are not loving our poor that we are not loving each other and we are not loving are God. Which there is truth in our brokenness in the fact that we are being sanctified, being made perfect, but isolation from and irritation with the church and people and the work I get to be a part of is rooted in this seed of deception that keeps me thinking that Christian brotherhood is an ideal we are missing when it is already reality and has been reality since Christ came here and brokenness is part of that reality and that I am called to be THANKFUL for the gifts and the people and Spirit and the life he has already given me and never ever to become and accuser or complainer of ANYONE in my life especially before men but also before God.

Keep shattering my wish dreams Lord, and giving me your truth instead. Keep that heavy hand of grace upon me. Crush me that I may be made whole. I love you.