Quote

The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Age: 39 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 4
Died: 1945
Died: April 8
Pastor
Philosopher
Poet
Resistance Fighter
Theologian
Breslau
Bonhoeffer
Christ
Calls
Ends
Cross
Come
Crosses
Men
Otherwise
Life
Beginning
Bids
Terrible
Fearing
Dies
Meets
Happy
Communion

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What we are in ourselves, and what we owe to others makes us a complete whole.
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It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.
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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.
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A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self.
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Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?
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Only the suffering God can help.
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The responsible person seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.
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Wherever there are sinners, the weak, the sorrowful, the poor in the world, that is where God goes.
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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.
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We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
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And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful” and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.
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The first service that one owes to others consists in listening to them.
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The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
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Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.
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It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. … So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.
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Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
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The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
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After he has been following Christ for a long time, the disciple of Jesus will be asked, Lacked ye anything? and he will answer Nothing, Lord. How could he when he knows that despite hunger and nakedness, persecution and danger, the Lord is always at his side?
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When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer