wise words

I was exchanging email s with my friend Bill C who is in Paraguay. He shared with me this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.


Bonhoeffer had been in prison for a long time towards the end of WWII. Two weeks before Hitler killed himself and the war ended Hitler ordered Bonhoeffer hanged.
These are Bonhoeffer's words on death while in London before the war:


"No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.


Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty of thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up--that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are are we so afraid when we think about death? .... Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God's Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentile; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.


How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?


Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1933

I chased this a bit in a sermon on Sunday. The time of our lives when we will know the most about God is the moment of our death. For in that moment, we cross over the river. The veil is lifted. That which has been know in part, become completely known.

May we all live each day with greater joy because we see that there is nothing to fear. Today, tomorrow, next week, next year. When ever we go, we go to be with our Lord.

It's a beautiful day in God's world, be sure to see the good