Tag: Bonhoeffer: Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy

a front row seat in the glorious theater

Darkness fell like a hush; the lights circled us as we circled the fire. The jumping glow splashed on our faces and warmed our autumn skin as we cupped black coffee in thankful hands. The sky speckled with stars and the creatures sang out their evening melodies.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God.

After reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, we had all carried around conversations that couldn’t happen over the phone and couldn’t happen half-hearted. This night was set apart to try to understand someone from the great cloud of witnesses – to look at the life of someone who treasured the Lord in such a way that he was ruined for anything else.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God, right there in the backyard of an Iowa farmhouse.

The candles glowed in mason jars to light the path from the woodshop, where we enjoyed a bountiful spread of German delights, and inside I was a mess of emotion. A weighty, good mess of gratitude and purpose and joy and hope and pain and fear and defeat and doubt and sorrow. When despair seems simpler and right, stories of hope read more like fiction. But not last night… not when we remembered people whose lives were anchored by one thing, driven by one thing, delighted by one thing … and not when I looked around at the firelit faces of my friends, whose struggles on stormy seas are anchored deep down by the same greatest treasure.

The struggle is not to stay upright, but to rejoice in the anchor which holds us. Bonhoeffer’s life was not about making the message of Jesus look good or better or more intellectual than whatever religion his peers and countrymen presented. He was not about being interesting or popular or approachable, at least in the end. Bonhoeffer purposed to be about truth. He set out to know God and to draw others into a knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word of God. His culture said a lot of things, burned a lot of books, and printed a lot of promotional materials for massive political campaigns… but Bonhoeffer had eyes to shake off the surface storms and cling to the hope that anchored and the only hope that would reveal the evil that had usurped the hearts of his countrymen.

This. This is beautiful, I thought.

I love how David Hall describes John Calvin’s thoughts on our seats in the glorious theater.

Calvin described this world, moved by God’s providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes, 1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God’s glory (1.14.20) or a “dazzling theater” (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God’s glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal “even a particle from this glory” (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones’ later claim that for Calvin “the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God’s glory.” (“The Theater of God’s Glory” by David Hall at Ligonier Ministries)

I went away from the night knowing we hadn’t talked about everything, hadn’t appreciated history completely, hadn’t understood theology thoroughly… but oh so thankful that we showed up at the theater. I’m thankful I have others with whom I can behold the glory of God and I’m thankful for the support we give each other to be unapologetic about truth.

Today, I am still purposing to know God, find out what pleases Him, and delight to do those things. And today I am thankful for those I can share steps with along the way.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

making me nervous

In a few weeks, I’ll sit around a table of delicious German food with some of my closest friends to discuss a true story of transformation, tragedy, and terror. We’re going to discuss a book about a life – the life of a man who would not tolerate a theology that would wipe out a race of people. Reading the book, Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, a few years ago was terrifying. I had walked inside the gates at Auschwitz in Poland and seen the incinerators; I had stood in the tower and looked across the field of long buildings built for suffering and death.

The account of this brilliant German man with the right pedigree and the right education and the right friends is ugly in its revealing of everything wrong about the world… about the human condition… about everything culture slowly and slyly considers “right” without question.

But book clubs with biographies are meant to focus on the past, to stir up nostalgia or pride or gratitude that terrible times had such wonderful people to overcome them. So why is The New York Times making me nervous today? Why do I think Bonhoeffer’s words would ring as poignant today, in our much progressed culture of tolerance?

Why does today seem so terrible?

I have to read the news in waves – a little bit here, a bit there… some in the morning and some over lunch. Because it feels ominous. A sliver of a column on the front page was dedicated to the continuing conflict in Syria while a lion and her cubs enjoyed a photo and feature further down on the page. Zoos are having trouble deciding what to do when babies “don’t fit the plan.” I guess those babies were part of, “All the news that’s fit to print” in a more prominent sense than the failure of any diplomatic, peaceful measures by Annan in the battered and bruised country of Syria.

This probably reads like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle and that’s because it is. I know I’ve got a hope secure and I know I’ve got to share this message, but is this world making anyone else nervous? When I sit around that table in a few weeks, enjoying good German food with kindred spirits, I have a feeling they’ll know exactly what I mean.

Posted on by Caroline 3

sunshine on a saturday

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I re-organized my room when I returned in August of this year so that my bed is cattywampus in the corner. A long, plant-patterned ribbon stretches down from the ceiling to hold a hanging basket that is growing several books at the moment. Beside my bed, stacks of books have already claimed floor space like good friends claiming the best seats. Creativity finds all sorts of places to hide and I hope I never grow tired of searching it out.

Today, the sunlight drifted in through the window and pranced straight across my morning face at 5:30 am. Even though it was Saturday, the day seemed to be saying there was much to live and that I better start early.

By 6:30, I had already made coffee, enjoyed whole wheat waffles, and finally sent several messages I had been writing in my sleep. I love mornings. Some mornings seem just so suited to curl up in covers warmed by a night’s rest. Other mornings seem to beckon like a playmate outside the front door.

Today the morning beckoned outside my window, but instead of a playmate it sounded like a man on loudspeaker selling avocados, tomatos and onions out of the back of a truck. Well, no simile needed there. He really did start his rounds that early!

But, truly, this day made me thankful to live it.
Do you ever get those?

Even as 5:30 am rolled into 6:30 and and then as 7:30 led to plans for the entire sun-drenched day, I felt more sure that this day was a gift. Maybe it has something to do with my obsession with Germany and the mid-1900s (thank you Bonhoeffer and Eric Metaxas) that I can’t seem to shake, as I read the letters Bonhoeffer sent to encourage all his students to live with a robust courage to live hopeful. Though Bonhoeffer was involved in the conspiracy to end the reign of a tyrant (and also knew of the imminent danger posed to his ordinands in battle), he exhorted them to find joy.

In any case, 7:45 found me on my way to meet a friend and to visit Hospital Escuela, the most affordable (and least sanitary) places to get medical care in Tegucigalpa. After a second round of coffee, we met up with a medical mission team from Arkansas and offered our morning to cut, package, and stuff as they needed. I felt of little use, but hugely blessed by the opportunity to see what the Lord is doing through willing hearts and able hands! Because of their service, this week will be full of desperate-turned-joyful stories of patients receiving medical care.

We parted ways before lunch and set off, my friend and I, on the next adventures Saturday was hiding for us. Currently, she is reading “Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church” by DA Carson and I am reading “Bonhoeffer,” as you well know. Our conversation drifts in and out of the page turns, but I am so thankful to be in community. In fact, I dug up an old post I wrote in 2007 about community and, ironically, Bonhoeffer’s “Life Together.”

Then, while I was digging up posts, I found an old post I wrote after I attended the first ever Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago. It rocked my world, to say the least. I’m pretty sure that’s when I picked up Carson’s book (above) and jotted down then these thoughts.

After our book-reading, sun-loving afternoon, we met up with another friend and celebrated a birthday. A night of laughter and new faces and… did I mention laughter? Maybe one of the most encouraging things, as I continue to love learning this language, is succeeding at humor. If I am 3/5 for jokes in the States, then the odds that I would be witty here are pretty slim. As it turns out, I’m not all that bad! And, if I can do anything to add laughter to a room, it’s a good day!

Well, I obviously spent far too much time trying to recap this little Saturday. I hope some of it makes sense.

Mostly, I hope that we

let LOVE FLY like cRaZY!

Posted on by Caroline 0