Quote of the Day

Human love has little regard for truth.  It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.  Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving.  There are two marks, both of which are one and the same thing, that manifest the difference between spiritual and human love:  Human love cannot tolerate the dissolution of a fellowship that has become false for the sake of genuine fellowship, and human love cannot love an enemy, that is, one who seriously and stubbornly resists it.  Both spring from the same source:  human love is by its very nature desire - desire for human community.  So long as it can satisfy this desire in some way, it will not give it up, even for the sake of truth, even for the sake of genuine love for others.  But where it can no longer expect its desire to be fulfilled, there it stops short - namely, in the face of an enemy.  There it turns to hatred, contempt and calumny. 

Right here is the point where spiritual love begins.  This is why human love becomes personal hatred when it encounters genuine spiritual love, which does not desire but serves.  Human love makes itself an end in itself.  It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything.  It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself, and nothing else in the world.  Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ, it serves Him alone, it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. 

Jesus Christ stands between the lover and others he loves.  I do not know in advance what love of others means in the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires- all this may be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ.  What love is, only Christ tells us in His Word.  Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is. Therefore, spiritual love is bound solely to the Word of Jesus Christ.  Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it.  Where his truth enjoins me to dissolve a fellowship for love's sake, there I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my human love…… Human love can never understand spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

from his book: Life Together

Quote of the Day

There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life.  But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life.  We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them.  It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together.  That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them.  We are bound together by faith, not by experience.

- Dietrich Bonhoffer
From his book: Life Together

Quote of the Day

Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.

He who loves his dream of a community more that the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.

And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship . . .

If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only 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.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

From his book Life Together

Quote of the Day

The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death. Since this happens at the beginning of the Christian life, the cross can never be merely a tragic ending to an otherwise happy religious life. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessarily our death and our life. 

  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

They (Disciples/Christians) are simply the servants and instruments of the Word; they have no wish to be strong where the Word chooses to be weak.  To try and force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea…..Where the Word is, there shall the disciple be.  Therein lies his true wisdom and his true simplicity.  If it is obvious that the Word is being rejected, if it is forced to yield its ground, the disciple must yield with it.  But if the Word carries on the battle, the disciple must also stand his ground.

  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

(Matt. 5:28-42) This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.  The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties.  The old Israel had been both - the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore his will that they should meet force with force.  But with Church it is different: it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression……At this point it becomes evident that when a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs.  He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone.  Again, his witness to this exclusive adherence to Jesus creates the only workable basis for fellowship, and leaves the aggressor for him to deal with……By his willingly renouncing self-defense, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego.  

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

To the natural man, the very notion of loving his enemies is an intolerable offense, and quite beyond his capacity:  it cuts right across his ideas of good and evil…….In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.  The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love.  His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus….Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it.  And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?  Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy?  Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?  Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love.  Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. ……How then does love conquer? By asking not how the enemy treats her but only how Jesus treated her…Our adversaries seek to root out the Christian Church and the Christian faith because they cannot live side by side with us, because they see in every word we utter and every deed we do, even when they are not specifically directed against them, a condemnation of their own words and deeds.  They are not far wrong.  They suspect too that we are indifferent to their condemnation.  Indeed they must admit that it is utterly futile to condemn us.  We do not reciprocate their hatred and contention.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

How does all this come to pass?  How does God create a community of saints out of sinful men and women?  How can he avert the reproach of unrighteousness if he makes a covenant with sinners?  How can the sinner become righteous without impairing the righteousness of God?  The answer is that God justifies Himself by appearing as his own advocate in defense of his own righteousness….and it is in the cross of Christ that this supreme miracle happens (Rom. 3:21)…Having thus died with him, we become partakers in the righteousness of God through the death of Jesus….The justification of the sinner therefore consists in the sole righteousness of God…Whenever we desire an independent righteousness of our own we are forfeiting our only chance of justification, which is through God and his righteousness.  God alone is righteous.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

God makes your marriage indissoluble, "What therefore God has joined together let no man put asunder" (Matt. 19:6)  God joins you together in marriage; it is his act, not yours.  Do not confound your love for one another with God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

When the Reformation came, the providence of God raised Martin Luther to restore the gospel of pure, costly grace.  Luther passed through the cloister; he was a monk, and all of this was part of the divine plan.  Luther had left all to follow Christ on the path of absolute obedience.  He had renounced the world in order to live the Christian life.  He had learnt obedience to Christ and to his Church, because only he who is obedient can believe.  The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life.  But God shattered all his hopes.  He showed him through the Scriptures that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction.  Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the 'religious.'  The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc.  The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world. …once more he must leave his nets and follow.   The first time was when he entered the monastery, when he had left everything behind except his pious self.  This time even that was taken from him.  He obeyed  the call, not through any merit of his own, but simply through the grace of God.  Luther did not hear the word:  'Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as your are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.'  No, Luther had to leave the cloister and go back to the world, not because the world in itself was good and holy, but because even the cloister was only a part of the world.
Luther's return from the cloister to the world was the worst blow the world had suffered since the days of early Christianity.  The renunciation he made when he became a monk was child's play compared with that which he had to make when he returned to the world.  Now came the frontal assault.  The only way to follow Jesus was by living in the world.  Hitherto the Christian life had been the achievement of a few choice spirits under the exceptionally favorable conditions of monasticism; now it is a duty laid on every Christian living in the world.  The commandment of Jesus must be accorded perfect obedience in one's daily vocation of life.    The conflict between the life of the Christian and the life of the world was then thrown into the sharpest possible relief.  It was a hand-to - hand conflict between the Christian and the world.
It is a fatal misunderstanding of Luther's action to suppose that his rediscovery of the gospel of pure grace offered a general dispensation from obedience to the command of Jesus, or that it was the great discovery of the Reformation that God's forgiving grace automatically conferred upon the world both righteousness and holiness.  On the contrary, for Luther the Christian's worldly calling is sanctified only in so far as that calling registers the final, radical protest against the world.  Only in so far as the Christian's secular calling is exercised in the following of Jesus does it receive from the gospel new sanction and justification.  It was not the justification of sin, but the justification of the sinner that drove Luther from the cloister back into the world. The grace he had received was costly grace.  It was grace, for it was like water on parched ground, comfort in tribulation, freedom from the bondage of a self-chosen way, and forgiveness of all his sins.  And it was costly, for, so far from dispensing him from good works, it meant that he must take the call to discipleship more seriously than ever before.  It was grace because it cost so much, and it cost so much because it was grace.  That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation - the justification of the sinner.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

We still cannot imagine that today God really doesn't want anything new for us, but simply to prove us in the old way.  That is too petty, to monotonous, to undemanding for us.  And we simply cannot be content 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.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

On Mathew 6:

Anxiety creates its own treasures and they in turn beget further care.  When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the precise opposite of our anticipations.  The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves.
The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow.  Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant only for today.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  The only way to win assurance is by leaving to-morrow entirely in the hands of God and by receiving from him all we need for to-day.  If instead of receiving God's gifts for to-day we worry about tomorrow, we find ourselves helpless victims of infinite anxiety.  "Be not anxious for the morrow" : either that is cruel mockery for the poor and wretched, the very people Jesus is talking to who, humanly speaking really will starve if they do not make provision to-day.  Either it is an intolerable law, which men will reject with indignation; or it is the unique proclamation of the gospel of the glorious liberty of the children of God, who have a Father in heaven, a Father who has given his beloved Son.  How shall not God with him also freely give us all things?
"Be not anxious for the morrow"."  this is not to be taken as a philosophy of life or a moral law:  it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and only so can it be understood.  Only those who follow him and know him can receive this word as a promise of the love of his Father and as a deliverance from the thraldom of material things.  It is not care that frees the disciples from care, but their faith in Jesus Christ.  Only they know that we cannot be anxious(verse 27).  The coming day, even the coming hour, are placed beyond our control.  It is senseless to pretend that we can make provision because we cannot alter the circumstances of this world.  Only God can take care, for it is He who rules the world.  Since we cannot take care, since we are so completely powerless, we ought not to do it either.  If we do, we are dethroning God and presuming to rule the world ourselves.

"Now mark ye, no beast worketh for his sustenance, but each hath his proper function, according to which he seeketh and findeth his own food.  The bird doth fly and sing, she maketh nests and beareth young.  That is her work, but yet she doth not nourish herself thereby.  Oxen plough, horses draw carts and fight, sheep give wool, milk, and cheese, for it is their function so to do.  But they do not nurture themselves thereb.  Nay, the earth bringeth forth grass, and nurtureth them through God's blessing.  Likewise it is man's bounden duty to work and do things, and yet withal to know that it is Another who nurtureth him:  it is not his own work, but the bounteous blessing of God.  It is true  that the bird doth neither sow nor reap, yet would she die of hunger if she flew not in search of food.  But that she findeth the same is not her work, bu tthe goodness of God.  For who put the food there, that she might find it?  For where God hath put nought, none findeth, even though the whole worl dwere to work itself to death in search therefof.'(Luther).

- From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship

Quote of the Day

If a drunkard signs the pledge, or a rich man gives all his money away, they are both of them freeing themselves from their slavery to alcohol or riches, but not from their bondage to themselves.  They are still moving in their own little orbit,  perhaps even more than the were before.  They are still subject to the commandment of works, still as submerged in the death of the old life as they were before.  Of course, the work has to be done, but of itself it can never deliver them from death, disobedience and ungodliness.  If we think our first step is the pre-condition for faith and grace, we are already judged by our work, and entirely excluded from grace.  Hence the term 'external work' includes everything we are accustomed to call 'disposition' or 'good intention.'  facere quod in se est.  If we take the first step with the deliberate intention of placing ourselves in the situation where faith is possible, even this possibility of faith will be nothing but a work.  The new life it opens to us is still a life within the limits of our old existence, and therefore a complete misapprehension of the true nature of the new life.  We are still in unbelief. 

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Marriage is more than your love for each other. …In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.  Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal - it is a status, and office.  Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is the marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

The spirit knows the right way, an desires to follow it, but the flesh lacks courage and finds it too hard, too hazardous and wearisome, and so it stifles the voice of the spirit.  The spirit assents when Jesus bids us love our enemies, but flesh and blood are too strong and prevent our carrying it out.  Therefore we have to practice strictest daily discipline only so can the flesh learn the painful lesson that it has no rights of its own…The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of "evangelical liberty").  We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from  self- martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism……Any objection that asceticism is wrong, and that all we need is faith , is quite beside the point; it is cruel to suggest such a thing, and it is no help to us at all.  When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

…when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the' German Christians'(Nazi church ) in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't.  "If you board the wrong train," he said, "it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction."

From  Eric Metaxas book, BONHOEFFER

Quote of the Day

 As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded.  The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property…..The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world.  Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship…….It is under the influence of this kind of 'grace' that the world has been made 'Christian,' but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before…The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different form the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace.   The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven.  I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.  Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.  It is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine evangelical doctrine.  In both cases we have the identical formula - 'justification by faith alone.' Yet the misuse of the formula leads to the complete destruction of its very essence.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

Commenting on Matt. 19:16 and Luke 10:25-29:

Moral difficulties were the first consequence of the Fall, and are themselves the outcome of 'Man in Revolt' against God.  The Serpent in Paradise put them into the mind of the first man by asking, 'Hath God said?'  Until then the divine command had been clear enough, and man was ready to observe it in childlike obedience.  But that is now past, and moral doubts and difficulties have crept in.  The command, suggests the Serpent, needs to be explained and interpreted. 'Hath God said?' Man must decide for himself what is good by using his conscience and his knowledge of good and evil.  The commandment may be variously interpreted, and it is God's will that it should be interpreted and explained: for God has given man a free will to decide what he will do.  

But this means disobedience from the start.  Doubt and reflection take the place of spontaneous obedience.  The grown-up man with his freedom of conscience vaunts his superiority over the child of obedience.  But he has acquired the freedom to enjoy moral difficulties only at the cost of renouncing obedience.  In short, it is a retreat from the reality of God to the speculations of men, from faith to doubt…..Jesus simply quotes the commandments of God as they are revealed in Scripture, and thus reaffirms them as the commandments of God.  

The young man is trapped once more.  He had hoped to avoid committing himself to any definite moral obligations by forcing Jesus to discuss his spiritual problems.  He had hoped Jesus would offer him a solution of his moral difficulties.  But instead he finds Jesus attacking not his question but himself.  The only answer to his difficulties is the very commandment of God, which challenges him to have done with academic discussion and to get on with the task of obedience.  Only the devil has an answer for our moral difficulties, and he says: 'Keep on posing problems, and you will escape the necessity of obedience.'  But Jesus is not interested in the young man's problems; he is interested in the young man himself.  He refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does.  There is one thing only which Jesus takes seriously, and that is, that it is high time the young man began to hear the commandment and obey it. 

Where moral difficulties are taken so seriously, where they torment and enslave man, because they do not leave him open to the freeing activity of obedience, it is there that his total godlessness is revealed.  All his difficulties are shown to be ungodly, frivolous and the proof of sheer disobedience.  The one thing that matters is practice obedience……The young man…is still not satisfied.  'All these things have I observed from my youth up:  what lack I yet?'  Doubtless he was just as convinced of his sincerity this time as he was before….He knows the commandment and has kept it, but now, he thinks, that cannot be all God wants of him, there must be something more, some extraordinary and unique demand, and this is what he wants to do.  The revealed commandment of God is incomplete, he says, as he makes the last attempt to preserve his independence and decide for himself what is good and evil…….. "

Speaking on the Lawyer in Luke 10:

"The final question 'Who is my neighbor?' is the parting shot of despair (or else of self confidence); the lawyer is trying to justify his disobedience.  The answer is:  "You are the neighbor.  Go along and try to be obedient by loving others." …Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience.  We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not.  We must get into action and obey - we must behave like a neighbor to him.  But perhaps this shocks you.  Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do.  To that there is only one answer.  You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.  You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.  It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.  With our consciences distracted by sin, we are confronted by the call of Jesus to spontaneous obedience.  But whereas the rich young man was called to the grace of discipleship, the lawyer, who sought to tempt him, was only sent back to the commandment.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

And as he passed by he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the place of toll, and he saith unto him, Follow me.  And he arose and followed him. (Mark 2.14)"

The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience.  The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus.  How could the call immediately evoke obedience?  The story is a stumbling-block for the natural reason, and it is no wonder that frantic attempts have been made to separate the two events.  By hook or by crook a bridge must be found between them.  Something must have happened in between, some psychological or historical event.  Thus we get the stupid question: Surely the publican must have known Jesus before, and that previous acquaintance explains his readiness to hear the Master's call.  Unfortunately our text is ruthlessly silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call and response as a matter of crucial importance.  It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a man's religious decisions.  And why?  For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself.  It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, Levi follows at once.  This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus…Jesus summons men to follow him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God.  In this short text Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to men.  Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for his decision for Christ.  We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

I'm still thinking about the assertion…that man cannot live without hope, and that men who have really lost all hope often become wild and wicked.  It may be an open question whether in this case hope = illusion.  The importance of illusion to one's life should certainly not be underestimated;  but for a Christian there must be hope based on a firm foundation.  And if even illusion has so much power in people's lives that it can keep life moving, how great a power there is in a hope that is based on certainty, and how invincible a life with such a hope is. 'Christ our hope' - this Pauline formula is the strength of our lives.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer