A home is a kingdom of it's own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
We have grown so accustomed to the idea of divine love...that we no longer sense the awe that God's coming should awaken in us.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how familiarity with divine love can diminish our sense of wonder and reverence for God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests that as we become more accustomed to the concept of divine love, we may lose the profound sense of awe and gratitude that should accompany the realization of God's presence and love in our lives. This complacency can lead us to overlook the significance of divine encounters, reducing the transformative power of faith.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of recognizing divine love.
A home is a kingdom of it's own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.
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.
Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then letβs see something to prove it.
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all.
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
Alas! never had I loved him so well!
She let him finish, scratching his head with the tips of her fingers, and without his having revealed that he was weeping from love, she recognized immediately the oldest sobs in the history of man.
Love never asks what benefit it will derive from love. Love from its very nature is a disinterested thing. It loves for the creature's sake it loves, and for nothing else.
As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.
Love has as few problems as a motor car. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.
They aren't common, but enormously interesting. How can it be that you've been together that long and you're still intensely in love with them?
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