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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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Interpretation

What this quote means

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.

Themes

DivineLoveAweReverenceFaith

In practice

Example use cases

In a sermon discussing the importance of recognizing divine love.

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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.
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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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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 let’s see something to prove it.
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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
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...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.
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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.
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