A Veteran Blog on Veteran’s Day

Today is Veteran’s Day!  I am thankful for all the men and women who have sacrificed greatly so that we can be free in our country. Below is a blog from a one who has served…

Veteran’s Day, 2009

The call to serve. It has no sound, yet I have heard it.
In the whispered retelling of honorable sacrifices made by those who have served before me.

The call to serve has no form, yet I have clearly seen it.
In the eyes of the men and women infinitely more courageous and more driven than most.

The call to serve has no weight, yet I have held it in my hands.
I will commit to carry it close to my heart, until my country is safe,
and the anguish of those less fortunate has been soothed.

The call to serve, is at once invisible and always present, and for those who choose to answer the call, for their country, for their fellow man, for themselves. It is the most powerful force on earth.

(From “A Global Force for Good”, US Navy)

I am proud that I have had the chance to serve my country. No, I did not got to Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or any of the other many hot spots around the globe. As a member of the Coast Guard, I did , however, save lives, protect the environment, protect the interests of American fisheries, and helped prevent drugs from reaching the shores of our country. I got to see the joy in the eyes of family when they were reunited with someone after a disaster, and the heartache and tears when they did not. I stood tall in my dress uniform sailing into foreign countries, and got down and dirty cleaning the ship’s decks. I fought fires, learned how to steer a boat that was longer than a football field, and could plot a course using only the stars and a clear horizon. I laughed alongside airmen, stood tall next to soldiers, and swore at Navy sailors. At times I felt I could do no wrong. Other times it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right. I grew up, gained confidence and learned how to lead others. I was prepared to go to war, but helped maintain the peace so we did not.

My story is unique, yet it is not. Every service member, whether they served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Coast Guard has a story to tell. Each one is different, but each one will tell of struggles, triumphs, and a deep-seated pride to having served. So I ask, on this Veteran’s day, put aside your political feelings and find a veteran to thank. Thank them for being prepared, thank them for their willingness to give their time, thank them for preparing to die, if necessary, so that you may continue to enjoy your freedoms that we really do take for granted. For a service member it is not an easy job, but one that we are proud to have done.

There are many ways to thank a veteran. Give them a hug. Give them a call. You probably know at least one. Most of us will blush at the thanks, but we really do appreciate it. One way that some businesses have decided to show their appreciation is by offering free meals or other items on or near Veteran’s Day to those who have served. To thank those establishments, I wanted to try to list as many as I can here.

Applebee’s (Wednesday, Nov 11th, selected menu, All locations)
Golden Corral (Monday Nov 16th, Free meal All Locations)
McCormick And Schmick’s (Sunday Nov 8th, Free meal, Selected locations)
Knott’s Berry Farm (Nov 1-24, Free admission plus one guest free)
Colonial Williamsburg (Nov 6-11 Free Admission to veterans and dependents)

I will update this as we get closer to the time and I hear of more restaurants honoring veterans! Please let me know if you hear of any restaurants, stores, or other places honoring veterans on (or around) Veteran’s Day.

And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
Lee Greenwood “Proud to be an American”

Posted by NW Dad at 9:00 AM

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Considered Suicide in Prison

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s early days in prison were fearful for him as he contemplated what could happen to his family, friends and him.  Bonhoeffer would write things down on pieces of paper…

Among notes scribbled on scraps of paper during the first days appears the sentence: “Suicide, not from a sense of guilt, but basically I am already dead.  Full stop.  The end.”

“Not from a sense of guilt”.  As he sat in prison he was once more involved in the interior struggle which was the background to his part in the resistance.  “At first,” he wrote, in his first letters to Bethge, “I wondered a great deal whether it was really for the cause of Christ that I was causing you all such grief.”

And finally the awful oppression of the world of evil against which Bonhoeffer and so many others had been struggling, weighed upon him in his cell without relief.

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 248)

 

Suffering is the Badge of Discipleship

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship…

Suffering…is the badge of true discipleship.  The disciples are not above their master!

Do we twenty-first century followers of Jesus believe that is true?

All Souls Quareterly Review on Dietrich Bonhoeffer

BONHOEFFER by All Souls Quarterly Review

In September, right at the beginning of our church year, Rev. Galen Guengerich challenged members of the congregation and visitors by scheduling a demanding series of readings and discussions about the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This pastor and theologian, who was born in 1906, struggled for much of his adult life with the ethical dilemma posed by Hitler’s Nazi regime to his society, his church and his own feelings of social responsibility. As a result, he became a member of a small group of resisters who protested the war against the Jews and the assault on the tenets of his own Evangelical church. While he continued to believe that Christianity had superceded Judaism, he strongly condemned state persecution of the Jews. Now that we are again in an era of racial turmoil and religiously based terrorism, an examination of this eminent theologian is extremely timely.

One of his concerns was to preserve the tenets and missions of his church that included the conversion of the Jews. Most Evangelical pastors ignored Hitler’s racism and persecution of even baptized Jews, while focusing on doctrinal problems posed by the Nazi’s rejection of Old Testament teachings. In contrast, Bonhoeffer and a like-minded group of pastors and theologians began to condemn the persecution of the Jews as a matter of ethics and justice.

Bonhoeffer, who had spent several years abroad early in his career, including work at Union Theological Seminary in New York, may have been influenced by the more open religious climate in the United States, and may have learned about racial discrimination when he visited African-American protestant churches. He carried these insights back to his own church work in Germany.

His own ethical and theological search led him into groups that actively tried to resist Hitler’s programs. Through a brother-in-law, he was drawn into such a circle operating out of the office of Military Intelligence. Bonhoeffer was able to use his international ecumenical contacts to serve as an agent for that resistance movement. Eventually, this also involved him in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler during a meeting.

In April 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo as a traitor and he spent the rest of his remaining years in harsh prisons and concentration camps. Two of his brothers and two of his brothers-in-law were executed by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer had no doubts that the same fate awaited him. Yet hope persisted. While in prison, he married a young woman who shared his beliefs, although the marriage could never be consummated. He continued to write while in prison, however, including a very moving poem that indicated his acceptance of his fate (see below).

The lecture/discussion series included the showing of a commercial film made by Martin Doblmeier who was present at its showing in the Sanctuary on October 16, attended by many members of the general public. The film vividly illustrated the rise of Hitler and National Socialism in Germany during the years before the Second World War and the effect on Jews and other resistors during the Hitler period. The film ended with the announcement of Bonhoeffer’s execution by hanging on April 9, 1945. The irony of that date is made manifest by the fact that by then all the concentration camps had been liberated and Hitler committed suicide only a scant ten days later.

One of Bonhoeffer’s most lasting contributions to Christian theology is his conviction that one must not seek “cheap grace” through theological posturing, but that real grace must be earned by deeds and by taking risks. Bonhoeffer certainly went to his death having earned such grace.

Bonhoeffer’s poem, Who Am I?, written in prison in June of 1944:

Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my prison cell poised, cheerful and sturdy, like a nobleman from his country estate. Who am I? They often tell me I would speak with my guards freely, pleasantly, and firmly, as if I had it to command. Who am I? I have also been told that I suffer the days of misfortune with serenity, smiles and pride, as someone accustomed to victory.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Am I really what others say about me? Or am I only what I know of myself? Restless, yearning and sick, like a bird in its cage, struggling for the breath of life, as though someone were choking my throat; hungering for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds, thirsting for kind words and human closeness, shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs, bedeviled by anxiety, awaiting great events that might never occur, fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away, weary and empty in prayer, in thinking and doing, weak, and ready to take leave of it all. Who am I? This man or that other? Am I then this man today and tomorrow another? Am I both all at once? An impostor to others, but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling? Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army, that flees in disorder before a battle already won? Who am I? They mock me these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, you know me, O God. You know I am yours.

How Shall We Respond to the Fort Hood Tragedy?

Abraham Piper posted the following after the Virginia Tech shootings.  The words are very appropriate after yesterday’s tragic shooting at Fort Hood.

April 16, 2007  |  By: Abraham Piper |  Category: Recommendations, Commentary

After the Columbine shootings, John Piper wrote up 21 ways to love and comfort the hurting by trusting wholly in God’s sovereignty over all things. He revised them after 9-11. I posted this a couple months ago, but I want to again in light of the Virginia Tech incident that is still developing. As lovers of an all-powerful God, let us be prepared to love people in their pain by empathetically and mercifully pointing them to a God who is in control.

21 Ways to Minister to Those Who Are Suffering

(Bible verses to accompany each item on this list are available in the full article.)

1. Pray. Ask God for his help for you and for those you want to minister to. Ask him for wisdom and compassion and strength and a word fitly chosen. Ask that those who are suffering would look to God as their help and hope and healing and strength. Ask that he would make your mouth a fountain of life.

2. Feel and express empathy with those most hurt by this great evil and loss; weep with those who weep.

3. Feel and express compassion because of the tragic circumstances of so many loved ones and friends who have lost more than they could ever estimate.

4. Take time and touch, if you can, and give tender care to the wounded in body and soul.

5. Hold out the promise that God will sustain and help those who cast themselves on him for mercy and trust in his grace. He will strengthen you for the impossible days ahead in spite of all darkness.

6. Affirm that Jesus Christ tasted hostility from men and knew what it was to be unjustly tortured and abandoned, and to endure overwhelming loss, and then be killed, so that he is now a sympathetic mediator for us with God.

7. Declare that this murder was a great evil, and that God’s wrath is greatly kindled by the wanton destruction of human life created in his image.

8. Acknowledge that God has permitted a great outbreak of sin against his revealed will, and that we do not know all the reasons why he would permit such a thing now, when it was in his power to stop it.

9. Express the truth that Satan is a massive reality in the universe that conspires with our own sin and flesh and the world to hurt people and to move people to hurt others, but stress that Satan is within and under the control of God.

10. Express that these terrorists rebelled against the revealed will of God and did not love God or trust him or find in God their refuge and strength and treasure, but scorned his ways and his Person.

11. Since rebellion against God was at the root of this act of murder, let us all fear such rebellion in our own hearts, and turn from it, and embrace the grace of God in Christ, and renounce the very impulses that caused this tragedy.

12. Point the living to the momentous issues of sin and repentance in our own hearts and the urgent need to get right with God through his merciful provision of forgiveness in Christ, so that a worse fate than death will not overtake us.

13. Remember that even those who trust in Christ may be cut down like these thousands who were in New York and Washington, but that does not mean they have been abandoned by God or not loved by God even in those agonizing hours of suffering. God’s love conquers even through calamity.

14. Mingle heart-wrenching weeping with unbreakable confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God who rules over and through the sin and the plans of rebellious people.

15. Trust God for his ability to do the humanly impossible, and bring you through this nightmare and, in some inscrutable way, bring good out of it.

16. Explain, when the time is right, and they have the wherewithal to think clearly that one of the mysteries of God’s greatness is that he ordains that some things come to pass which he forbids and disapproves of.

17. Express your personal cherishing of the sovereignty of God as the ground of all your hope as you face the human impossibilities of life. The very fulfillment of the New Covenant promises of our salvation and preservation hang on God’s sovereignty over rebellious human wills.

18. Count God your only lasting treasure, because he is the only sure and stable thing in the universe.

19. Remind everyone that to live is Christ and to die is gain.

20. Pray that God would incline their hearts to his word, open their eyes to his wonders, unite their hearts to fear him, and satisfy them with his love.

21. At the right time sound the trumpet that all this good news is meant by God to free us for radical, sacrificial service for the salvation of men and the glory of Christ. Help them see that one message of all this misery is to show us that life is short and fragile and followed by eternity, and small, man-centered ambitions are tragic.

More on the Inner Struggles of Dietrich Bonhoeffer During the Early Days of His Imprisonment…

…During the hours when Bonhoeffer sat in silence in his cell, the horror of this destruction weighed him down to the point of death.  Added to this was the fearful prospect of the interrogations, possibly of physical torture, under the stress of which he might reveal secrets which could constitute the death warrant for Hans von Dohnanyi and others to whom he was bound by ties of loyalty…

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 248)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Inner Struggles During the Early Days of His Imprisonment…

We twenty-first century Christians in the fairly comfortable Western World can hardly imagine the horror of solitary confinement in a Nazi prison.  German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew about it…

…Of the twelve days of solitary confinement…very little impression can be gained from the cheerful and controlled letters written to his parents.  The iron hardness and heartlessness of his surroundings not only emphasized the sudden break with his own life, but also seemed to symbolize the iron grip of disaster by which the past that he had loved was being destroyed…

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 248)

After Forty-Eight Hours My Bible Was Returned to Me…

…it had been searched to see whether I had smuggled inside it a saw, razor blades, or the like.

For the next twelve days the cell door was opened only for bringing food in and putting bucket out.  No one said a word to me.  I was told nothing about the reason for my detention, or how long it would last.

I gathered from various remarks–and it was confirmed later–that I was lodged in in the section for the most serious cases, where the condemned prisoners lay shackled.

The first night in my cell I could not sleep much, because in the next cell a prisoner wept loudly for several hours on end; no one took any notice.

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 247)

This was the beginning of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life in prison.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Was Denied Certain Privileges When He First Went to Prison!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not even told why he was arrested!  The jailer said to him, “You will find out soon enough!”

I was taken to the most isolated cell on the top of the floor; a notice, prohibiting all access without special permission, was put outside of it.  I was told that all correspondence would be stopped until further notice, and that, unlike all the other prisoners, I should not be allowed half an hour a day in the open air, although, according to the prison rules, I was entitled to it.  I received neither news papers not anything to smoke.

(Mary Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 247)

A Good Word for Young Preachers

I am a blogger who reads blogs.  I read this blog today by Russell D. Moore about preaching.  Since the bonhoefferblog was formed to help me complete my Doctor of Ministry preaching track at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I want to post Dr. Moore’s blog.

A Word to Young Preachers

— Friday, October 30th, 2009 —

Your first few sermons are always terrible, no matter who you are.

If you think your first few sermons are great, you’re probably self-deceived. If the folks in your home church think your first few sermons are great, it’s probably because they love you and they’re proud of you. If it’s a good, supportive church there’s as much objectivity there as a grandparent evaluating the “I Love You Grandma” artwork handed to them by the five year-old in their family.

So your first set of sermons, unless you’re very atypical, are probably really, really bad.

So what?

The great thing about Christian ministry is that Jesus doesn’t start all over again with his church every generation. He gives older men in ministry who shape, disciple, and direct younger men in ministry. This includes (although it’s not limited to) critiquing your sermons.

Your sermons will be critiqued. You want them to be critiqued, and harshly.

Now you don’t want them critiqued harshly by your congregations (and a critical attitude toward your pastor’s preaching, church members, is not a fruit of the Spirit). But you want them critiqued, and you want them critiqued now.

Your sermons will be highly critiqued early on in your ministry, when you’re still being shaped, or you’ll just be left alone.

The great preachers you hear or that you read about in your church history books are not almost never those who were preaching great sermons from the very beginning of their ministries.

Great preachers are the ones who preach really bad sermons. The difference is that they preach really bad sermons when they’re young, and are sharpened for life by critique.

Mediocre preachers are those who start off with sermons that are, eh, pretty good, but they’re never critiqued and thus never grow.

So if you’re early on in ministry and you preach a bad sermon, so what? You’re in a train of previously bad preachers that extends from Moses to Aaron to Simon Peter to about every good gospel preacher you’ve ever heard with your own ears.

Your bad sermon says nothing about your future. If you’ve got folks in your life saying, “Hey, that was a really bad sermon,” that does indicate something about your future, so praise God for it. It’s probaby a sign that God has something for you to say, for the rest of your life.