Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Life Together 4

God's timing is certainly good!! I am almost starting my final week at work and it is a bit difficult. My replacement has started and I have found it hard letting go and allowing him to make changes to all I have done over the last 5 years. Today has been especially difficult as I have read through his programme for the next term and seen there are some quite big changes from my programmes. Despite knowing that the activities needed a freshen up, I didn't like reading it. I spent a long while trying to find fault with it, hoping (I'm ashamed to admit) that it wouldn't quite work out. And then, a day later than scheduled, I read chapter 4 of Bonhoeffer's book.

He opens with a paragraph dedicated to how people together will always try judging each other, will try and find fault, if they are weak people they will judge the strong; if they are strong they will show disdain to the weak. The solitary will attack the sociable whilst the sociable mock the solitary. It is human nature to judge and compare. But Bonhoeffer warns that this is the destruction of community. He says the main challenge is to control the tongue and ensure that thoughts do not get verbalised. The passage that struck me was: ' God did not make this person as I would have made him... God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in his image.' (p.71)

After feeling admonished and challenged by the opening paragraphs the rest of the chapter gave me much food for thought about being a minister. Before proclaiming the Word of God to anyone, each Christian must learn to listen, really listen, to those he will speak to. Not to see it as wasted time or an annoyance, but as part of Christ's ministry. Just as God listens to us, so we must listen to others. Also, we must learn to bear one another. Not just the burdens, but the things about others that irritate us, the things we don't like about other people. It is not an easy ministry, but it is important to then truly be able to speak to those same people.

Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow, full of listening and not so much speaking, or judging.