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Advent creates people, new people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The task of pastoral ministry, above all else, is to arrange contingencies for an encounter with the divine.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Divine Job
We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Existence God History Judgement Need Sin
Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Action Death Love Man Old Reflection
There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Fashion Ourselves Stay World Wrong
A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

God Man People
Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Believe God Life Yourself
Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian’s life.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Control Exercise Life
This is the end. For me the beginning of life.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Beginning End Life Myself
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Believe Character Himself
Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

God Human Tears Word
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.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Achievement Easy Gratitude Hard Help Important Life Rich
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Direction Run Wrong Yourself
How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Believe Community Expectation
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Freedom Hope Oneself Photograph Prison Wait
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Grace Judgement Ourselves
While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Goodness Job Seek

Advent creates people, new people.

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Advent creates people, new people.

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