One phrase hit me from today’s reading: ‘spiritual orphan.’ Have you ever experienced being a church orphan? Or as if you were a fish out of water, even though you were with believers who could all sign the same statement of faith? It is sometime difficult to connect with like minded and like hearted followers of Christ. I am probably wrong, but I hesitate to use the word ‘Christian’ because it has been so polluted with different defining attachments. I’m praying that we each go much deeper with our fellowship in a variety of settings. May we each discover fellowship in deeper ways.
“The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.” / Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
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