Bonhoeffer: Come to church!

Sunday, November 2, 2025
    Feast of All Souls
Meditation:
    But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out.
    “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people the full message of this new life.”
    At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles.
    —Acts 5:19-21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Come to church! You can do that of your own free will. You can leave your home on a Sunday morning and come to hear the sermon. If you will not, you are of your own free will excluding yourself from the place where faith is a possibility.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship, Simon and Schuster, 1959, p. 65 (see the book)
    See also Acts 5:19-21; John 1:40-41; Acts 16:14-15; Rom. 16:3-5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Phlmn. 1:1-2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bless the church with Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Baillie: at home on earth

Friday, October 31, 2025
    Reformation Day
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”
    —Luke 6:47-49 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The mark of modern unbelieving man as a whole is that he has felt astonishingly much at home in his earthly surroundings. He has taken a cheerful view of the prospects of the race and of the future of human history, staying his soul upon the promise of further “evolution” of the human individual, the continuous upward progress of civilization, or perhaps the confident expectation of a completely revolutionized order of society—a communist Utopia beyond the class struggle or something else of that same general kind. Where such hopes remain unchastened by the cold touch of reality, there is little prospect of the Christian Gospel recommending itself to men’s minds, and any wordy defense of it is likely to be quite useless.
    ... John Baillie (1886-1960), Invitation to Pilgrimage, Oxford University Press, 1942, and New York: Scribner, 1942, p. 94-95 (see the book)
    See also Luke 6:47-49; Isa. 6:9-10; Matt. 13:14-15; Mark 4:11-12; John 8:45; 12:40; Acts 28:26-27; Rom. 11:7-8; 2 Cor. 5:20; 2 Tim. 4:3; 1 Pet. 2:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have opened the ears of Your people, so that the world cannot stop them from hearing Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Luther: praying without ceasing

Thursday, October 30, 2025
    Commemoration of Martin Luther, Teacher, Reformer, 1546
Meditation:
    Pray without ceasing.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV)
Quotation:
    There is no Christian who does not have time to pray without ceasing. But I mean the spiritual praying, that is: no one is so heavily burdened with his labor, but that if he will he can, while working, speak with God in his heart, lay before Him his need and that of other men, ask for help, make petition, and in all this exercise and strengthen his faith.
    ... Martin Luther (1483-1546), in “Treatise on Good Works” [1520], Works of Martin Luther, v. I, Philadelphia: A. J. Holman, 1915, p. 229 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 5:17; Matt. 6:7; Luke 18:1; Rom. 12:12; Eph. 6:18; Col. 4:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, set the need for continual prayer on my heart. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hanson: What more could He do?

Wednesday, October 29, 2025
    Commemoration of James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885
Meditation:
    God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
    —2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It seems that Paul is here [2 Cor. 5:21] outlining the very ultimate degree of Christ’s self-identification with us, the very lowest point to which he condescended when he took the form of a slave. He allowed himself (God allowed him) to be accounted sin by the Law. He refused to do what orthodox Jews of his day thought God had commanded them to do, (i.e.) seek to gain credit with God by keeping the Law. He lived by faith, not Law, and therefore repudiated the Law and the path of self-justification... He stripped himself even of that claim to moral goodness which would have distinguished him from sinners. Short of becoming a sinner (and Paul shows that this idea is repudiated), how could God come closer to us sinners?
    ... Anthony T. Hanson (1916-1991), The Church of the Servant, London: SCM Press, 1962, p. 57 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 5:21; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 4:2; Phil. 2:5-8; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 1:3-5; 1 John 2:1-2; 4:10; 5:3-4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You given Yourself for us. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonar: belief and the Holy Spirit

Tuesday, October 28, 2025
    Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles
Meditation:
    This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
    —1 John 5:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Holy Spirit is as indispensable to your believing, as is Christ in order to your being pardoned. The Holy Spirit’s work is direct and powerful; and you will not rid yourself of your difficulties by trying to persuade yourself that his operations are all indirect, and merely those of a teacher presenting truth to you. Salvation for the sinner is Christ’s work; salvation in the sinner is the Spirit’s work. Of this internal salvation he is the beginner and the ender. He works in you, in order to your believing, as truly as he works in you after you have believed, and in consequence of your believing.
    ... Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), God’s Way of Peace: A Book for the Anxious, London: J. Nisbet, 1864, p. 149 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 5:6; Acts 13:48; Rom. 4:5; 8:8-10,16,26-27; 1 John 2:20; 3:24
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You speak in my heart and whisper the truth in my ear. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Paton: God concerned for the wicked

Monday, October 27, 2025
Meditation:
    But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
    —Jonah 4:10-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    To think of the Communists as the executors of God’s judgment should not strike us as strange if we have read our Bibles. The same study should free us from the assumption that God will always be on our side whatever we do, will always protect His Church from temporal evil, or that He is only concerned with the faithful believers. It was precisely His concern for the wicked Ninevites that so distressed the prophet Jonah.
    ... David M. Paton (1913-1992), Christian Missions and the Judgment of God, London: SCM Press, 1953, p. 20 (see the book)
    See also Jon. 4:10-11; Isa. 1:18-20; Luke 15:28-32; Acts 14:27; 17:29-30; Rom. 15:15-16; Eph. 2:1-5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your plan is perfect. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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