The sufferings of God

Thanks to anonymous for the comment on my last blog. How blessed we are when we feel and act on gratitude for others gifts to us, for our being gift to others and for the mysterious gift of life itself.

In 1964 when I was arrested in Drew Mississippi and jailed by myself and convicted, I came home traumatized. I returned to college and was fortunate to find a history professor who helped heal my soul. He introduced me to books and thinkers and people who lived out the deep truths of their own journey, sometimes at great cost. Specifically, he led me to a book called Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pasotr and scholar who had the option of staying in the US right before the beginning of WWII. But his people were in Germany and he returend to be with them in the struggle against Nazi domination of the church and society. Participation in anti Hitler plots led to his arrest. Jailed for 18 montsh, he was executed in April of 1945.

Bonhoeffer's words come at us with such power because of his life and witness. As we journey through the dessert of this world, drink in some of the healing words of one of our great souls.

'The man who despises another will nverv be able to make anythign of him. Nothing htat we despise n the other man is entriely absetn from ourselves. we must learn to regard popel less in the light of hwat they do or omti to do, nad more in the lifght of wath they suffer.'

'we have been silent wintesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms;we have learned the arts of equivocaiton and pretence...are we still of any use. What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics or misanhtroupes, or clever tacticians, but plain honest straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straigthforwardness?'

'What is bothering me incessantly is the question of what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.'

'Man is called to share in God's sufferings at the hands of a godless world.'

We are called to decide whether we believe that indeed God suffers with us or is God indifferent to us or perhaps the source of our suffering. It is Job's question over and over again. It is the question of the cross.

Think on those books and poems and songs that have sustaining power for your soul. And give thanks.