“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves.”
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
(hawthorn berries / Julie Cook / 2017)
“God travels wonderful ways with human beings,
but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people.
God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him;
rather, his way is beyond all comprehension,
free and self-determined beyond all proof.
Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels,
where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be.
There he confounds the reason of the reasonable;
there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be,
and no one can keep him from it.
Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous
that he does wonders where people despair,
that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.
And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…
God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.
God marches right in.
He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would
least expect them.
God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly,
the excluded, the weak and broken.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
cookiecrumbstoliveby 
Perfect!
Thanks- I’d actually written a whole post going along with the Bonhoeffer quote but read it and decided the quote was such that it could and should stand by itself so I cut out everything I wrote and left Bonhoeffer’s words to speak to us all ☺️
You are a gifted writer, perhaps God will lead you to share them another time… 😀
I appreciate that— sometimes I must learn to be quiet 😇
😊
The passage is certainly effective alone. However, I would like you to share your gleaning from it. Perhaps a different setting or refer to this with added comments. Beautiful post that calls for being shared.
Yep, I had written this whole long post even using different a different title, quotes and scripture—then I found the Bonhoeffer quote and wanted to use it…but my words paled in what he was saying and with what I had already written—so I cut the title, the verses, cut my words…leaving only his….
my thought was about decreasing so another my increase…but the thought of God traveling with us on this journey we call life, yet traveling in tandem but with a different approach —as in traveling parallel to us but not as us—free from our desires and or demands of and for Him—rather dipping in when others would steer clear and wanting to be in the thick of the unpleasant —being present in our frailty and in our voracious appetites for the worldly and in our ego—daring to trod where we won’t even venture ourselves—in which to bring about our redemption—just seemed the be more necessary than my increasing and decreasing notion 🙂
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Powerful Sis!
Bonhoeffer has these effect 😇
Reblogged this on New Life in Christ Jesus and commented:
“Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel (ALL of My people) would walk in My ways….Psalms 81:13