All you need is...

Many of us remember the Beatles' song "All You Need is Love." The Bonhoeffer devotional today offers a slightly different view: all you need is God in Christ. Enjoy.

BONHOEFFER for TUESDAY

April 3, 2007


God in Christ

All that we may rightly expect from God, and ask God for, is to be found in Jesus Christ. The God of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with what God, as we imagine God, could do and ought to do. If we are to learn what God promises, and what God fulfills, we must persevere in quiet meditation on the life, sayings, deeds, sufferings, and death of Jesus. It is certain that we may always live close to God and in the light of God's presence, and that such living is an entirely new life for us; that nothing is then impossible for us, because all things are possible with God; that no earthly power can touch us without God's will, and that danger and distress can only drive us closer to God. It is certain that we can claim nothing for ourselves, and may yet pray for everything; it is certain that our joy is hidden in suffering, and our life in death; it is certain that in all this we are in a fellowship that sustains us. In Jesus God has said Yes and Amen to it all, and that Yes and Amen is the firm ground on which we stand.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer -


from Letters and Papers from Prison 206-207
from A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer Carla Barnhill, Ed., HarperSan Francisco, 2005