Life Together by Bonhoeffer Dietrich

Author:Bonhoeffer, Dietrich [Bonhoeffer, Dietrich]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780334009047
Publisher: Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd
Published: 2012-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

After the first morning hour the Christian’s day until evening belongs to work. ‘Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening’ (Ps. 104.23). In most cases the Christian family fellowship will separate for the duration of the working day. Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it was God’s will that man should work six days and rest and make holy day in his presence on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian by both prayer and work. Prayer is entitled to its time. But the bulk of the day belongs to work. And only where each receives its own specific due will it become clear that both belong inseparably together. Without the burden and labour of the day, prayer is not prayer, and without prayer work is not work. This only the Christian knows. Thus, it is precisely in the clear distinction between them that their oneness becomes manifest.

Work plunges men into the world of things. The Christian steps out of the world of brotherly encounter into the world of impersonal things, the ‘it’; and this new encounter frees him for objectivity; for the ‘it’-world is only an instrument in the hand of God for the purification of Christians from all self-centredness and self-seeking. The work of the world can be done only where a person forgets himself, where he loses himself in a cause, in reality, the task, the ‘it’. In work the Christian learns to allow himself to be limited by the task, and thus for him the work becomes a remedy against the indolence and sloth of the flesh. The passions of the flesh die in the world of things. But this can happen only where the Christian breaks through the ‘it’ to the ‘Thou’, which is God, who bids him work and makes that work a means of liberation from himself.

The work does not cease to be work; on the contrary, the hardness and rigour of labour is really sought only by the one who knows what it does for him. The continuing struggle with the ‘it’ remains. But at the same time the break-through is made; the unity of prayer and work, the unity of the day is discovered; for to find, behind the ‘it’ of the day’s work, the ‘Thou’, which is God, is what Paul calk ‘praying without ceasing’ (I Thess. 5.17). Thus the prayer of the Christian reaches beyond its set time and extends into the heart of his work. It includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes it, affirms it, and lends it meaning and joy. Thus every word, every work, every labour of the Christian becomes a prayer; not in the unreal sense of a constant turning away from the task that must be done, but in a real breaking through the hard ‘it’ to the gracious Thou.

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