Notes on Life Together (3 of 5)
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In case you are just entering the series and would like to catch up, feel free to read through Part 1 and Part 2.
CHAPTER 3: THE DAY ALONE (HIGHLIGHTS)
Only in fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in fellowship. ~Bonhoeffer, Life Together.
Solitude and Silence. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. A person should not enter into fellowship because he cannot stand to be with himself or for the sake of temporary diversion. He will blame the community for disappointing him, and this leads to the disintegration of the community, genuine experience, and finally, resignation and spiritual death. We stand alone before God; alone, we will give account to Him. God has singled us out, and we cannot escape from ourselves. However, only in fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Fellowship and no solitude results in a void of words and feelings. Solitude with no fellowship is characterized by vanity, infatuation and despair. Right speech comes out of silence, and the mark of community is speech (Eccl 3:7). Right silence, under the Word and out of the Word, comes out of speech. The Word comes to those who hold their tongues not as a ceremonial gesture, nor out of mystical desires to get beyond the Word, but in the simple stillness of an individual under the Word of God to honor and receive it.
When are we to be silent? We are to be silent before hearing the Word, when our thoughts are already directed to the Word. After hearing the Word, we are silent as the Word is still speaking and dwelling in us. At the beginning of the day, we are silent that God should have the first Word. And before going to sleep, the last Word also belongs to God. Real silence and holding of one’s tongue comes as sober consequences of spiritual stillness, and stillness exerts its force the entire day. If we can be silent before the Word, we will also be able to manage silence and speech during day.
Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails. ~Bonhoeffer.
Christian silence is in conjunction with Word. There is wrong silence: forbidden speech, self-indulgent, proud and offensive silence; silence can either become filled with terrors or a false paradise of self-deception. Right silence a listening, humble silence, which may be interrupted at any time for sake of the humility, clarification, purification, and concentration upon the essential thing. Silence before the Word leads to right hearing and thus right speaking of the Word of God at the right time. People at close quarters need regular times of quiet. If the Christian lays down no conditions in silence but simply accepts it, he will be greatly rewarded. Expect nothing from silence but a direct encounter with Word of God, and we enter silence for this sake. There are three reposes for which Christ needs to be alone: Scripture meditation, Prayer and intercession.
Scripture Meditation. This may initially mean nothing more than us performing a service that we owe to God, and that would still be sufficient. Solitude with the Word provides solid ground on which to stand and clear directions as to the steps we are to take. Unlike corporate readings, we confine ourselves to brief selected texts, which may not be change for a whole week. We expose ourselves to a selected specific word until it addresses us personally. We do not ask what this text has to say to other people but rather wait for God’s Word to us on basis of clear promise. It may take a long time for Word to break through, as we are often so burdened with many other concerns. It is not necessary that we should focus on expressing thoughts in words. It is also not necessary to discover new ideas in meditation, as these may only divert us and feed our vanity. It is not necessary that we should have any extraordinary experiences in meditation. It is sufficient that the Word penetrates and dwells within us, that is stirs and works in us (Eph. 3:14-19). We will feel a great spiritual dryness, apathy, aversion, and inability in meditation. It is not our right to have nothing but elevating and fruitful experiences. It is not below our dignity to discover our own inner poverty. Do not be balked by such experiences, as impatience and self-reproach lead to complacency and self-centered introspection. Thus, without morbidity and with great patience and faithfulness, we center our attention on the Word alone and leave the consequences to its action. God brings reproof and dryness that we may be brought to expect everything from His Word.
‘Seek God, not happiness’ – this is the fundamental rule of meditation. ~Bonhoeffer.
Prayer Scripture meditation leads to prayer. The most promising method of prayer, in which we do not become victims of our own emptiness, is to allow oneself to be guided by the Word. Prayer is the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate the Word, to accept it in one’s personal situation, particular takes, decisions, sins and temptations. In individual prayer, we may pray for what is not feasible in corporate prayer. All prayers we prayer according to the Word will certainly be heard and answered in Jesus Christ. Our thoughts will likely to wander, but it is helpful not to snatch them back but to calmly incorporate the people and events from the straying thoughts into our prayers.
Intercession. Every Christian has a unique circle committed to him and must faithfully set apart a regular time for prayer intercession. Christian fellowship stands or falls by intercession. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, because no matter how intolerable, he is transformed in intercession to a brother for whom Christ died. Intercession brings the brother under the cross of Jesus as a poor sinner in need of grace. By it, we grant our brother the same right that we have received, to stand before Christ and share in His mercy. Rather than vague intentions, intercession is a matter of definite people, difficulties and petitions. Intercession, a grace given by God, purifies both the individual and the fellowship, and there is no strife or tension that cannot be overcome by it.
Who can be faithful with great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life? ~Bonhoeffer.
THE TEST OF MEDITATION
Our hours of solitude react upon community – every act of self-control in Christ is a service to community and every sin in thought, word and deed inflicts injury upon the whole community.The test of true meditation and community is the many hours the Christian spends in the secular world each day. Has the fellowship served to make him free, strong and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has meditation led into the unreal which vanishes and then shocks him when he returns to work, or has it lodged the Word so securely that it fortifies him, impelling him to love, obedience and good works? Is the invisible presence of fellowship a reality, and do the intercessions of others carry him through the day?
We are members of a body, not only when we choose to be, but in our whole existence. Every member serves the whole Body, either to its health or to its destruction…Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness…[both are] solely the strength of the Word of God, which is addressed to the individual and the fellowship. ~Bonhoeffer.
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