It’s tough when after a nice little honeymoon phase passes and then something brings it all down to reality.  The past full year on campus has been a great one including all its ups and downs.  Yes I did get sick way too many times.  I overestimated my capacity but still managed to get away relatively unscathed (but I did learn something).  I didn’t find that I had any real issues with people because in most cases I didn’t have to make any real adjustments.  But after today I realized (or re-realized) that yup, I still have to die to myself and my own proud desires.  That people still come before some of my own desires for control or excellence.

To be clear, I always thought that I was pretty flexible and easygoing, but that likely pertains to things that hold little relative significance to me.  But for matters that are really close to my heart, that are passions that sit in my zone of comfort, even when they are gently tugged away I cannot easily let go.

Well that is where dying to myself comes in.  I’m not sure I can swallow my pride.  And so I’ll ask the Spirit to help me.

Interestingly, as I realize the things that are hard to let go of, I am understanding what I find worth devoting myself towards.

I don’t know that much about Dietrich Bonhoeffer but I know he is a man quite respected. For some reason the Boundless Line blog keeps referencing a lot of great articles from the past on Boundless. Because today is the anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death in a concentration camp, they linked to this article about Bonhoeffer’s perspective on pacifism, marriage, and loving one another completely. Here is an interesting quote of Bonhoeffer:

Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal — it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

How does a man facing imminent death have such a grand and deep view of God’s gift of marriage!? Recently as I was reading through A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy, I started understanding a fine balance of life that was a bit hazy before.

If one has a proper perspective that God is eternal and outside of the bounds of time, we realize that our life spans are very short and limited compared to God who is not bound by time. To a Christian, the fleetingness of life provides no threat since our hope is entirely in Christ, who has saved us and provides eternal life. He also provides meaning and sustenance for each and every short day.

However, for one with the improper perspective that there is no God, every day goes by slowly and slower, since there is nothing to look forward to for tomorrow. There is nothing after this life. A day without meaning or purpose becomes strikingly and painfully slow. And then five years, ten years from now even pleasure itself will lose its appeal. The only way to end the meaninglessness is by ending life.

Do you think this is realistic? Is this how people view life? How else can we view each and every day of life as precious and appreciate each moment unless we realize how quickly it goes by?

Brethren, I beseech you, in all you do, in everything, to let this day be a Good day. Allow the goodness Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross to flow through your own blood and course through the innermost recesses of your mind. Think upon the One Death that made death His servant. One Good Death to pay for it all; the sins of a lost world paid for once and for all. The Only Death that brings life.

The sun that shines now was blotted out That Good Day. The condemnation for a world, the most distance the Father ever placed as He turned away from His Son. That Good Day was a day when His love was so great that He gave up His Only Son so that anyone — ANYONE — who receives this Sacrifice shan’t be separated from the Source of Light, Life, and Love ever again. (cf)