Chapter 3: The Day Alone
Bonhoeffer’s introduction to this chapter asserts that many people join a fellowship simply because they cannot stand to be by themselves. This, he states, will end in disaster because:
“…only as we are in within the fellowship can we be alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship.”
90. “The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium.” (76) What do you suppose Bonhoeffer was getting at with this statement? Isn’t the Christian faith expressly for the purpose of curing souls?
91. There seems to be a double edged sword in this chapter. What two cautions does he give the Christian regarding aloneness and community?
Solitude and Silence
Being community and having alone time are part of the balanced Christian life. God is present in both localities, though in different ways. Following is a quote on Luther regarding the trouble with community:
“The challenge of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone….I will not be with you then, nor you with me” (Luther)
And another quote from Luther giving encouragement to the faithful who suffer and die alone:
“If I die, then I am not alone in death; if I suffer they [the fellowship] suffer with me” (Luther)
92. For the Christian, then we have a chicken/egg paradox. Which came first, community or solitude? (78)
93. When do they begin? (78)
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone”
94. None of us are perfectly “even-keeled”. We will tend to gravitate toward one thing or another when given a choice. Which direction do you tend to lean; toward fearing solitude or shunning community?
95. What is the danger to you if you succumb to that preference?
96. What might you do in order to fend off this tendency and enable a more balanced spiritual life for yourself?
97. According to Bonhoeffer, silence is a servant to what? (79)
98. At what two times is silence particularly important?
99. How does silence serve the Word in our lives?
100. By what is the silence of the Christian marked by? (80)
Meditation
Meditation, along with prayer and intersession are three things which must go along with solitude and silence. Bonhoeffer deems them not only as useful, but required by God. But meditation is not to be seen as a lonely business which might “let us down into void and abyss of loneliness; it lets us be alone with the Word. And in so doing it gives us solid ground on which to stand and clear directions as to the stops we must take.” (81)
101. In chapter two Bonhoeffer encouraged families and small group fellowships to read whole chapters of the Old and half chapters of the New Testament. But when it comes to personal meditation, what is his advice regarding the amount of scripture to ponder?
102. Which is most necessary? (Eph. 3:18) (82)
103. How long does he suggest we meditate on a passage of scripture? (82)
104. What do we seek to receive in our meditation? (82)
105. How might we begin our meditation time so that it might be most profitable to us? (82)
106. As a time of struggling with the Word, what might we expect to often be the fruit of that struggle? (83)
“It is not necessary, therefore, that we should be concerned in our meditation to express our thought and prayer in words. Unphrased thought and prayer, which issues only from our hearing, may often be more beneficial.”
107. Beneficial for whom? How?
108. On page 83 he describes our meditations as something akin to Mary “pondering in her heart” the things the shepherds told her at Jesus’ birth. How might these “ponderings” affect us? (83)
109. So, what attitude should we take regarding these various experiences? Should they concern us?
“Seek God, not happiness”—this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness; that is its promise.”
Prayer
Though he spend much time on this in the previous chapter, here it gets precisely 1 page as it seems he sees it as part and parcel of the time the Christian spends in solitude.
110. On what shall our prayer be guided? (84
111. When we are in prayer, for what should we be ready? (84)
112. What surprises might you discover or encounter in your prayers? Might this be a reason why we avoid it at times?
113. But, yet, as scary as it may be at times, what promise to we have in prayer? (85)
114. How might prayer join together our mental meanderings and the meditation from which those thoughts distracted us?
“Because God’s Word has found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, all prayers that we pray conforming to this Word are certainly heard and answered in Jesus Christ.”
Intercession
At the heart this section is that we need to be praying personally for all those in our lives. To not do so is a great neglect of their well-being.
“A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.”
115. If we are in “reality” connected to each other through Christ, as we proposed earlier in this study, When are we not connected to each other in Christ? Since we are so connected, then what happens when we pray for each other, especially those with whom we have troubles? (86)
“Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day. The struggle we undergo with our brother in intercession may be a hard one, but that struggle has the promise that it will gain its goal (of overcoming disunity).”
116. How does this happen? How does intercessory prayer “fix” and “fix” things going wrong in the church? (86)
117. How might intercession be the great equalizer (my emphasis, not DB’s)? In what do we share through intercession?
118. What if I deny someone my prayer? (87)
119. How are we to pray on their behalf? (87)
Bonhoeffer in his zeal for us to pray constantly also realized that there are far more people and situations to pray over than we have time. Christ commanded prayer, but clearly we fail at executing it fully and properly. Bonhoeffer therefore tells us that “it will be come evident that intercession is a gift of God’s ___________ for every Christian community and for every Christian.” (87)
120. How will knowing this affect your prayers?
121. However, to ensure we don’t engage in “cheap grace” what does Bonhoeffer suggest we do so that we might give intercession the time and attention it deserves?
The Test of Meditation
While only two pages long, I have marked nearly every line of it in my copy of the book with a highlighter pen. This section is where the “rubber hits the road” so-to-speak.
“Every day brings to the Christian many hours in which he will be alone in an unchristian environment. These are the times of testing.”
122. What is the big “payoff” to meditation? How will we know it has “worked” for us? (88)
123. When the individual finds themselves surrounded by non-Christians, is he/she ever alone? What/Who else is there?
124. Even when away from the fellowship, whom does the Christian represent to the world around them?
125. Therefore, for whom do acts of self-control serve beside the individual? (89)
126. Who is harmed when we sin and behave badly among non-Christians?
127. Therefore everything we do serves the __________; “either to its health or to its destruction.”
128. But regardless of whether we are alone or with the fellowship, where does our strength come from? (89)
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