"Beauty from the Heart"

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Homesick

Posted by Hannah at 11:06 AM
1 Comments

It seems as if most good conversations I've heard these days have culminated in talk of Heaven. Coincidentally (though probably not really coincidentally at all), I ran across a really amazing quote from Bonhoeffer on the subject:

"No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up---that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? ...

Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in Him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

______

All the thoughts

The galaxies of ambition

Oceans of attempts

All the poetry the world may

Hold

All the fancies I may cradle

In my arms

All the rain the clouds let fall

That drop tears in seas below