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public and private

I recently finished reading “Bonhoeffer”, a biography of Dietrick Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas.  For those who may not know, Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was part of the conspiracy to overthrow Adolf Hitler.  Unfortunately, he was executed in a concentration camp only two weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allies.

Bonhoeffer emphasized personal devotions as the means to connecting with God.  He didn’t want to know about God; he wanted to know God.  He would begin and end each day with thirty minutes of meditating on a single passage of scripture.

Bonhoeffer knew that we could be busy with “religious” activities and still not know God:  “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”

What gave Bonhoeffer the strength to act in public were the things he practiced in private.