Bulletin 7.23.23

Resonance, while open to mystery, is never abstract but rather always concrete. Reading

That poem, watching that movie, looking over that mountain vista, laughing and playing with that four-year-old. Such experiences are full. You feel a resonance between yourself

and the world, a felt relationship that reverberates at the frequency of the good.

– Andrew Root, The Congregation in a Secular Age

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As time passed, there were enough older children to start a youth group, and Bonhoeffer hosted gatherings with these young people in which they came up with discussion topics that were then shared with the group. The extent of Bonhoeffer’s bond with these children is evident from the response that he has to their praying for him upon his leave-taking of the parish:

“Pastor Meumann mentioned me in his general prayer and – the congregational prayer has long sent shivers down my spine, and it did so incomparably more when the group of children, with whom I had spent two years, prayed for me. Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is, there is never loneliness.” – Bonhoeffer

In this experience, we can see how highly Bonhoeffer valued these young people by his careful preparation of material, his respect for their capacity to know theology, his sharing of classroom authority, and his deeply appreciative response to their prayer for him. In his time with them, he shared in their experience and they shared in his.

- Katherine Steinley:

Placing Children at the Center:

Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s Call to the Church and the World

Psalm 103:1-6, 13-18

¹  Praise the Lord, my soul;

    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

²  Praise the Lord, my soul,

    and forget not all his benefits—

³  who forgives all your sins

    and heals all your diseases,

⁴  who redeems your life from the pit

    and crowns you with love and compassion,

⁵  who satisfies your desires with good things

    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

⁶  The Lord works righteousness

    and justice for all the oppressed.

¹³  As a father has compassion on his children,

    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;

¹⁴  for he knows how we are formed,

    he remembers that we are dust.

¹⁵  The life of mortals is like grass,

    they flourish like a flower of the field;

¹⁶  the wind blows over it and it is gone,

    and its place remembers it no more.

¹⁷  But from everlasting to everlasting

    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,

    and his righteousness with their children’s children—

¹⁸  with those who keep his covenant

    and remember to obey his precepts.