Approach the Manger
I posted this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger last year around this time. I may just make this an annual tradition. I have need, at any rate, to relocate myself each year amongst the “questionable figures” who “cannot get their fill of this miracle and want to live entirely by the mercy of God.”
We cannot approach the manger of the Christ child in the same way we approach the cradle of another child. Rather, when we go to his manger, something happens, and we cannot leave it again unless we have been judged or redeemed. Here we must either collapse or know the mercy of God directed toward us…
The throne of God in the world is not on human thrones, but in human depths, in the manger. Standing around the throne there are no flattering vassals but dark, unknown, questionable figures who cannot get their fill of this miracle and want to live entirely by the mercy of God.
——
The image above is courtesy of Ruth Bergen Braun, taken Christmas 2014 at Lethbridge Mennonite Church. The nativity figures are the creation of Joani Neufeldt.
Rumblings 
The more I learn about Bonhoeffer’s life and work, the more I am moved by the man he was. Clearly a man who stepped beyond the comfort of his religiosity and made great effort to to live an authentic, apostolic life.
Pastor Bonhoeffer was not of my tradition, consequently we do not consider him a Saint.
I choose to believe that in God’s eyes he is. St. Dietrich. A life worth emulating.
There is much to admire about the man. Certainly a life worth emulating.