Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A Call for Courage


"All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe."
Anonymous 


"What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"? That sounds beautiful. But I would say - courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth Out task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology of literature... we lack a holy rage - the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets and when the lie rages across the face of the earth... a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God's earth, and the destruction of God's world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until in conforms to the norms of the kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish... but never the chameleon."
Kaj Munk 
(an old prayer of a Danish pastor)


"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer