It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.

He did not hope that God heard his prayers; he knew it.

When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They’ve substituted a toothless ‘freedom of worship’ for ‘freedom of religion’.

Christianity contains within itself a germ hostile to the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

The 'success' of the sermon is utterly dependent on the God who breaks through and 'grasps' us, or we cannot be 'grasped.

Bonhoeffer knew that twisting the Truth to sell it more effectively was inexcusable. For Bonhoeffer the challenge was to present the Truth as purely as possible without attempting to help it along or dress it up.

Belief in God is an act of faith. But so is believing our existence is simply the result of chance.