Dietrich Bonhoeffer Suffering Quotations

The Lord confers great honor on his servants when he brings them suffering....

Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.

It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men.

The cross is suffering with Christ.

God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.

Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory.

Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. ... Suffering and being rejected are not the same.

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.

Disciples will not be weakened by suffering, worn down, and embittered until they are broken. Instead, they bear suffering, by the power of him who supports them. The disciples bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the Crucified.

Only the suffering God can help.

A Christian is someone who shares the sufferings of God in the world.