Called To Die

Detrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him to die."  It doesn't sound very appealing on the surface.  One has to wonder why anyone would accept such a call.  One might also wonder if Jesus really calls us in the way Bonhoeffer suggests.

Let me first say that Detrich Bonhoeffer not only believed what he said, he did exactly that.  Taking a a stand against the Nazi dictatorship and Hitler's genocide of the Jews led to his imprisonment and finally death by hanging.  He could have pastored a Lutheran church without running aground against  the Nazi machine, but he could not have been faithful to God without raising his voice against the evil of his day.

And Bonhoeffer was not mistaken about what Jesus called us to do.  He did not necessarily call us to the hangman's noose Bonhoeffer experienced or even to die a martyr's death at all.  But he did call us to give up our lives, naming them His own and accepting whatever fate following Jesus might bring us to.  His precise words were, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mk 8:34).  oooooooo

Jesus calls us to deny what we want in life, taking up the cross He may ask us to bear.  Crosses, by the way, are not designed for discipline or for rehabilitation, they were made to die on.  Once yo take up your cross, there was no going back, death was the only outcome.

Whatever it means, whatever it costs, Jesus calls us to follow after, accepting whatever following him might demand of us.  It means to put Christ's will ahead of our own and be willing to go and to do as He bids.  Jus' Say'n.