A special Chinese new Year greeting to all who celebrate it and are included in the joy this season. I was reading these following words in preparation for the message for our Chinese New Year Worship gathering (first time for BLC as this is the first time day one of the Chinese New Year falls on on Sunday). I thought it is worth sharing today 🙂

“… to be free does not mean to be great in the world, to be free against our brothers and sisters, to be free against God; but it means to be free from ourselves, from our untruth, in which it seems as if I alone were there, as if I were the center of the world; to be free from the hatred with which I destroy God’s creation; to be free from myself in order to be free for others. It directs my attention, bent in on myself, to what is beyond and shows me the other person. And, as it does this, I experience the love and grace of God. It destroys our untruth and creates truth. It destroys hatred and creates love. God’s truth is God’s love, and God’s love frees us from ourselves to be free for others. To be free means nothing else than to be in this love, and to be in this love means nothing else than to be in God’s truth.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
On Freedom, July 24, 1932
From A Testament to Freedom, p. 206