URC Daily Devotion for Thursday 21st August 2025

Reflection                
Yesterday we read Bonhoeffer saying that, rather than seeing God as the explanation of the things we don’t know, we are to find God in what we do know. But this still leaves the question as to what place God has in our thinking and, indeed, our daily living. In other words, how central is God to the lives we live as Christians? From his prison cell on 30th April 1944 Bonhoeffer wrote ‘I should like to speak of God not at the boundaries but at the centre, not in weakness but in strength’  A month later he expressed this more strongly when saying, ‘God…must recognized be at the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognised in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities and not only in sin. The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the centre of life…’ 

How do we ensure that Christ really is central to our lives and not simply one element amongst many? How do we sustain and deepen our relationship with Christ amidst all the demands on our time and our energy? How do we even remember Christ day by day? (In a book on prayer, Simon Tugwell wrote, ‘Forgetfulness is the root of all evil. In our relationship with God, one of the main problems is that half the time we just forget about it.’) To maintain and deepen our relationships with other people takes time and effort, but we only take the time and make the effort if we really want to deepen them. Do we really want to deepen our relationship with God through Christ? If we do, are we willing to take the time and make the effort? And, if we are, how do we do it?

Prayer            
Gracious God, 
we thank you for revealing yourself 
most clearly and completely in Jesus Christ. 
Increase our desire to deepen our relationship 
with you through him 
and help us to find ways of doing this, 
for our own good and the good of other people. Amen.