Pilfering The Pages

Mom has stacked all of dad's library in our dining room. There are stacks of books two & three rows deep around the walls... book after book... old books that he collected over the years... commentaries, classics, as well as contemporary writings fill the room... I love the smell of an old book(one of my favorite smells) - The smell of an old book store is something to behold. Just walking in makes you feel smarter. I wish it worked this way!
Getting back to the point, when I was home I began to sort through the books. A day will come when I will gratefully add them to my own library, but for now they will just stay at the house. Except those that I randomly pick up on our visits home...
I brought one back by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, which recounts many of his experiences in a German concentration camp during WWII. One of the best parts of looking through dad's books is to see the pages he has marked and dogeared.
One like this:
"Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all of this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God - the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?" Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I have never, nor will I ever face circumstances near what those in the camps were dealt... I wonder... What would have been my thoughts? How would I have acted? How would I have lived out my faith? How about you? For me, a brattish and selfish young American, would have more than likely buckled at the mere thought of the suffering...
God gives Jeremiah and us this advice...

"If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, who will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?" Jeremiah 12:5