The Day Alone

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. MATTHEW 6:6

A book about Christian community might be expected to have little to say about solitude. Bonhoeffer gave it a whole chapter. Life Together moves from the day together to the day alone, and he insisted that the two cannot be separated. The one who cannot be alone, he warned, should be wary of community; and the one who will not live in community should be wary of being alone. Each is a danger without the other.

Why we need both

Why should a person who cannot bear solitude be wary of community? Because he may be using other people to escape himself. He seeks company not to love others but to avoid the silence in which he must face God. He fills every hour with talk and activity, and the fellowship becomes a noise that drowns out the voice he most needs to hear. Such a person brings his emptiness into the community and asks it to fill him. It cannot.

Why should a person who shuns community be wary of solitude? Because he may be using solitude to escape others. He retreats into his own spiritual life, cultivates his inner experience, and is answerable to no one. His solitude becomes a fortress of self-regard. Bonhoeffer thought that such a person was in danger of vanity and despair, cut off from the correction and comfort God gives through a brother.

And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. LUKE 5:16

Silence

The day alone begins with silence. Bonhoeffer did not mean an empty silence, or the kind of mystical stillness that seeks to empty the mind. He meant the silence of the one who waits to hear the Word of God. We are silent, he said, so that God may speak; and we are silent afterwards, so that his word may sink in. Silence and speech belong together. The one who has learned to be silent before God will speak more truly to others, and less.

Be still, and know that I am God. PSALM 46:10

He noticed how anxious many people are in silence. It feels empty, even threatening. We reach for noise. But he thought that learning to be silent before God was one of the great disciplines of the Christian life, and one that must simply be practised. It does not come naturally. It comes with time.

Meditation on Scripture

The heart of the day alone, for Bonhoeffer, was meditation on Scripture. At Finkenwalde he had each student spend a period every morning in silent meditation on a short passage — often the same passage for a whole week. This was not study, and it was not sermon preparation. The student was not to ask what the text meant for others, or how he might preach it. He was to ask what God was saying to him.

Bonhoeffer’s counsel on this practice is simple and practical. Take a short text, not a long one. Read it slowly. Do not try to cover it all or exhaust it; stay with a word or a phrase as long as it speaks. Accept the text as God’s word addressed to you today. Do not look for new ideas or striking experiences; often the time will seem dry, and that does not matter. What matters is that we have heard, and that the word goes with us into the day, as Mary kept the words she had heard and pondered them in her heart.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. LUKE 2:19

Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. JEREMIAH 15:16

He admitted the difficulty. The mind wanders. Thoughts of the day’s work crowd in. His advice was not to fight them anxiously but to bring them into the prayer — to pray about the very thing that distracts us, and then return to the text. Patience, not strain, is the secret.

Prayer from the Word

Meditation, he said, leads naturally into prayer. The word we have heard becomes the word we pray. This keeps prayer from wandering into our own preoccupations; it gives it a shape and a direction that come from God rather than from ourselves. The Psalms are the great school of this kind of prayer, but any passage of Scripture can become the starting point.

O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. PSALM 119:97

Intercession

Then Bonhoeffer turned to intercession — praying for others — and here he said something that many readers have found transforming. Intercession, he said, changes the one who prays. I cannot go on hating a brother for whom I pray. When I bring him before God, I see him as he is: a poor sinner, like me, in need of grace. His faults, which loomed so large, are seen in the light of the cross. And his needs, which I had overlooked, become my concern.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy. PHILIPPIANS 1:3–4

He added two practical points. Intercession should be specific: not a vague blessing on everyone, but particular people, with particular needs, by name. And it should be regular: a daily duty, not an occasional impulse. He thought that a Christian community in which every member prays daily for the others is held together by bonds stronger than any other. And he believed, too, that the one who is prayed for is truly helped — that intercession is not merely a pious exercise but real work, done before God, on another’s behalf.

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. EPHESIANS 6:18

The test of solitude

How can we know whether our time alone is doing its work? Bonhoeffer offered a simple test. The fruit of the day alone should be seen in the day together. If our meditation makes us more patient with our brothers, more ready to serve, more willing to hear and to forgive, then it has been real. If it makes us proud of our spirituality, impatient with the less devout, or withdrawn from ordinary duties, then something has gone wrong. Solitude is not an end in itself. It is a preparation for love.

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. PSALM 62:1

Bonhoeffer would soon learn the day alone in a harder school. In the prison at Tegel he had solitude enough, and he kept the disciplines he had taught: Scripture, the Psalms, prayer for those he loved. The letters from that time show a man whose inner life had been formed long before the cell door closed.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Set aside fifteen minutes each morning this week for silence and meditation on a single short passage. Use the same passage every day.

2. Notice where you use company or noise to escape being alone with God. Turn off one source of noise for a week.

3. Notice, too, where you use solitude to escape the demands of others. Who have you been avoiding?

4. Make a list of people to pray for by name, with specific needs. Pray through it daily for a month.

5. Choose one person you find difficult. Pray for them every day this week, and watch what happens in you.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have filled my days with noise, and I have been afraid of the silence in which You speak. Teach me to be still, and to know that You are God.

Give me a word from Your Scripture each day, and let me keep it and ponder it in my heart as Mary did.

Teach me to pray for others, by name and with love, until I see them as You see them.

And let my time alone with You make me more patient, more humble, and more ready to love those You have given me. Amen.