Action in Waiting
Christoph Blumhardt
Ours is a time of intense searching. Few of us are satisfied
with what the church and society have served up. The honest
among us will readily admit we lead fractured lives - with a
disembodied spirituality on one side, and a soulless daily existence
on the other. We are desperate for something more, for a faith
with the power to transform both ourselves and our world.
Enter Christoph Blumhardt. With unabashed clarity of focus,
Blumhardt’s words cut through the clutter of our post-modern
existence. He offers a concrete vision that inspires even the
most disillusioned. His enthusiasm rekindles our passion to
live a life of purpose.
Action in Waiting is not abstract theology - it’s too blunt,
too earthy, too real. These seventeen essays reflect the gripping
reality of the living Christ. They give us a fresh look at the
spiritual life as one of “active expectation” of God’s kingdom
breaking into this world. Blumhardt shows us that the object
of our hope is no longer relegated to some afterlife, but takes
effect today.
Blumhardt tells us how we can experience the future Christ promised
now, in such a way that death and human misery are overcome.
In his life, he experienced God’s saving actions every day.
Demons were cast out, sick were healed, and sinners turned from
evil. Action in Waiting shatters the walls of institutional
Christianity. Having been both a pastor and a politician himself,
Blumhardt was qualified to say, “State and church are no soil
for the fire of God.” All human institutions stand in the way
of God’s kingdom. “Nothing is more dangerous than a religion:
for that is what makes us heathens…God does not care a fig for
our religion.”
Praise for Action in Waiting
Karl Barth
Theologian and writer
Blumhardt can do something very few of us can do: represent
God’s cause in the world yet not wage war on the world, love
the world and yet be completely faithful to God.
Donald G. Bloesch
Author, Wellsprings of Renewal
The modern church needs to hear this social prophet. Here is
a summons to act in confidence and courage in the firm expectation
that God’s kingdom is at hand.
Dale W. Brown
Author, Biblical Pacifism
Blumhardt represents a wonderful union of eschatology and ethics
with his focus on the coming and breaking in of the kingdom
of righteousness, justice, love and peace.
Rodney Clapp
Author, A Peculiar People
Pulse-quickening…In
plain but vibrant language, Blumhardt reminds us that personal
peace is merely the wrapping paper of a greater, even more magnificent
gift: confidence in the coming of the kingdom.
William Dyrness
Author, Let the Earth Rejoice
Reading Chrisoph Blumhardt is like drinking from a pure, cold mountain stream.
It is just the tonic we frantic postmoderns need…I always knew
what an impact Blumhardt had made on Karl Barth, but after reading
him I know why.
Vernard Eller
Author, Christian Anarchy
Blumhardt believes
that God can make “all” things new. He challenges us to participate
in this newness and devote ourselves to it.
Stanley Hauerwas
Author, Resident Aliens
That Barth saw Blumhardt’s
significance is surely not accidental. Who else, besides Barth,
is so unrelenting in their attack on religion? Who else reminds
us that Christianity is about the worship and service of a strange
God indeed? Who else uses the language of faith so straightforwardly
and without apology? The fact that Plough has now made Blumhardt’s
work available is itself, as Barth would have put it, “a hastening
that waits.”
John Miller
Mennonite Quarterly Review
One feels these words
were shaped for the hour in which we are all living. We have
scholars and theologians, but we are almost totally lacking
in authentic witnesses to the coming of God’s kingdom.
Eugene H. Peterson
Author, Subversive Spirituality
On a landscape
increasingly (and depressingly) eroded by world-accommodating
strategies and programs, Blumhardt stands as a stark and commanding
figure on the horizon. His life and writings are adrenaline
for faltering and compromised followers of Jesus.
Clark Pinnock
Author, The Flame of Love
Blumhardt is filled
with hope about the power of God to transform the world in concrete
ways…His is a holy optimism grounded not in human prowess but
in the triumphant grace of God.