Wednesday, October 2, 2019*

 _Psalm 119:147____________________

Early 

in the 

morning 

I cry out 

to you, 

for in

your 

word

 is my 

trust.

* George Allen Bell,

       1883-1958

Bishop of Chichester, &

ecumenist,  who develope-d “a close association with 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and  the Confessing Church in

Germany, he was the sign-er of the Barmen Declaration, the manifesto of the Confessing Church in Germany that stood in  

oppostion to Hitler’s regime. (Christianity often gets coopted in totalitarian regimes.)  It has been widely presumed that his outspoken condemnatio

of the indiscriminate bombing of German cities during the war cost him the See of Canterbury after the death of William Temple in 194. In 
the postwar era, hewas a staunch critic 
of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race." 

A great ecumenist, he was friends with  Giovanni Montini, who became Pope Paul VI.  

         God of peace, 

you sustained your Bishop George Bell with the courage to proclaim your truth and justice in the face of disapproval in his own nation: As he taught that we, along with our enemies, are all children of God, may we stand with Christ in his hour of grieving… Collect       

                I was a day early with him but what’s day a day in eternity?