Another journal entry from Bonhoeffer. Is that a good answer to yesterday?
26th June 1939—. . . Today I read by chance in II Timothy 4, “Do thy diligence to come before winter,” Paul’s petition to Timothy. Timothy is to share the suffering of the apostle and not to be ashamed. “Come before winter”—otherwise it might be too late. That has been in my mind all day. It is for us as it is for soldiers, who come home on leave from the front but who, in spite of all their expectations, long to be back at the front again. We cannot get away from it any more. Not because we are necessary, or because we are useful (to God?), but simply because that is where our life is, and because we leave our life behind, destroy it, if we cannot be in the midst of it again. It is nothing pious, more like some vital urge. But God acts not only by means of pious emotions, but also through vital ones. “Come before winter”—it is not a misuse of Scripture if I take that to be said to me. If God gives me grace to do it. –Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eric Metaxas