Note:
Bonhoeffer writes about “praying and working” and I can see in it Bill Haley’s refrain about “contemplation for kingdom action.” Two apparently opposite goods in tension, a creative tension, a necessary one. It’s like the way negative space in art defines where and what the positive space is. Or in the words of the secular song “you can’t have one without the other.”” Still, I might quibble with his pronouncement that “the bulk of the day belongs to work.” That seems to say that prayer is walled off over there or is in a box. Praying at all times, however, and contemplative living puts prayer at the core and wraps work and everything else around it. How big is the core in your life? How thick is the wrapping layer?

Quote:
“Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it is God’s will that man should work six days and rest and make holy day in His presence on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian by both prayer and work. Prayer is entitled to its time. But the bulk of the day belongs to work. And only where each receives its own specific due will it become clear that both belong inseparably together. Without the burden and labor of the day, prayer is not prayer, and without prayer work is not work. This only the Christian knows.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, pages 69-70. (original German pub in 1939)