In the past few days, I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s powerful little work Life Together. My edition is a small paperback (122 pages). Yet, it is a powerful book. Before this week, I had never read the book in its entirety.
Bonhoeffer was born February 4, 1906 and died April 9, 1945. Bonhoeffer, in his relatively short life, produced several works that continue (even to today) to nurture, teach, and encourage believers. Much of his adult life was spent in Germany during a very difficult time.
Finally, on April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer along with his sister and her husband were arrested and put into prison in Tegel. During the first year of prison, guards were friendly to this minister. They preserved and took care of his papers and writings. Then after a year, Bonhoeffer was transferred from one Gestapo prison to another. During his final weeks, he came in contact with men and women from throughout Europe. One English officer who witnessed these events wrote:
Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive…. He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near…. On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, the thoughts and the resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us." That had only one meaning for all prisoners — the gallows. We said goodbye to him. He took me aside: This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life. The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.
Have you ever read Bonhoeffer’s "Letters and Papers From Prison" by any chance? That was my favorite Bonhoeffer work, by far, although I have not read the work you’re talking about here today. That’s such a powerful quote you give from the English officer. I greatly admire Bonhoeffer and the way he lived and died. Just before we moved into our apartment in Picayune while we were building our house, I’d started Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers again, but alas it got packed up more than a year and a half ago and has not yet appeared again for me to pick back up. I hope it will show up once again because I would really like to re-read it. I highly commend it. Dee
Dee,Yes I have. Letters and Papers from Prison was the first Bonhoeffer book I ever read. It moved me deeply. I am glad that you mentioned the book. That book was an important read for me.