Bonhoeffer

I'm still working on a second part to yesterday's Kingdom Communication. I want to do the subject some reasonable semblance of justice, so I don't want to hurry through. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. I've just begun rereading this little book, and I think I'm going to spend some time next week summarizing it here at Mr. Standfast. But before I do, here's a quote from the introduction, written not by Pastor Bonhoeffer but by an unnamed English officer who was imprisoned with Bonhoeffer at Flossenburg, the Nazi prison camp.

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, and the thoughts and 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 good-bye 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.

By the way, the text on which he spoke, that last day of his life: "With His stripes are we healed."