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The Church's Year: Lent

DYING TO TELL THE STORY
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Born on 4th February 1906 into a German Lutheran family, Bonhoeffer studied in Berlin, Rome and New York. When Hitler came to power Bonhoeffer saw that Nazism was deeply threatening to Christianity and formed the Confessing Church, which was shut down by the security police in 1937. For Bonhoeffer true discipleship demanded resistance to Hitler and he worked for the overthrow of the government. He was arrested in March 1943, and after a failed attempt on Hitler’s life, was hanged on 9th April 1945, only a few days before the end of the war.

One of his miscellaneous thoughts was:-

“Death is the supreme festival
on the road to freedom”

“Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,
For mercy for them sick, sinning or dead:
All men do so, Christian and unbelieving.

Men go to God when he is sore bestead,
Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead:
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.

God goeth to every man when sore bestead,
Feedeth body and spirit with his bread,
For Christians, heathens alike he hangeth dead:
And both alike forgiving.

D. Bonhoeffer