The Deepest Root

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Finishing a good book is bittersweet.  No matter if it's fiction or non-fiction, there is a mixed emotion that accompanies the ending of a mind-stimulating read.  A few days ago, as I digested the last sentences of Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, this feeling of rich sadness was especially keen.  I felt that I was saying goodbye to a treasure.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, simply put, was a phenomenal man.  I know he would not wish me to idolize him.  If he were alive, he would stress that Christ was the power behind anything he accomplished.  Bonhoeffer was obsessed with his relationship with Christ and, more profoundly, with being obedient to Christ.  Yet, he was not a piously abstract and isolated Christian.  To the contrary, he was a very present and concerned believer who sought to be used for good and for the glory of God at a time when doing so was not easy in his country.

The story of Bonhoeffer's life reads like a thriller.  So many aspects of his story, so intricately entwined with Nazi Germany, are beyond belief.  Yet, it is the calm assurance and action of a man so hounded by stressful and dire circumstances that presents itself as the most astoundingly consistent thread in his life.  How can someone so harried by impossible situations ever remain calm and loving?  Wouldn't he become bitter, scared, crazed, angry or suicidal like so many others of that time?  No. He had a root system that ran too deep, a spiritual grounding of faith in Christ. 

It is this hallmark of his life that has impacted me most.  It is this compelling example of his that urges me to write of this book in hopes that you will read it too.  You would not be disappointed.  Let the following passage from a sermon of his give you a glimpse into the extraordinary life and legacy that is Dietrich Bonhoeffer (found on pg. 531 of the book):

"No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward to being released from bodily existence.
Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up - that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? ... Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God's Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.
How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?
Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death."  

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