Powers of Good

With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.
The old year still torments our hears, unhastening;
the long days of our sorrow still endure;
Father, grant to the souls thou hast been chastening
that thou hast promised, the healing and the cure.
Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.
But should it be thy will once more to release us
to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
that which we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us,
and all our life be dedicate as thine.
Today, let candles shed their radiant greeting;
Lo, on our darkness are they not thy light
Leading us, haply, to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine even our darkest night.
When now the silence depends for our hearkening,
Grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
Their universal poem, in thy praise.
While all the powers of good aid and attend us,
Boldly we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each newborn day!

Dietrich wrote this poem for his mother and fiancée for Christmas, 1944. He was then in a Gestapo prison and his contacts with family and friends had been severely restricted.

Photo
Dietrich wrote this poem for his mother and fiancée for Christmas, 1944. He was then in a Gestapo prison and his contacts with family and friends had been severely restricted.

Dr. Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, in 1945, a post-war picture. On October 8,1945, Karl Bonhoeffer wrote to a colleague in Boston. His letter read in part,

I understand that you have heard that we have had a bad time and lost two sons (Dietrich, the theologian and Klaus, the head of Lufthansa) and two sons-in-law (Professors Schleicher and Dohnanyi) at the hands of the Gestapo. You can imagine that that has not been without its effects on us old folks. For years we had the tension caused by anxiety for those arrested and for those not yet arrested but in danger. But since we were all agreed on the need to act, and my sons were also fully aware of what they had to expect if the plot miscarried and had resolved if necessary to lay down their lives, we are sad but proud of their attitude, which has been consistent.