Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letter from Tegel Prison

In the spring of 1943, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Tegel military prison in Berlin. He had spent years resisting the Nazi regime, knowing full well the path he walked could end at the gallows. Yet in letter after letter smuggled from his cell, Bonhoeffer returned to a single, stubborn conviction: God's faithfulness does not depend on our circumstances.

To his closest friend Eberhard Bethge, he wrote that he began each morning by committing his soul to the Lord, lifting his life upward before he could be dragged downward by fear. He refused to let shame dictate his future, even as his captors sought to break him. He waited — not passively, but with the fierce patience of a man who believed that the Almighty's lovingkindness and truth had been at work long before the prison doors closed behind him.

Bonhoeffer did not survive the war. He was executed at Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945, just weeks before liberation. But his letters reveal a man who had discovered what the psalmist knew centuries earlier: "To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul." When we entrust our path to God — our confusion, our waiting, our unanswered questions — we are not abandoned. The One who teaches the humble His way was guiding Bonhoeffer through the darkest corridor, and He walks with us still.