The Pastor Who Grieved for Germany

In the summer of 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in a New York City apartment with a ticket to safety and a heart splitting in two. Friends had arranged his escape from Nazi Germany — a teaching position, a quiet life far from the Gestapo's reach. He had every reason to stay in America.

He lasted twenty-six days.

"I have made a mistake in coming to America," he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr. "I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."

Bonhoeffer returned to a country careening toward its own destruction. He watched congregations embrace an ideology that desecrated everything holy. He saw pastors trade the gospel for patriotism. And he grieved — not from a safe distance, but from within the wound itself.

When Jeremiah cried, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" he was not asking from the sidelines. He stood in the rubble of his people's choices, refusing to look away. His grief was not weakness. It was the truest form of love — the kind that stays when staying costs everything.

Bonhoeffer understood what Jeremiah knew: the shepherd who truly loves the flock does not flee when they wander toward destruction. He weeps. And he stays.