Twenty-Six Days in New York

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stepped off a ship in New York Harbor, leaving behind a Germany descending into madness. Friends had arranged everything — a teaching position at Union Theological Seminary, a safe apartment on the Upper West Side, a congregation of German refugees who needed a pastor. The offer was generous, reasonable, and wise.

It was also, Bonhoeffer realized, a temptation.

For twenty-six days he wrestled. He walked the streets of Manhattan. He sat in empty churches. He wrote in his diary with increasing agitation: "I have made a mistake in coming to America." The safety was real. The need back home was real. And the voice whispering "Stay — you can do more good alive" sounded almost holy.

But Bonhoeffer had learned something Jesus demonstrated in the Judean wilderness: the most dangerous temptations never come dressed as evil. They come dressed as bread when you are starving, as kingdoms when you are weary, as rescue when you are falling. They arrive wrapped in logic, compassion, and self-preservation.

On July 7, Bonhoeffer boarded a ship back to Germany. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."

Jesus answered every wilderness temptation not with cleverness but with clarity — He knew who He was and whom He served. Bonhoeffer, having studied that same Scripture, found the strength to do the same.