Meditating on the Word

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER was a Lutheran pastor in the German Confessing Church during the Nazi years under Adolf Hitler. Books like The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and Letters and Papers from Prison reveal the depths of his immersion in Scripture and how it called him to work against tyranny and political injustice. In 1945, at the age of thirty-nine, Bonhoeffer was executed for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. DAVID McI. GRACIE is an Episcopal priest who has served as a college chaplain at Temple University and a staff officer at the American Friends Service committee. He is currently on the staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.

These meditations are for a time when the balance between social action and evangelical piety is in danger of being lost—which is to say, they are for always.