I believe the times we are living in are perhaps the darkest days this country has ever witnessed, even with wars, depressions, economic upheavals, and political divisions. It seems like there is no end to the negativity that has been washing over and through us since COVID began. So many people are bent on revenge, on ways of doing more evil than their neighbors. What most people have forgotten is “that God gives us the ability to return good for evil.” (Sabina Wurmbrand) The choices we make will determine what our futures will be, and God has given us free will. We may think that we plan our paths, but God controls our steps.
I am an avid reader, reading a wide variety of texts. In my search for the truths of man, I found the poem, “Powers of Good,” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his two and a half years of imprisonment by the Germans in WWII, he found good in his captors and even light in his prison cell by witnessing to the love of God to his fellow prisoners. Perhaps when you read his words, you, too, will see light amid the darkness of today. Through the power of prayer, Americans will once again love one another as Christ has loved us.
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 hearts, 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 deepens for our hearkening,
grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, 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 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison,Touchstone, New York, New York, 1953)
