I’m a day late, but it’s always a busy time of year. To go with the Winter Wargaming theme, I present a quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German minister and anti-Nazi dissident:

For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ. No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged.

Knowing the extent of my readership as I do, I think it unlikely, but I hope that Bonhoeffer’s words here are an encouragement to some of my brothers and sisters in dark places, as they might have been to Christians in Europe at Christmas in 1940.

Winter Wargaming will resume tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on when I get the update posted. As I will be visiting family and focusing on fiction writing, we’ll take a break from updates next weekend, and wrap up on the 9th or 10th.