In the spirit of Thanksgiving — and because I have some time to kill before I eat — I thought I would share with you this excerpt from a letter the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Eberhard Bethge while Bonhoeffer was awaiting execution at the hands of the Nazis for his role in an attempted assassination of Adolph Hitler.

There is hardly anything that can make one happier than to feel that one counts for something with other people. What matters here is not numbers, but intensity. In the long run, human relationships are the most important thing in life; the modern 'efficient' man can do nothing to change this, nor can the demigods and lunatics who know nothing about human relationships. God uses us in his dealings with others. Everything else is very close to hubris. Of course, one can cultivate human relationships all too consciously in an attempt to mean something to other people [...] it may lead to an unrealistic cult of the human. I mean, in contrast to that, that people are more important than anything else in life. That certainly doesn't mean undervaluing the world of things and practical efficiency. But what is the finest book, or picture, or house, or estate, to me, compared to my wife, my parents, or my friend? One can, of course, speak like that only if one has found others in one's life. For many today, man is just a part of the world of things, because the experience of the human simply eludes them. We must be very glad that this experience has been amply bestowed on us in our lives...

Amen to that. (Tip of the hat to Ruth Holladay.)