The following article is an excerpt from The Eleventh Hour by Michael Phillips.
Baron von Dortmann found his daughter and their new young friend an hour later in the rose garden. An inner prompting had led him here, and the moment he saw the looks on their two faces, he knew why the urging of the Spirit had come to him.
They sat silent, obviously deep in thought.
The baron sensed he had walked into the midst of an important conversation. The very air tingled with a stillness he recognized immediately as the presence of God. Gliding across the ground softly, as if the garden itself were a chapel, which in truth it was, he took a seat nearby and prayerfully waited.
Several minutes passed.
It was Sabina who broke the holy hush.
“I was just telling Matthew,” she said softly, “what our faith in God means to us, Papa.”
“Ah,” he murmured with a smile, “I wish I had heard what you told him.”
“Why, Papa? You know well enough what I would say.”
“It is always uplifting to hear it from another’s lips. And every time we talk of the things of God, it seems some new truth is revealed.”
Both were quiet again. Time was plentiful for such things. Discussions of this nature could not be rushed.
It is not often in life that the intercourse between two or three individuals results in such harmony of spirit, that every word is received with the meaning it was intended to carry. Such requires an abandonment of personal motive and a humble hunger for truth rarely seen.
In most discussions, each person possesses an agenda of ideas and perspectives, which he seeks to interject into discourse at every potential opening the conversation affords. His object in dialog is to introduce as many of his own points of view as possible, then to maintain and bolster them, while countering his neighbor’s. Most, no doubt, originally adopt their views because of elements of truth once seen in them. But the rest of their life they proceed to wall up every door and window in their mind where more truth might enter.
Unusual as it is, therefore, on this particular afternoon, here were three individuals intent only on probing honestly and with no motive but the truth into the deep meanings of life. With such a point of beginning, the conversation did not take long to settle into the right channels.
“I’ve just never heard the kinds of things Sabina’s been telling me, Herr von Dortmann,” said Matthew at length.
“What kinds of things?” asked the baron.
“About how you make God a part of all you do and think. She mentioned some of it when we were talking in Berlin, but I guess it didn’t really sink in. But being here with your family, and talking to you and seeing how you live, I guess I’m beginning to see how seriously you take your religion. I’ve never known people quite like you before.”
A smile parted the baron’s lips at the word religion, but he made no comment.
“Well then,” he said, “if how we view God is new to you, how are you accustomed to thinking of him?”
“I suppose I haven’t thought of him much. I don’t know, just sort of out there, I guess, looking down on the world from…”
He hesitated.
“From heaven?” suggested the baron.
“Yeah, I guess,” answered Matthew.
“Wherever that is?” added the baron inquisitively.
Matthew nodded.
“But not having much actually to do with the daily goings-on of life?”
“Yes, I guess that’s it. That’s why it’s so different—and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, it’s almost peculiar to listen to Sabina talk as if… as if God is actually a member of your family, and is just walking around beside you all the time.”
“What do you think of a notion like that?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?” asked Matthew hesitantly.
“Of course. Nothing you can say will offend me.”
“Well, sir, it seems kind of spooky—maybe a little fearsome. I’m not sure I altogether like the sound of it.”
The baron laughed heartily.
“A very common response, Matthew, my boy,” he said, still chuckling. “Why don’t you like the sound of it?”
“I don’t know, I never thought of it before. I suppose because I’d be afraid, if it was true, that he’d be always watching to see if I did something wrong.”
“To punish you if you did?”
“Yeah—I suppose.”
“But if God stayed up in heaven and wasn’t around up close, and you did something wrong—then what? Would he be any more pleased?”
“No, I guess he wouldn’t.”
“But you wouldn’t be quite as afraid of stepping out of line because he’d be far away and probably wouldn’t bother you?”
“I’ve never reasoned to myself like that, but to hear you say it, I suppose that’s something like what I’ve thought.”
“Well, Matthew,” said the baron tenderly, “without knowing it, you’ve stumbled into the misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world has about God.”
– Excerpted from pages 145-147 of The Eleventh Hour by Michael Phillips
Continue Reading: The Eleventh Hour by Michael Phillips
Amid the placid rhythms of farm life, Baron von Dortmann looks over his world with both a father’s and a gardener’s eyes, teaching his daughter Sabina life lessons about God, creation, and love. Already, she has caught the eye of a young American, Matthew, and their neighbor’s son, Gustav. Suddenly, a storm sweeps over neighboring Poland—the thunder and lightning of the German blitzkrieg—which will change the Dortmanns’ lives forever.