“Yet it is one of God’s ways to enclose truths within mysterious outer shells that seem different from what they contain. Who would ever guess the color and texture of a yolk from looking at the hard shell of an egg? Who can fathom what enables the root of a rose to draw the nourishment from common dirt so as to make such a thing of beauty?

“I can give you no answer, Sabina.

“It will always remain a mystery to me. Somehow, though, I recognize another principle at work in it, that throughout all aspects of his work, God reveals truth only to those who truly seek it. There is a screening process at work in all things, a process separating truth-seekers from self-seekers, just as the machines my men and I use separate the wheat from the chaff at harvesttime. Truth-seekers discover layer upon layer of truth as they progress through life; self-seekers become only increasingly blind to truth in their ever-increasing self-preoccupation.

“Therefore, God encloses the deepest truths in husks, so that truth-seekers who hungrily want to discover and know his ways, whatever the cost, will dig and search and pray and seek and ask—until light dawns in their hearts.

“Why that is the process, I do not know. But it is the process. We must look past the husks and shells, deep into the heart of all things. And it is another truth of God’s, that the greater the truth, the more obscure he makes it, so that the finding of it must be all the greater a quest. We must peel away the husks, break open the shells, dig deeper beyond the surface into the rich soils hidden from view—and there find the life of God in all things!”

“Is that the mystery of the garden you are always telling me about?”

The baron laughed. “The mystery? No, my child. It is but one of a thousand mysteries!”

“You are sounding more and more like the Scotsman, Papa.”

Herr von Dortmann laughed again. But unexpectedly in the midst of this delightful conversation with his daughter, a stray thought drifted across his mind like a cloud, and the baron found himself thinking about his brother Otto. The smile on his face faded, and he grew more thoughtful.

9 Inner Storms

9

Inner Storms

A hard, persistent rain pelted against the grimy panes of glass.

The warm summer storm had blown in quickly early in the morning from somewhere over the Baltic and had been pounding the north of Germany relentlessly all day. The farmers would no doubt be glad, but it had turned the streets and sidewalks of Berlin into concrete streambeds. Now with night falling, still it showed no sign of letting up.

Emil Korsch stood and stared out into the blackness. He was no philosopher, yet somehow rain always turned him pensive, as one of his temperament was capable of becoming.