Acknowledgment:
This essay is based on a text by Hannah Reichel. “Emergency devotional for times like these” (November 2025), including some of the historical examples discussed below. The following reflects my interpretation.
“Walk then with caution, not as fools, but as wise men, to redeem the times, for the days are evil,” Paul wrote in Ephesians (KJV 5:15-16).
I took those words as moral advice. I now think of that as a strategy as well.
Sometimes you just can’t stop or defeat what comes your way. But you can buy time. Time for someone to run away, time for a message to arrive, time for a door to close, time for someone to miss a flight. It’s time to unravel the lies. It’s time for evil plans to slow down or fail. Even if damage seems certain, it is important to delay it. Changing direction is not the same as giving up.
In Berlin Tegel Prison, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned for his role in the anti-Nazi resistance movement, faced so much despair that he wondered where it would lead. But, Bonhoeffer wrote, “I have told myself from the beginning, that I do not do this favor to man or devil; if they desire it, they had better end it themselves.”
Bonhoeffer lived on. Over the next year and a half, he published some of the most probing thinking of the 20th century. These include a faith stripped of religious paraphernalia, a crucified God, “cheap grace,” and a life of discipleship as disciples who stand with God in suffering. He got that time back. If the Nazis had not executed him when defeat was imminent, he might have lived to complete his famous work ethics. What he gave us existed because despair did not have the final say.
Oskar Schindler, the German businessman known for the movies about him, worked within the system as it was. He joined the Nazi Party, turned his factory into an ammunition factory, and obeyed orders that if he refused would have meant the closure of the factory or worse. In doing so, he saved approximately 1,200 Jewish workers from deportation or death. By the end of the war, he had spent all his wealth on bribes and support. The Nazis held out a little longer, but he bought time. For those who survived, that difference meant everything.
When the Nazis took over the railway system, French railway workers did not openly refuse. Instead, they delayed trains, reversed luggage, and pretended equipment was broken. Each act seemed small, even mundane. But together they disrupted supply lines, slowed troop movements, and made it difficult for the Nazis to respond to D-Day. Many saw these actions as mistakes or bad luck, and that was the purpose. They were quietly buying time through small acts of resistance.
In Denmark, officials concealed Nazi demands in extensive bureaucratic procedures. Files disappeared, requests for clarification increased, and additional approval steps were introduced. Some adhered to “dienst nach forschrift,” which means strictly following legal procedures rather than promptly carrying out illegal orders. These actions did not change the Nazis’ objectives, but they created opportunities. Thanks to this space, more than 7,200 Jews (over 98% of Denmark’s Jewish population) were able to flee to Sweden in October 1943.
If you are alive, you can overcome fear. This statement is blunt, but it is true. Everyday actions often enable survival. Let’s call it “banality of resistance.”
Buying time rarely looks heroic. They seem to be causing delays, following procedures, not answering the door, or waiting for a warrant signed by a judge. Or build your network before you need it, so you’re ready when trouble strikes. It’s like putting a legal, social, or material barrier between a threat and putting people at risk.
It also means to prepare. Before the panic sets in, have your documents ready, supplies on hand, and a plan in place. Who do you call? Where do you go? Who will keep things running? How will we communicate if the system breaks down? I’m not asking these questions in jest. I ask them because time is something you can’t get back.
None of it feels dramatic. None of this looks like a victory.
But winning back time is not winning. It means refusing to let harm spread right away. It means slowing down things that need speed, disrupting things that need obedience, and staying alive long enough for something or someone else to arrive.
Hope in times like these is more than just optimism. We argue that time is still of the essence, that delays still make a difference, and that even the simplest acts of survival can open up the future a little longer.
So I return to another interpretation of Paul’s words. Redeem time, not because it promises a happy ending, but because it leaves the ending open.
Notes and additional reading
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Letters and documents from prisonDietrich Bonhoeffer
These letters, written while Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in Berlin-Tegel (many of them addressed to his close friend Eberhard Bethge), trace his struggle with despair, along with reflections on “nondenominational Christianity,” discipleship, and moral responsibility under severe constraints. -
schindler’s listThomas Keneally
It documents how Oskar Schindler used bureaucratic appointments, bribes, and calculated compliance to protect some 1,200 Jews from deportation, showing how survival often depended on delays, paperwork, and time bought at great personal cost. -
warriors of shadowRobert Gildea
It studies resistance as misdirection, delays, and procedural frictions rather than open rebellion, and shows that small, deniable acts added up to severely disrupt German logistics and buy time for Allied and underground efforts. -
Rescue of Danish JewsLeni Yahir
An account of how Danish officials, civil servants, and citizens used administrative delays, legal red tape, and quiet coordination to thwart Nazi expulsion orders and enable the rescue of more than 7,200 Jews in 1943.
stay by my side
unexpected help
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
