Helmut Thielicke preached a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer (Our Heavenly Father) during the air raids on Stuttgart. Every page of these messages reveal Thielicke’s pastoral desire to comfort the horrified. Here’s a particularly moving passage:

Of course we praise him who holds the sun and the stars of the firmament in his hands. But for us he was at his greatest when the sun was darkened and as God he stooped so low that he took upon himself our human death in the death of the Crucified.