The Long View

Today Paul Kieffer and I traveled to Potsdam to visit the home of Frederick the Great, Sans Souci. This was the great German leader's answer to the Palace of Versailles. The buildings and palaces are in various states of restoration. Nonethless it is a beautiful estate set in the midst of the ciy.

The highlight of our tour was a visit to the New Palace, actually built as a guest palace by Frederick but far larger and more sumptuous than his own home on the grounds. In later years it became the home of the last two Hohenzollern rulers, Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II. In 1918 when the last Kaiser abdicated he left this home, taking with him 51 train cars of furnishings.

The most interesting room for me was the smaller room on the north end used by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a dining area. In that room in August 1914 he signed orders mobilizing German armies and setting off events that led to the Great War, World War I.

A few feet from this room is the largest most ornate room in the palace, the Marble Room. At one window you can stand and see through an avenue of trees for more than two miles in the distance, across the entire estate. It is a long view.

I wondered if perhaps the Kaiser might have arisen from his table after signing the orders and walked into this room and stood for moment to look out across his land. Might he not have thought about what he had just done? Could he have thought how far reaching was the decision he had just made? Certainly he did not see nor comprehend how many years into the future that one decision would last. The lives that would be changed and a world reshaped. 

Today, more than 92 yers later, the world still deals with the consequences of his decision. America is in Iraq trying to unravel the impact of decision made in the wake of World War I. Indeed, the entire Middle East is shaped today largely by a conference held at the end of the war. Leaders still try to sort through the consequences of the Kaiser's decision to plunge the world into an abyss. 

The world sorely needs leaders with a different view than those of the past. The world needs leadership with the long view into the world to come, the kingdom of God.