Look Up and Live – November 07, 1999
Who has not seen a little child holding out its arms and looking up to a parent—looking up for comfort, for security, for love? There’s safety in a parent’s embrace. There’s a feeling of well-being, where the world doesn’t seem as hurtful or frightening.
It’s not long before that child is too big for laps, too big to be carried in a parent’s arms. But no matter how much we grow or how far we move away, there’s still that same need for comfort and assurance, and the need to look for it beyond ourselves. We too are children, looking up to an infinite and eternal Father for security and peace.
To forget the divine source of our support will leave us struggling and helpless. A Danish fable tells of a spider that slid down a single strand of web from the high rafters of a barn to a lower level. In that new space, she spun her web outward from that strong, single line. She caught flies, grew fat, and prospered. Self-sufficiency and conceit lulled her into forgetfulness of where her true support and strength lay. One day, wandering her realm, she noticed the thread still stretching into the unseen spaces above her. “What is that for?” she asked, and in a fit of impatience she snapped it off. All of her web collapsed and fell to the ground.1
No matter what we’ve accomplished—no matter how much we have grown—there will always be unanswered questions that need searching out. Looking heavenward to our eternal Father will bring us comfort and peace—and life.
Program #3664
1. See Harry Emerson Fosdick, Twelve Tests of Character (New York: Association Press, 1931), 63.