Devotion—The Depth of Life – Sunday, August 10, 1980
Devotion is certainly one of the noblest words in the English language. Lincoln used it to describe the ultimate dedication of those who fell at Gettysburg when he said. “. . . from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”1
William James described the devotion of a mother to her child as, “. . . perhaps the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords.”2
Devotion to a great ideal gives depth and direction to our lives. On the other hand, the person who lives a life devoted to himself begins to dread the dawning of each new day and sees in each sun’s setting another sliver of existence shaved away. Hours turn into enemies and age becomes a cruel cartoonist who twists us into caricatures of what we used to be. Such a person focuses on days instead of destiny. He desperately clings to youth and fights a losing battle to maintain the status quo refusing to admit that change is the most constant thing of all.
How different, how exciting, how fulfilling is the life of one filled with devotion to some noble cause, who sees in everyday events and mundane matters the unfolding of a master plan.
Of course, he feels some bittersweet nostalgia as he sees how quickly children grow and how relentlessly the world rolls on; how the years flit by with ever quickening speed. But the bittersweet is softened by the knowledge that life is not a “passing shadow” as Shakespeare had Macbeth so gloomily describe it. We are not fragile flowers to be cut down in our prime or bloom for a short season and then wither, go to seed and back to mother earth from which we sprang.
Life is the most enduring element in the universe. Life is an eternal thing and growth unto perfection is the essence of it. We cannot hold tomorrow back nor would we want to. Rather we will tuck our memories within our hearts to warm us against the cold and darkness we may encounter on our way and then with deep devotion travel on while giving thanks for every sunrise, every sunset that marks our progress up a never-ending road.
1 “The Gettysburg Address,” Abraham Lincoln, quoted in the New Columbia Encyclopedia, William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey Eds., Columbia University Press, New York, 1975, p. 1077.
2 The Principles of Psychology Vol. II, William James, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1899, p. 440.
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August 10, 1980
Broadcast Number 2,660