Lighting Tomorrow’s Distant Hills – July 22, 2001
Among the precious gifts that patriots and pioneers offer us is the opportunity to carry their dreams to future generations. Gratitude for the freedom and happiness we enjoy is best expressed by adding our own contributions to this glorious inheritance. Our grateful remembrance of the past should prompt us to try to create an ever brighter future.
Unfortunately, too many people believe that all the new worlds have been discovered, that all the important inventions exist, and that all the great things have already been done by someone else. To those who question whether there’s anything left to be done, Lincoln Steffens wrote: “The best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; [and] the divinest music has not yet been conceived. . . . In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has [yet] to be discovered.”1
When we commit ourselves to begin where the trails of yesterday’s pioneers ended, remarkable things occur. We become both beneficiaries of the past and architects of the future.
Our forefathers believed that the seeds of faith, fortitude, and sacrifice they planted in the rich soil of yesterday’s possibilities would grow into tomorrow’s opportunities.
We can all become pioneers whose lights shine on the summits of distant hills and illuminate the tops of previously unscaled mountains—heights where future generations will someday stand because of our courage and example.
Program #3753
1. Lincoln Steffens Speaking (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936), 147-48.