The Unfulfilled Future – Sunday, March 29, 1959
Perhaps it is time again to say some things that have been said before and to say them gratefully and soberly in this Easter setting—for always and ever we need assurance against what otherwise would be but fleeting futility assurance that men are immortal, that justice can be counted on, that truth and intelligence, people and personality continue eternally beyond time, and that loved ones who have left us are not forever lost.
Easter is the symbol and assurance that these things are so—and with the destructive forces we have found, perhaps we never more needed such assurance. Sometimes we hear of people who profess indifference to death. But no man who himself comes close to death or who sees someone he loves to leave this life can be indifferent to death—and the longer we live the more compelling becomes the question as to what lies beyond the mortal limits of this life.
And as we face these facts, we are grateful for the strengthening of our faith, and for the everlasting future. Thoughtful men always do some of their living and thinking for the future. The ever-present awareness of an unfulfilled future is born of man’s consciousness of his own eternal continuance.
Young and old alike look toward things to come because the soul of man will always continue, because the Creator has not planned or placed before us all this opportunity and effort of existence without the certainty of everlasting life. Sometimes the uncertainties loom large, but the realities exceed the uncertainties.
And those who have lost those they love and those who look to the end of this life may rely on the reality that, life is limitless, that truth and intelligence and personality are perpetuated, and that the path was pointed and the way was opened by God’s own beloved Son who was sent not to condemn but to redeem us from death—Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, who returned from death to life on that first Easter day.
History is largely the word of witnesses, and this day we would witness our acceptance of the word of those other witnesses, as to the divinity of Jesus the Christ and the reality of the resurrection, to which witness we would add the certainty, the assurance of our very souls. *
*Revised.
March 29, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,545