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Centuries ago, King Solomon offered some parental advice to his people. It seems equally applicable today: "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it."1
If given our choice, I suppose we would choose a less fearsome world. We would like a place where weeds did not invade the lawn, nor pain invade life; where best-laid plans worked out, and ignorance did not ever rule over wisdom. We'd like a world where bodies did not age, cells did not deteriorate, nor muscles tire. We'd like a world where there was enough food to feed the hungry, money to pay the bills, and creature comforts for all.
The potential of each human being is usually greater than the product of our lives. It is generally accepted that most of us go through our lives only partially aware of the full range of our abilities. Why? Well, it may be that we lack the courage to take risks—the courage to change failure.
In springtime, the world is renewed. The crocuses put forth their shoots in search of the sun" the grasses that were gray beneath the snow turn green again: the snow itself which only yesterday was ice-packed in the mountains, becomes a life-giving river to valley farms being plowed in preparation for the season's planting.
If we would have our way, we would book ourselves a safe passage through this life.
The world shouts its demands at us in many ways. Voices over a thousand radio stations jangle at once. Undigested bits of information come creeping into corners of our house. Pressure keeps us running first one way, then another until finally we learn to respond only to the loudest and most insistent.
Shakespeare's Juliet, on her balcony pondered a question that gives cause for consideration yet today. "What's in a name?" she asked. "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet..."1 And, she noted that her beloved Romeo would still be the same person if he were named something else.
For many of us, life is a visit to a large picture gallery—a gallery where most of the paintings are facing the wall. Our senses are drowned by beauty, but little of it is ours. We walk among the aesthetic wonders of nature and art as blind people oblivious to the delicate harmony which surrounds us.
One of life's more youthful and exciting times is the annual renewal of the earth called spring. It's a time when one can have a simple but powerful communion with nature. It is one of the best remedies for spiritual ills. It stirs our spirits. We experience surges of energy and optimism as we witness longer periods of sunlight, warming temperatures, and the landscape putting on a new face of color. But the miracle of spring comes so quietly each year that many of us take it for granted and fail to comprehend its significance.
More than a hundred years ago the famous English man of letters, Samuel Johnson, said, “The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”1 Today it is still true that most of us respond well to a sincere word of praise.
In much of the Northern Hemisphere it is the long, gray season when life seems a little harder for want of sunshine. We battle flu bugs and stalled cars, try to buoy sagging spirits against long, cold nights, and through it all wonder why life has to have so many frustrations. We think that tomorrow or next month or even next year will bring us ease. Surely at some point the obstacles will fall, the little problems that bits at us like a swarm of angry insects will subside. That is the time for which we yearn.
Often our lives are so full of the bounty of this world that it is easy for us to say, "Life is good." We have our homes and our families, our employments, and opportunities. There is work for us to do and time in which to do it; there are rewards for our labors, and there is the love of those we love.
There are among us those whose names are household words, whose lives and actions are common knowledge to all: movie personalities, sports heroes, politicians and tycoons. These are the rich and famous.
As we look around, we see people who measure their lives as failures, as drab, as small, and yet are they? In that rhythm of light and darkness which is our life, we wonder what has significance—what is the moment that will stay with our souls, cherished in memory, leaving us never quite the same?
Faith is the key which unlocks the door of success for every human being. We all exercise faith at various times in our lives. It comes in all degrees and in all quantities. The scriptures tell us, "whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it."1
The wisdom and glory of the Lord is due in part to His ability to view events from an eternal perspective and judge their consequences by that much more accurate measure.
The wisdom and glory of the Lord is due in part to His ability to view events from an eternal perspective and judge their consequences by that much more accurate measure.
Ancient sailors heard its plaintive cry along the coast of Greece pulling them to uncharted shores; and Vikings heard the call above the whistling sound of ocean spray and kept their prows toward the unexplained; then Columbus listened to its whisper in the billowing canvas of his sails and pushed onward toward the unknown.
Where you there on that Christmas night? Many were —citizens of Bethlehem, who went about their work and didn't know a child was born. It's not that he wasn't expected. For thousands of years the people had word of His coming, waiting for a Savior; but now, at the moment, it was all so quiet. A mother, travelworn and weary, her husband with anxious eyes, and a baby who probably looked just like any other. No pomp, no press, no general announcement of His birth. He left His throne of glory to enter in a manger —and He did it quietly.
Christmas has accumulated a great many symbols in its passage through the centuries and the customs and countries of the world —the evergreen tree, the sleighbells, the piñata, Santa Claus, and a red-nosed reindeer to name a few.
Christmas is a time for remembering friends, a time for kindness and generosity, but it is often a difficult season because of the challenge of brotherly love in a world filled with hardship, violence, and mistrust.
Ours has been called the "Age of Information." Indeed, the most stunning advancements of our technologies have been applied to the communication of data and ideas. We can shuttle and save numbers and words faster, farther and with greater efficiency than at any other time in the history of the world. Our data banks require such precision that we extrude recording filaments through orifices burned by laser in the face of diamonds—all to the end that we can save more, in a smaller space, and access it with greater speed.
Henry David Thoreau once observed that our lives are often frittered away by detail. He advised us to simplify! Simplify!
Today, a history lesson of ten thousand years we study; of the species called man we learn; with laws, customs, arts, traditions we become acquainted clusters of peoples, of men and women like us, being born, giving birth, dying; nations of languages and governments traveling their course.
Listening has always been one of the most important aspects of mankind's communication. Even the Savior made reference to it. "He that hath ears to hear, let him listen."1
Poet Robert Browning once wrote, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for."
One of the more interesting and important aspects of the Ten Commandments is that they are as valid today as they were when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai. We need to be reminded from time to time of their application today, of the need to still keep the Lord's commandments and observe His teachings.
George Eliot once observed that we would never have loved the earth so much if we had not first been children here. It was then that each season came with the freshness and wonder of first love; each golden leaf that fell was a miracle. Often, even the things we love as adults are dear to us because they carry the nostalgia of some half-remembered past.
Often in life we're concerned with giving or getting the right answer. But we must also be cognizant of the right question.
The burden of modern civilization is not, as many have supposed, that wealth is ill-distributed, or that social welfare has been neglected. It is rather the very real possibility that civilization has become an obstacle to the simple faith of honest souls.