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To the world's oppressed, America has been for more than two centuries a beacon of freedom in a sea of strife and bondage. To most of her own people, America has been a place of peace and prosperity. She has poured forth her abundance without measure and made some of her humblest richer than the royalty of other ages in other lands.
At a recent conference on families, speakers appealed for an America where the home is a place of love and stability . . . a place where experiences, dreams, joys and sorrows are shared…a place where families are built on love that can span the barrier of generations.
Of what work may a man be most proud? Should he be proud to be a patriot? Should he be proud to preside over a great business corporation, command vast armies, occupy a seat of power in government, receive the cheers of thousands, be the subject of biographies? Such works should make a man feel proud indeed of his accomplishments.
Of all man's questions regarding human existence, the problem of suffering seems to be one of the most perplexing. For some individuals, pain and suffering appears to be punishment from God for sins committed or laws broken. Others see it as an indication that there is no God: for surely, reason these people, an omnipotent God could have organized a universe without the presence of pain and sorrow. And for others, the question remains an unanswered riddle.
There are those who view life as a preparation for a kind of high and final court, in a literal sense, a supreme court. God is the judge who has carefully scrutinized our lives. Our deeds are laid before us as evidence of our good and wrongdoing. And punishment and reward is meted out accordingly with accompanying tears and cheers. It is all very grim and frightening and is the kind of perspective that makes us want to shrink before the Lord, avoiding Him and hoping that maybe He and His probing eyes will avoid us.
To endure to the end. . . that is the charge given us throughout the Scriptures. As we pause to honor those who have already endured to the end, the importance of this instruction rings clear.
Robert Ingersoll wrote, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences."1 One of the best known of nature's consequences is the law of the harvest. As we sow so shall we reap. For some reason we as people are more willing to accept this law as it applies to plants and animals than to human nature. We spend time trying to beat the system rather than succeed within it.
A toddler awoke in the middle of the night crying for his mother and screaming in pain with an earache. She rushed to him, scooped him up into her arms, and then noticed that as he sat upon her lap, he pressed his ear to her lips again and again, seriously believing she could somehow kiss it better. Kiss it better. How many hundreds of scratches and bruises and cuts are presented to mothers each day with the plea, “Kiss it better.” For to children, mothers seem to have some secret healing power, better than Band-Aids. It is the power of love.
Here in the United States, we have grown increasingly concerned about the health of our economic system. Indeed, the eroding effects of inflation seem to be eating away at the values of currencies in almost all nations. In this country, the value of the dollar has decreased rapidly during the past decade, while the incomes of many individuals have risen slowly.
We have heard the choir herald spring's return, and our thoughts turn once again to the divine origin of this invigorating season. Is there a God in the heavens? Surely the answer is self-evident when we observe the miracle of spring.
"Come follow me," He said. "The final test of a leader," wrote Walter Lippman, "is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on."1 By this measure Jesus of Nazareth is the supreme example of leadership. “Come follow me,” he said, and the farmers, the fishermen, the tax collectors left their worldly pursuits and became his disciples. These followers and those who followed them carried their convictions to the corners of their world and marked out the history of mankind from their time 'til ours.
"If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world," said Bruce Barton, “it will come through the expression of your own personality—that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.”1
Had we been present when Christ faced Pilate, we could have predicted with certainty the outcome. On the one hand stood Jesus. He was a Hebrew, a second class citizen. He commanded no armies; He had cultivated no friendships with prominent individuals; His only material possession at the time was a homespun cloak.
Early in the second decade of life, young people enter the stage of development popularly known as adolescence. The term, itself, seems clumsy. . . and it is, indeed, an awkward age. But it is such an important time. Unaccustomed physical changes affect the entire being— emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. The old childhood dependencies are cast aside.
During a winter month in one of this country's northern states, an eleven-year-old boy was playing with his friends when a wall of wet snow collapsed on him and buried him alive. Helplessly pinned with his arms behind him, he felt the snow stiffen and freeze entombing him and paralyzing his body. Soon he would die of suffocation.
Scholars have come to classify the different periods of mankind's history according to the most prominent human urges of the time. The era which produced the treasures of Greek literature and philosophy is now known as the Golden Age of Thought. That epoch during the 17th and 18th centuries when explorers and scientists uncovered new facts about our world is called the Age of Discovery. More recently, the Age of Technology has made the machine our servant.
Yes, awake thou wintry earth. Fling off thy sadness. . . renew thy bright array with fairest blooms of spring. Ah, the sights and sounds and smells of spring—the shimmer of dancing rain. . . the aroma of fresh turned soil. . . the promise of pink in an apricot bloom. . . the glint of morning sunlight on the window sill. No wonder we feel that increased vigor each morning.
On the world’s highest mountains there comes a point beyond which no tree can grow.
Centuries ago Augustine described the simple blessings of his world. He wrote, "How (pleasant) is the alternation of day and night. How abundant the supply of clothing furnished us by trees and animals. Who can enumerate all the blessings we enjoy?"1 Who indeed but you know.
The sound of this great Choir reminds us that music is one of the simple pleasures of life. It affects everyone. It moves and motivates. . . releases emotional tensions. . . keeps sensitivities alive. . . and helps exercise imaginations—not as an escape, but as a meaningful addition to life. For ages music has been used to heal the sick and comfort the distressed.
We have all seen the remarkable construction of the chambered seashell—how each year the developing marine animal adds another compartment to its home, making a larger, expanded dwelling to accommodate the annual growth. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ observation of this phenomenon led him to a conclusion about man's own need for continued growth and development. Speaking of the chambered nautilus, he wrote:
Is there really, somewhere, in a meadow far away, still a shepherdess who sings all day while she watches her flocks? If there is, we are separated from her by a thousand cares, our world caught up in crisis, strung with personal tensions and responsibilities that tie us up and bind our songs within our hearts. For too many of us the world is bleak and gray and cold, and we are breathless with hurry as we rush from one job to another. No time for meadows or easy songs.
A dynamic and optimistic executive was once asked if he ever got discouraged. His quick reply was a pearl of insight. He said, "I don't get discouraged, but I do get tired. The Lord surely knew what He was doing when He put a night between two days."
Oh divine Redeemer…turn me not away…grant me pardon and…remember not my sins… oh divine Redeemer. 1
Of all the sicknesses which afflict man, homesickness is at once the easiest to contract and the most difficult to cure. For we can be exposed to this infirmity with a simple change of scenery or even a temporary move from familiar surroundings. We all remember our first extended leave from home: whether we were at camp, the home of relatives, or away at school—the symptom was always the same; it is the inexplicable longing for the one place we call home.
The turn of a decade, perhaps even more than the turn of a year, is a time for reflection, a summing up of where we've been, where the last ten years have taken us. Many observers have called it an age of turbulence and disappointment, a time when optimism was dashed by the problems and challenges of a changing world. Some have called it a time of retreat from old values and old assumptions about the way things are or ought to be. And many look to this new decade with all the unease of a child who wakes up in a strange house in a dark room.
The words of an old song suggest a subject: "Let us oft speak kind words to each other, At home or wher-e'er we may be ... "1 Negatively, it suggests another subject: the opposite of kindness, which is cruelty. There is so much need of kindness, and yet so many kinds of cruelty - the physical kind and sometimes the almost crueler, subtler kind - the cruelty of sarcasm, the cruelty of indifference, the cruelty of neglect, the cruelty of ignoring people, of making them feel small, inadequate, foolish, or frustrated.
There is a proverb that says: “Believe no tales from an enemy’s tongue.” But perhaps we can believe our own examination of ourselves.
One of the most gracious and considerate men of our acquaintance, and one of the busiest also, puts at ease those who come to call by giving them his complete attention. Many people seem preoccupied when others are talking to them, and the split attention is obvious. It is difficult to talk to people who are thinking two ways at once. This tendency has many manifestations. There are those, for example, who only give half attention in their offices, who only give half attention in an interview, those who only give half attention when receiving instructions, those who try to read or study while looking at or listening to entertainment. This two-way attention is hardly effective for either purpose. Perhaps all of us have sat in church or in a classroom and received credit for being present when the thinking part of us really wasn't there.
“Build the more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll!”1 This is more than a line of finely phrased poetry. It suggests we must not be indifferent, or resigned, or smugly satisfied with ourselves.