Spoken Word Messages - Page 59

We are constantly reminded of the barriers that divide us. The speeches we make from our soapboxes are not alike; the flags we wave may be mismatched. For the least excuse we may busy ourselves drawing boundaries, sketching lines that divide nation from nation and neighbor from neighbor. We mark class distinctions, make walls, and learn to stare at others whose skin or speech or manner is different than our own. Yes, all of us are the true inheritors of a world that boasts the Great Wall of China, the Iron Curtain, the "white lines" on buses, the Jewish ghettos once designed to separate the fit from the so-called "unfit." We hear about the .'beautiful people" and know even as we read that there is a gulf between them and the rest of us not-so-beautiful people.

Prayer has been a reoccurring theme on this program. We've commented about the continual need for prayer, about the strength and confidence it brings into our lives. We know that prayer is used not only in healing the sick, but in maintaining good health. When patients under stress begin to practice regular prayer, their blood pressure drops, digestion improves, tensions dissolve.

There is hardly a community or town from Plymouth Rock to the Western Seaboard which does not owe its existence to pioneers—to brave men and women who cleared the land, drained the swamps, who challenged discouragement and sickness in order to push the frontiers of civilization westward.

Sadness and melancholy are feelings we would generally avoid if we could, but of course we cannot. Joy and sorrow are mixed and stirred together to make up the substance of our lives. The Roman poet Ovid knew that when he wrote, "No pleasure is unalloyed: Some trouble ever intrudes upon our happiness."1

One of the great themes of literature has always been life's impermanence. Poets and playwrights have looked at the human condition and marveled that everything has its little moment and then passes away almost beyond memory. Even the poet who wrote, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,"1 was saying in his own way that the fresh flower of today will be withered tomorrow and dust eventually. And Shakespeare who was quite taken with impermanence noted, "Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay.  Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."2

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.