Signs of the Times
Paul Scherer in The Chaplain Washington, District of Columbia
The very first words of the Bible are—"In the beginning God." We must start there too, in this our time, if anything great is to stand at the end of the coming years.
Some people can't put the past on the shelf where it belongs. They keep handling it....
There are times when going back is losing step with God. This is not to say that whatever is old is thereby wrong or obsolete. It is to say that being frightened, thinking your only possible hope, your only salvation, lies in beating a retreat, is lacking both in courage and in vision. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the past.
The Lord God said unto Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (Ex. 14: 15 ). That voice has not been stilled.
From an editorial in the Star,Muncie, Indiana
One of the world's great mathematicians .... [has solved] the mathematic equations of Albert Einstein's "Unified Field Theory." This feat has been called by a (German newspaper "the greatest scientific achievement in decades."....
[This mathematician], being more than just a man of intellect and great knowledge, does not seem to be too impressed with his achievement. That is because he is also a man of wisdom. When praised for his great work he said, "We shouldn't be too proud of it. .... The farther we go the more ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith." ...
The Christian philosophy which inspired our democratic society places God, not man, at the center of the universe. Instead of the arrogance of the intellect, the basis for our social structure is the humility of man before God.
Our American Declaration of Independence is the best statement of the religious foundation of our political institutions existing. It states as an avowed faith that, "All men .... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Thus our liberties, our human rights, and our individual human dignity come to us from God and not from our fellow men. No man-made government can justly usurp these rights. No human agency can rightly deprive us of these liberties.
Government, under a Christian or religious faith, exists to serve the people and to insure these "unalienable rights." Government is to be created only with the consent of the people. It can be destroyed whenever it governs without our consent, no matter how "wrong" the people may be judged to be by those who govern them....
Christian democracy is the religious assertion that the laws of God are higher than the laws of man. It is grounded in the faith in the "Natural Law" as against the unnatural laws which men devise.... If we are to make a New Year's resolution this year, a resolution to be kept for life, we should resolve to do whatever we can to spread the faith in God, in the higher law, whenever we can. If we preach humility before God instead of arrogance in man's achievements, we will be serving the cause of liberty and of final peace on earth.
"All we have left is faith." It is enough for those who have that faith.
Canon R. P. Price in an article in Christchurch Times Hampshire, England
Perhaps one of our chief difficulties nowadays is that the rush of life makes it so hard to find time to do the things which keep us in touch with God. Worship, prayer, the Bible, communion with God—these often seem unimportant amid the pressure of our modern life. Actually there is nothing more important.
At the beginning of the Christian era the people of God for the most part had forgotten where their true hope was to be found. But there was a little group of unimportant people living their quiet uneventful lives in the hill country of Judea —people like Mary of Nazareth and her kinsfolk who held to the traditions of their faith. And God used them to prepare His way.
The friends of God will usually be in a minority. But it is they who keep open a channel by which the saving energy of God passes into the life of the world.
And for those who profess and call themselves Christians there is no more important duty than that through their prayer and corporate worship they should keep themselves in the love of God and so become an instrument that the Lord can use.
Communion with God is the first thing in a Christian scale of values. And communion with our fellow men is the second. This is the real success in any home, any community, any church: this achievement of love and communion, this appreciation .... of the good in others, this sense of a common humanity.
This is the real thing in our social life. It is far more important than ambition or reputation, material prosperity or efficient organization. If the gaining of some cherished end means that love is crowded out, that end is not worth the price we pay for it.
It would be a good idea at the beginning of another year to do some quiet thinking about the values we live by, to ask ourselves whether in actual fact we are putting first things first.
