Eugene C. (L) Smith - Sermon Untitled (October 25, 1964)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | What one thing do you wish more than anything else? | 0:31 |
If I could wave a magic wand and give you one thing, | 0:39 | |
what would you ask for? | 0:46 | |
And I don't mean stand up here | 0:48 | |
and let other people hear you, | 0:50 | |
but, in your secret desire. | 0:52 | |
What one thing do you want more than anything else? | 1:00 | |
Popularity? | 1:08 | |
Some skill? | 1:13 | |
Conquering of some habits? | 1:20 | |
Money? | 1:25 | |
What would be the one best thing for you? | 1:31 | |
This is what St. Paul was writing about | 1:41 | |
to that little church in Philippi that he loved so much. | 1:43 | |
It is my prayer that the what, | 1:48 | |
that your love may grow more and more. | 1:56 | |
If we thinking of the one best thing for us, | 2:04 | |
think of love, | 2:11 | |
we probably would think of wanting to be loved. | 2:15 | |
There is some wisdom in this. | 2:23 | |
Being loved is necessary to the good life, | 2:26 | |
but Paul was wiser | 2:31 | |
and spoke of the ability to love. | 2:35 | |
The most important gift, | 2:41 | |
history has a strange way of underscoring | 2:48 | |
these sometimes surprising insights of scripture. | 2:51 | |
Just two illustrations, | 2:57 | |
the Ponderous Tome by | 3:00 | |
William Alanson White on psychotherapy, | 3:03 | |
scores of analyses of the situations | 3:08 | |
of people in mental breakdown | 3:12 | |
with each an examination of the possibilities of recovery | 3:16 | |
and in each prognosis, | 3:23 | |
a study of the degree to which, | 3:25 | |
resentment, | 3:28 | |
suspicion, | 3:31 | |
hostility, | 3:34 | |
have become habitual | 3:36 | |
to the degree that they are habitual, | 3:41 | |
the chance for recovery from mental breakdown is less. | 3:46 | |
Love is essential to mental health. | 3:53 | |
Another illustration on the opposite side, | 3:57 | |
a professor of psychiatry at Verdict, | 4:01 | |
whose hobby has been a lifetime study | 4:06 | |
of what he calls, five great systems of human wisdom. | 4:09 | |
They seem very different than one way. | 4:16 | |
The ancient Hindu system of Yogi, | 4:18 | |
the secret devotionals of the church order, | 4:22 | |
the symbolism of the | 4:30 | |
Roman Catholic mass dynamically interpreted, | 4:31 | |
a symbolism of some of the higher orders of Masonic ritual, | 4:37 | |
and the classical writings of contemporary psychoanalysis. | 4:44 | |
For this purpose eliminate the theological factor. | 4:50 | |
And here one has an amazing similarity | 4:55 | |
and description of the basic human problem. | 5:00 | |
The struggle of the human spirit for liberation | 5:06 | |
from artificial and unnecessary restriction. | 5:10 | |
And in each of these different as they may seem | 5:16 | |
the description of the movement toward maturity, | 5:22 | |
towards freedom is the same. | 5:27 | |
The movement away from suspicion, | 5:32 | |
to trust, | 5:35 | |
from doubt, | 5:38 | |
to faith, | 5:40 | |
from hostility, | 5:42 | |
to love. | 5:45 | |
How wise St. Paul was. | 5:49 | |
It is my prayer | 5:53 | |
that your love may grow. | 5:58 | |
Now how does love grow? | 6:03 | |
May grow more and more rich in knowledge. | 6:07 | |
Christian love is not just a sentimentalized goodwill. | 6:12 | |
Christian love is fed by facts. | 6:17 | |
No movement in history | 6:24 | |
has placed such a priority upon knowledge | 6:26 | |
as the Christian movement. | 6:30 | |
It was a school master of Europe, | 6:33 | |
it was a school master of North America | 6:38 | |
in our decisive year. | 6:40 | |
For several centuries, | 6:45 | |
the school master of Latin America. | 6:47 | |
Until the last decades the school master of Africa. | 6:51 | |
Asia has its ancient systems of education, | 6:57 | |
but they've been revolutionized by the impact | 6:59 | |
of the ideals of Christian education. | 7:02 | |
And the picture of the wise man | 7:08 | |
worshiping at the feet of the Christ child | 7:09 | |
there is profound truth. | 7:11 | |
The Christian movement has taken the commandment, | 7:16 | |
thou shall love the Lord thy God, | 7:19 | |
with all my mind | 7:21 | |
and clouded into history | 7:23 | |
with amazingly fruitful harvest. | 7:26 | |
And today the question is urgent, | 7:30 | |
one hates to use Russia so much as a scare, | 7:33 | |
but let's look at this relationship. | 7:39 | |
According to UNESCO figures, | 7:43 | |
Russia today with 9% on the world's population | 7:48 | |
is printing 20% of the world's books. | 7:52 | |
The United States with 6% on the world's population | 7:59 | |
enjoying 46% of the world's wealth | 8:04 | |
is producing 3% of the world's books. | 8:10 | |
In the last two years, | 8:18 | |
Russia has produced more books in English alone | 8:22 | |
than were produced in the United States. | 8:27 | |
But the issue is still more personal. | 8:32 | |
The Russian people whose per capita income is | 8:39 | |
that of the lowest per capita income | 8:49 | |
represented in this sanctuary. | 8:51 | |
Our buying on an average of prices many book per capita, | 8:55 | |
as people of the United States. | 9:00 | |
Now it may seem a strange question to ask, | 9:06 | |
but it becomes one of the overriding questions | 9:08 | |
in the life of this nation, | 9:10 | |
how much do you read? | 9:14 | |
The real question to ask students, | 9:19 | |
is how many books do you read that you don't have to read? | 9:21 | |
How long has it been since you've stretched your brain | 9:27 | |
on a tough book that nobody made you read? | 9:30 | |
When you're on vacation, | 9:37 | |
which do you prefer, a book or television? | 9:40 | |
When you're home and can do what you want, | 9:47 | |
do you keep a tough book open? | 9:48 | |
So if you have 1/2 an hour you can try no idea. | 9:50 | |
The increasing mental laziness | 9:58 | |
of so many people in our nation, | 10:06 | |
it's to me the most dangerous element | 10:11 | |
in our relationships with Russia as of this moment. | 10:13 | |
It is my prayer that your love may grow more and more | 10:18 | |
in knowledge. | 10:21 | |
And writes Paul, | 10:25 | |
in all manner of insight. | 10:27 | |
The word insight is one reason why I like so much | 10:31 | |
this translation of Dr. Moffitt. | 10:35 | |
From the point of view of a layman | 10:41 | |
in the field of psychology, | 10:42 | |
I wonder if we can't say, | 10:45 | |
and I'm sure that this is biblically sound, | 10:47 | |
that the word insight in this context really means, | 10:50 | |
the ability to apply knowledge out there | 10:55 | |
to one self in here | 10:59 | |
so that one is changed by those facts. | 11:04 | |
Knowledge takes brains, | 11:11 | |
insight takes brains plus courage, | 11:14 | |
the rareness and the most precious form | 11:20 | |
of courage in the world, | 11:23 | |
the ability to be honest with yourself. | 11:26 | |
I am sure this is what the scripture means, | 11:32 | |
be transformed by the renewing of your mind. | 11:36 | |
I was 16 years with about a missions | 11:44 | |
of the Methodist Church, | 11:45 | |
and that time we had to move on missionary three time. | 11:46 | |
A remarkable person, | 11:50 | |
one of the foundations in the United States | 11:52 | |
publishing a book recently | 11:55 | |
on a certain technical field in foreign aid | 11:56 | |
wrote to this missionary | 11:59 | |
that he was one of the ablest persons in his field | 12:00 | |
in all the world. | 12:03 | |
The first time I met him, his wife showed me an essay | 12:05 | |
he had written on the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. | 12:08 | |
One of the most beautiful essays | 12:14 | |
on the meaning of love I have ever read. | 12:18 | |
We've had to move him three times | 12:24 | |
because he is so irritable in some of his relationships, | 12:28 | |
that five years is about the longest he can be left | 12:33 | |
with the same group of people. | 12:37 | |
He has a great deal of knowledge about love, | 12:40 | |
but it has never become insight. | 12:43 | |
This may be the most decisive issue | 12:49 | |
about the education you've gotta do, | 12:51 | |
whether knowledge becomes insight. | 12:54 | |
It is my prayer wrote St. Paul, | 13:04 | |
that your love may grow more and more rich in knowledge | 13:05 | |
and an all manner of insight. | 13:08 | |
And now we begin to see | 13:11 | |
the kind of logic which St. Paul has. | 13:13 | |
It's not like the logic of John Calvin. | 13:17 | |
That logic is like having a bulldozer | 13:21 | |
and setting all the controls | 13:23 | |
and then just ploughing remorselessly | 13:24 | |
through whatever you meet. | 13:26 | |
The logic of St. Paul is more like a bird in flight, | 13:28 | |
like a swallow with the sunset. | 13:32 | |
If you look from the outside you see no reason | 13:35 | |
for all these dotting and movings, | 13:37 | |
but there is a strong internal logic. | 13:39 | |
We saw with St. Paul, | 13:42 | |
and now we see it. | 13:44 | |
What is the result of love fed by facts, | 13:47 | |
becoming insight? | 13:49 | |
First, | 13:51 | |
enabling you to have a sense our plot is vital, | 13:54 | |
don't we need it. | 14:03 | |
We live in an over stimulated century. | 14:07 | |
We are threatened by having too many good things to do. | 14:13 | |
We are surrounded by people, | 14:21 | |
so busy doing good things that they disintegrate. | 14:23 | |
The real issue in this world | 14:30 | |
is having the courage to say no to many good things | 14:31 | |
in order to do the vital things. | 14:36 | |
It is quite possible in the church | 14:43 | |
to be so busy doing good things for God that you go to hell. | 14:45 | |
That you have time for God himself, | 14:50 | |
never know what prayer really can mean, | 14:52 | |
can become a stranger to yourself. | 14:56 | |
It's possible to be so busy reading good books | 14:58 | |
that you never learn anything vital, | 15:02 | |
because you don't read the great book. | 15:07 | |
How do we know what is vital? | 15:12 | |
Oh, for this some people want rules, | 15:17 | |
this is child. | 15:21 | |
Rules won't work | 15:24 | |
they're out of date they farther codified, | 15:26 | |
the world moves on. | 15:29 | |
How do you know what is vital? | 15:32 | |
It is this process of growth, | 15:35 | |
love fed by facts becoming insight then you know. | 15:38 | |
The first result enabling you to have | 15:44 | |
a sense of what is vital and the second, | 15:48 | |
more surprising and rewarding still | 15:52 | |
that you may be transparent. | 15:58 | |
That's why there is a second reason | 16:04 | |
I liked Dr. Moffitt's translation so much. | 16:05 | |
Transparency I suppose is the best test | 16:08 | |
of the Christian life. | 16:13 | |
And transparency I suppose it's the one thing | 16:17 | |
which some of us fear most. | 16:19 | |
The proligerous amount of nervous energy, | 16:25 | |
which we pour into pretending, | 16:30 | |
hoping that people will not see what we really think, | 16:36 | |
will not know what we really feel, | 16:42 | |
cannot tell our actual desire. | 16:46 | |
I think it may be true | 16:56 | |
that most of our really bad dreams at night | 16:58 | |
result from this implication of our fear | 17:03 | |
that we should find out what is really within it. | 17:06 | |
Joshua L. Liebman, | 17:15 | |
wrote that book called Peace of Mind. | 17:17 | |
It stayed at the top of the best seller list | 17:20 | |
for long months. | 17:22 | |
But the most remarkable thing about that book | 17:26 | |
was not the way it's sold, | 17:28 | |
but that one could write such a book and forget to say | 17:31 | |
the most important thing about peace of mind. | 17:34 | |
For the secret of peace of mind is transparency. | 17:37 | |
One of the most delightful illustrations, | 17:46 | |
which is to give was that Socrates. | 17:48 | |
You remember how you (murmurs) hated him, | 17:54 | |
and wrote the play to lampoon him. | 17:58 | |
Now I see in your hometown, | 18:02 | |
whenever a play like this were to be produced, | 18:03 | |
everybody went. | 18:06 | |
And if one of the greatest writers of comedy | 18:09 | |
on our history were to write a play | 18:12 | |
for the sole purpose of making fun of you, | 18:13 | |
what you would do when the play was presented? | 18:19 | |
Well, I probably would have headed to high hills | 18:24 | |
and find me a dark cave and hide in the shadows, | 18:27 | |
but not Socrates. | 18:31 | |
He knew this was gonna be a good play | 18:34 | |
he wanted to see it, | 18:36 | |
and he got a good seat. | 18:38 | |
They run with laughter as he was lampooned, | 18:41 | |
what did he do? | 18:44 | |
He roared with laughter. | 18:46 | |
You remember that in those days they wore masks | 18:51 | |
and an artist I think unknown to Socrates | 18:55 | |
had made a mask which was superb replica | 19:00 | |
of Socrates' own face. | 19:03 | |
There was no possibility of mistake | 19:06 | |
as to who was being Lampooned, | 19:08 | |
and premiere to this unknown artist. | 19:12 | |
At the end remember, Socrates stood | 19:17 | |
so that the people could see | 19:23 | |
what a great job this artist had done in making a face | 19:24 | |
that looked just like Socrates, | 19:27 | |
this is transparency. | 19:32 | |
He was what he was he wasn't going to pretend. | 19:35 | |
As far as the extent of him, | 19:42 | |
he had himself off his own hand, | 19:44 | |
this is peace of mind. | 19:49 | |
You might try it someday | 19:56 | |
it might interest you. | 20:00 | |
And you know I'm sure | 20:05 | |
that this is much easier for you | 20:08 | |
than it was for Socrates, | 20:10 | |
for you know something vitally important, | 20:15 | |
which Socrates did not know. | 20:17 | |
So its dynamics involved him as much as you, | 20:20 | |
have you believe it or not | 20:27 | |
you have a right to know, | 20:29 | |
that since Christ died upon the cross, | 20:35 | |
your sins are not held against you. | 20:40 | |
Any sin which you confess | 20:45 | |
is forgiven, | 20:51 | |
God doesn't remember it against you. | 20:56 | |
You know you'll see far better than Socrates | 21:00 | |
that you have nothing to hide. | 21:03 | |
And because of this incredible action of God's love, | 21:08 | |
even the meanest and the dirtiest thing of out of your past, | 21:14 | |
if you will be honest about it to God | 21:20 | |
becomes to you strangely asset, | 21:25 | |
a source of wisdom that you can use for future, | 21:31 | |
that you may be transparent. | 21:39 | |
And then finally, two last results | 21:48 | |
that you may be of no harm to anyone | 21:56 | |
in view of the day of Christ. | 22:01 | |
Now that last phrase is a tough one. | 22:05 | |
In view of the day of Christ, | 22:10 | |
I don't remember any of my seminary Greek, | 22:11 | |
but I will never forget the lecture given one day | 22:13 | |
by Dr. Davies on the prepositions used in the Greek texts. | 22:16 | |
Whenever the gospel say that Jesus looked at a person, | 22:24 | |
always the meaning of the Greek text is that he looked into, | 22:31 | |
instead of at. | 22:38 | |
Then if you'll go back and see some of his encounters | 22:42 | |
you'll understand what happened. | 22:46 | |
We romanticize a great deal about him, | 22:49 | |
I do not know whether we would enjoy meeting him, | 22:52 | |
of whom the ancient prayer says, | 22:58 | |
unto whom all hearts are opened, | 23:00 | |
all desires known | 23:04 | |
and from whom no secrets are hid. | 23:08 | |
Would you like to have him look into you? | 23:13 | |
Could he look all the way down | 23:28 | |
and find no desire | 23:34 | |
to be of harm to anyone? | 23:38 | |
You see it is these hidden hostilities | 23:50 | |
which we protect so jealously | 23:53 | |
that the major reason we are so afraid of transparency, | 23:57 | |
these points | 24:04 | |
how much we need this prayer of Paul | 24:09 | |
that our love fed by truth, | 24:13 | |
applied to ourselves until we grow intact, | 24:18 | |
so that we may have a sense | 24:25 | |
of what is vital and be transparent, | 24:26 | |
free from this kind of clinging hostility | 24:28 | |
which is our poison. | 24:32 | |
And then last, | 24:37 | |
you're not covered without harvest of righteousness, | 24:40 | |
which Jesus Christ produces | 24:43 | |
to the glory and the praise of God. | 24:45 | |
I didn't know whether I'd have time, | 24:47 | |
but now I wanna say just two things. | 24:49 | |
The first is that, | 24:54 | |
I can't preach the rest of this sermon really, | 24:57 | |
but you can. | 25:01 | |
He said, I don't know you well enough, | 25:06 | |
but every one of you illustrates this lie. | 25:10 | |
This verse begins with love it ends with people. | 25:14 | |
The harvest of righteousness is what happens to people | 25:18 | |
because you live like this. | 25:22 | |
There are marvelous stories here | 25:30 | |
of the harvest of righteousness which you have shown | 25:34 | |
and what you have done for people | 25:40 | |
because you have lived more like this verse | 25:42 | |
than you yourself realize. | 25:45 | |
I wish I could illustrate from you | 25:47 | |
because many of you are far closer to this than you know. | 25:53 | |
But you see our problem is that | 25:57 | |
our harvest is spotting. | 26:00 | |
This is a promise of a full harvest. | 26:05 | |
Now I will take time to see, | 26:13 | |
to tell you the most moving | 26:15 | |
picture of this I have seen recently. | 26:19 | |
And if there is a newspaper reporter in here, | 26:21 | |
I must ask this not be printed. | 26:24 | |
A recent visit to East Berlin. | 26:28 | |
I came in from Poland into Czechoslovakia. | 26:32 | |
The people in Poland and Czechoslovakia | 26:37 | |
are obviously less tense than they were even five years ago, | 26:39 | |
you can see it in the way they walk the streets, | 26:44 | |
it's fun to walk those streets at night | 26:49 | |
in Poland and Czechoslovakia, | 26:51 | |
it's something you would never see in the States | 26:53 | |
where they share joy of just a family walking together | 26:55 | |
quietly on the streets is enough to feel the streets, | 26:59 | |
and these were either draft times of the night. | 27:04 | |
And there's a nice atmosphere as you watch their faces. | 27:08 | |
But then go into East Germany | 27:12 | |
And immediately you can tell when you crossed the line, | 27:14 | |
greater prosperity, | 27:17 | |
houses that are better painted, | 27:20 | |
the streets are better repaired | 27:22 | |
the clothes are better. | 27:23 | |
And so it's the greatest shock to get into East Berlin. | 27:25 | |
I got there by accident. | 27:30 | |
The first time was put on a train to go to Leipzig, | 27:31 | |
I don't yet know what happened | 27:35 | |
we ended in East Berlin. | 27:36 | |
My visa set to go only to Leipzig. | 27:38 | |
I was with two friends from Czechoslovakia. | 27:44 | |
We got off in an enormous railroad station, | 27:48 | |
before the war the kind of thing crowded | 27:53 | |
now strangely empty. | 27:55 | |
There's all this service were being held this morning | 27:57 | |
and there were no preacher, no choir and no congregation. | 27:59 | |
We walked through this emptiness up steps to a street | 28:04 | |
and there was no traffic, | 28:11 | |
the lights were poor. | 28:13 | |
And the bit of the sunlight that was left | 28:17 | |
one could see the buildings | 28:19 | |
and the great gaps between from the bombings | 28:22 | |
where no buildings had appeared, | 28:26 | |
and there was no traffic. | 28:29 | |
I said to my friends | 28:33 | |
that we must not call the Methodist | 28:34 | |
because I was violating a visa | 28:37 | |
and I knew that what we did would be known to the police. | 28:39 | |
Well, one of them might often telephoned | 28:43 | |
to hotel after hotel there was no space. | 28:46 | |
And then looked the name Methodist, | 28:50 | |
a district superintendent called. | 28:55 | |
I stood on the street knowing that in just East Berlin, | 29:01 | |
there are a million and a 1/2 people | 29:05 | |
haunted by this emptiness. | 29:09 | |
What kind of an atmosphere is it | 29:13 | |
that drives people off of the street? | 29:14 | |
This strange darkness. | 29:19 | |
Then like an explosion of sunlight | 29:22 | |
was the face of this boy, 11 years old, | 29:26 | |
I learned his name was Mateo, | 29:31 | |
open, square, secure this infectious grand, | 29:33 | |
he came up to me and said, "You're coming to my home." | 29:39 | |
And I found they'd called this method of test, | 29:44 | |
he'd send his boy. | 29:46 | |
So we picked up our luggage. | 29:49 | |
We walked seven or eight strangely empty and silent blocks. | 29:51 | |
We got to this apartment house. | 29:57 | |
Then in Harlem I would've felt at home | 30:01 | |
because the steps creaked in the walls, | 30:03 | |
if they'd had any pain was peeling, | 30:08 | |
it was not dirty it was incredibly decrypted. | 30:10 | |
And as in any communist country the minutes at one appears, | 30:14 | |
there is a face looking over the wall | 30:17 | |
the inevitable reporter. | 30:20 | |
We climbed the steps I said nothing. | 30:24 | |
I was obviously enough American without my accent. | 30:26 | |
Mateo led us into a door, | 30:32 | |
we entered the apartment the door was shut behind. | 30:35 | |
The cheerful one, | 30:41 | |
the father and mother were gone, | 30:47 | |
the daughter 16, a daughter 21. | 30:49 | |
The older daughter used to haunt me. | 30:52 | |
She had polio as a child. | 30:55 | |
When it came time for her to enter the university, | 30:57 | |
she was not allowed because she was active in the church. | 30:59 | |
And the best job that you to can get, | 31:04 | |
and she has a first-class mind | 31:07 | |
is to be a secretary to her father. | 31:09 | |
Now, her youngest sister has come along | 31:13 | |
and things are more relaxed on her. | 31:14 | |
Younger sister is in medical school at government expense. | 31:15 | |
I don't know what this does to you. | 31:19 | |
I think about Utah often. | 31:23 | |
They got supper for us. | 31:26 | |
I wanted to see Stalin LA, | 31:28 | |
and I wanted to see the wall at night from the east side, | 31:30 | |
I'd seen it often from the west. | 31:33 | |
We went, the Stalin LA, the old, | 31:36 | |
it's not the Karl Marx LA that's a showplace. | 31:39 | |
A street three quarters of a mile long, | 31:42 | |
lavish building, | 31:48 | |
very modern apartment houses, | 31:50 | |
beautifully equipped star windows. | 31:52 | |
All of the best housing in East Berlin they're jammed, | 31:56 | |
but no people. | 32:01 | |
Brilliantly left two blocks you might find 20 people, | 32:04 | |
like a stage of a theater that is set, | 32:09 | |
and the actors forgot to appear. | 32:12 | |
Then we went down to the east side of the wall. | 32:14 | |
We went down a street which I have known in its busy days. | 32:19 | |
And there isn't a city in Durham or Raleigh quite as busy. | 32:22 | |
We walked two blocks and didn't see a person. | 32:25 | |
A street car went by it had two conductors, | 32:28 | |
about 1/2 an hour later it came back | 32:32 | |
it had nobody in, not a passenger either time. | 32:35 | |
We got back to the apartment about 11, | 32:40 | |
the supper dishes are still on the table. | 32:44 | |
I was put in the master bedroom, | 32:47 | |
the cleanliness of this place, | 32:50 | |
the orderliness and the tightness of it. | 32:51 | |
The only place to iron in the apartment | 32:54 | |
was very neatly set up on the top of the dresser table | 32:57 | |
there was in the apartment. | 33:01 | |
We have to leave at six at five o'clock, | 33:05 | |
Mateo got up and got breakfast for us. | 33:08 | |
I wanted to go back, | 33:12 | |
I wanted to see if the place was as warm and radiant | 33:13 | |
as this incredible memory. | 33:16 | |
So during later meetings in West Berlin I made two trips. | 33:19 | |
The first time since I had to send a telegram, | 33:24 | |
I was followed by the police, three men. | 33:26 | |
Not uninteresting it's kind of fun. | 33:30 | |
You know, you see if they can play tricks on them, | 33:33 | |
and they see if they can play tricks on you. | 33:35 | |
And you'll go into a store and ask directions, | 33:39 | |
and as soon as you get out | 33:41 | |
one of them darts in to see what you asked. | 33:41 | |
So you go back in and ask for the directions again, | 33:43 | |
just to enjoy their embarrassment. | 33:45 | |
But then when you get to the apartment | 33:52 | |
and you start climbing the five flights of steps, | 33:54 | |
and three of them follow you | 33:57 | |
up to the all five flights of steps | 33:58 | |
and stand behind you when you knock at the door, | 34:02 | |
it is not amusing. | 34:04 | |
That night the parents were there. | 34:13 | |
The father asking questions so eagerly about Africa, | 34:16 | |
the hunger to know about the rest of the world. | 34:20 | |
I finally said to them, | 34:25 | |
"Do you have trouble with the police | 34:31 | |
because you have visitors from the west?" | 34:32 | |
Because I saw from the guest book | 34:34 | |
that they had many visitors from the west. | 34:35 | |
The mother is an attractive brunette | 34:38 | |
with remarkable strength. | 34:43 | |
Now I can understand a man saying this, | 34:45 | |
I can understand any one of us saying it alone | 34:47 | |
but when a mother says this | 34:49 | |
with the welfare of children involved, | 34:51 | |
she said, slowly and thoughtfully, | 34:54 | |
"Yes, we sometimes have trouble with the police, | 34:59 | |
but we have decided we will not stop. | 35:05 | |
We want our home to be a bridge | 35:10 | |
between the east and the west. | 35:17 | |
This is why we think God put us here." | 35:21 | |
And I thought of two things. | 35:32 | |
One verse, "The light shineth in the dark, | 35:36 | |
the darkness comprehended it not." | 35:40 | |
And I thought of this last phrase of our scripture, | 35:43 | |
the life of that family covered | 35:47 | |
with that harvest of righteous, | 35:49 | |
which Jesus Christ produces, | 35:52 | |
to the glory and the praise of God. | 35:56 | |
Amen. | 36:03 | |
We will hear this scripture as our prayer. | 36:13 | |
Grant oh God, our father for each here. | 36:20 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund