So live, that when
thy summons comes to join
The innumerable
caravan, which moves
To that mysterious
realm, where each shall take
His chamber in
the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like
the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering
trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps
the drapery of his couch
About him, and
lies down to pleasant dreams.
Thanatopsis, William Cullen Bryant
The heavens are telling the glory of God,
and all creation stands witness to the wonder of His work. Seasons come and go,
years roll by, centuries pass, and ages fade into the dim distant past, while life and truth go on forever but this day and
hour in which we live is as surely a part of eternity as will be another day and hour a hundred or a thousand years hence. Richard L. Evans, Unto the Hills
LAbri @ Massanutten,September 13, 2001
A page from my journal...acg
On the morning of September 11 (engraving indelibly in history the emergency
number 911), I was preparing to speak to the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community about my books. I had neither turned on television that morning, nor had I listened to the radio. When I arrived at the VMRC, I was informed of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A sudden quiet control stole over me for I knew that I had already included in my opening
remarks this sentence from page 114 of my book:
If my journeys around the globe have taught me anything, they have shown me that life makes
sense only when Jesus is Lord. At the end of my talk, I would share with
them a paragraph from E. Stanley Jones autobiography, written near the end of his long life:
So will men listen? They will have to for if you wont listen to Christ,
you have to listen to chaos, within and without. If you wont listen to Christ,
you will probably have to listen to disordered nerves, to stomach ulcers, to frustrated relationships, to a growing sense
of emptiness and meaninglessness in life. On the other hand, if you do listen to Christ, you will listen to calm and quieted
nerves, to inner peace in body and soul, to harmonious relationships, to a growing sense of the meaningfulness of life, to
a sense of spiritual and physical well-being, to a sense of Life. More than ever,
these are times when our world needs to listen to Christ.
Once more the lyrics of that
old September song float through my conscience: the days grow short, when we
reach September. In His providence, the great Creator saw to it that there
were flowers unique for all the seasons. Now comes the season for mums, and last
evening I planted two more magnificent specimens of deep pink. Along with the
well-seasoned blossoms of those planted before my time here, they now begin to eclipse the rapidly fading gloriosa (black-eyed
susans) and Echinacea (cone flowers), and take their hour upon the stage. Meditating
on my garden and beholding the solid magnificence of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the East, these reassuring words of Deuteronomy
ring with new meaning: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of
hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the
Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from
the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.
These days I have been reading Lin Yutangs insightful autobiography From Pagan to Christian. By way of what he describes as a long detour, Yutang came to fully embrace the Christian faith near the
end of his life. I found these words especially meaningful in his final chapter: "Blow out the candles! The sun is up! said a great recluse philosopher when Emperor Yao mounted the throne. Such is the natural imagery when mankind sees an incomparable light.
The world of Jesus is the world of sunlight by comparison with that of all the sages and philosophers and schoolmen
of any country. Like the Jungfrau which stands above the glaciers in the world
of snow and seems to touch heaven itself, Jesus teachings have that immediacy and clarity and simplicity which puts to shame
all other efforts of mens minds to know God or to inquire after God. Then he
quotes the French scholar Ernest Renan: For thousands of years the world will
extol Thee. Banner of our contradictions, thou wilt be the sign around which
will be fought the fiercest battles. A thousand times more living, a thousand
times more loved since Thy deathThou wilt become to such a degree the corner-stone of humanity, that to tear Thy name from
the world would be to shake it to its foundations."
Letters mingle souls...John Donne