Ralph W. Sockman - "Wisdom for the Wilderness" (February 20, 1966)
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| - | In us all that we possess, | 0:03 |
| grant us grace that we may honor thee with our substance | 0:06 | |
| and remembering the account | 0:10 | |
| which we must one day give, | 0:12 | |
| be faithful stewards of our county | 0:14 | |
| through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 0:17 | |
| Amen. | 0:20 | |
| (gentle music) | 0:22 | |
| It is always with a high sense of privilege, | 0:46 | |
| that I come to this majestic chapel | 0:51 | |
| in this great university | 0:56 | |
| where I have so many personal associations. | 0:59 | |
| In its search for dramatic themes, | 1:04 | |
| Hollywood turns with notable frequency | 1:08 | |
| to the Bible. | 1:12 | |
| The holy scripture is still the source | 1:16 | |
| of life's highest drama. | 1:20 | |
| And however, this scenario writers may distort the script, | 1:24 | |
| distort it. | 1:29 | |
| Their use of it is high tribute to the book of books. | 1:31 | |
| There is one event in scripture | 1:36 | |
| which has more than once been before the movie camera. | 1:39 | |
| That is the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt | 1:44 | |
| to | 1:49 | |
| Jordan. | 1:50 | |
| But there's one scene in that Exodus, | 1:52 | |
| which I am not sure has been picturized. | 1:55 | |
| It's the scene between Moses and Hubab. | 1:59 | |
| I have never been quite sure | 2:05 | |
| whether Hubab was the father-in-law | 2:08 | |
| or the brother-in-law of Moses. | 2:11 | |
| But last night I went | 2:14 | |
| to the highest source I know in the scriptural things, | 2:16 | |
| Professor Stein Spring, | 2:19 | |
| and he assures me that Hubab was Moses's father-in-law | 2:22 | |
| though sometimes called Jethro. | 2:27 | |
| Let me read the script. | 2:30 | |
| Moses said to Hubab, | 2:34 | |
| "come with us, | 2:37 | |
| "we are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, | 2:40 | |
| "'I will give it to you.' | 2:43 | |
| "Come with us and we will do you good, | 2:45 | |
| "for the Lord has promised good to Israel." | 2:48 | |
| Hubab said, "I will not go, | 2:53 | |
| "I will depart to my own land to my kindred." | 2:57 | |
| And then Moses said, | 3:01 | |
| "do not leave us I pray you, | 3:03 | |
| "for you know we are to encamp in the wilderness | 3:06 | |
| "and you will serve as eyes for us." | 3:10 | |
| And Hubab went. | 3:14 | |
| The call to serve was a stronger appeal | 3:18 | |
| than the promise of personal advantage. | 3:23 | |
| The setting of that scene | 3:27 | |
| seems lost in the dim past, | 3:29 | |
| the wilderness which Moses confronted | 3:32 | |
| was that stretch of wasteland between Egypt and Jordan. | 3:35 | |
| It took him 40 years, | 3:39 | |
| a modern jet would probably cross it | 3:42 | |
| in less than 40 minutes. | 3:44 | |
| And yet with all our advance in methods and means | 3:47 | |
| we confront a wilderness | 3:52 | |
| far more baffling than that which Moses faced. | 3:54 | |
| Ours is a wilderness caused not by nature, | 3:59 | |
| but by human nature. | 4:04 | |
| The old landmarks are lost | 4:07 | |
| in the jungle ethics of a new day | 4:09 | |
| and the very speed of our change | 4:13 | |
| causes crisis almost daily. | 4:16 | |
| Three or four years ago when the Cuban Crisis | 4:22 | |
| was at its peak, | 4:25 | |
| one of our New York newspapers carried a questionnaire. | 4:28 | |
| One of the questions was this. | 4:32 | |
| If there should be an all out nuclear | 4:34 | |
| aerial attack on America, | 4:39 | |
| how many people would be killed? | 4:42 | |
| The answer given was this, | 4:45 | |
| it's only a guess, | 4:46 | |
| but we would put the figure at from 10 to 20 million. | 4:48 | |
| I repeated that citation at Cornell University | 4:54 | |
| two years ago commencement. | 4:58 | |
| And after the address, one of those present, | 5:01 | |
| Mr. Arthur Dean. | 5:05 | |
| The distinguished lawyer, | 5:07 | |
| who was chairman of our Disarmament Commission at Geneva | 5:08 | |
| for so long, said to me this. | 5:13 | |
| "If you wish to think in the very latest weapons | 5:16 | |
| "you might put that figure | 5:19 | |
| "at 100 millions." | 5:21 | |
| Hardly seems possible as we sit here | 5:25 | |
| in this beautiful chapel, | 5:27 | |
| but there's a Damocles sword hanging over our heads, | 5:30 | |
| which could in a single night | 5:33 | |
| destroy a hundred million Americans. | 5:35 | |
| When we stopped to think about it, | 5:40 | |
| we just get almost paralyzed with despair. | 5:41 | |
| But we're swept along by the surge of daily living | 5:45 | |
| and we crowd the peril into the periphery of our mind. | 5:49 | |
| Our attitude is somewhat like that, | 5:55 | |
| which I observed | 5:58 | |
| some few years ago, | 6:01 | |
| driving in a taxi cab up Park Avenue. | 6:02 | |
| We were passing the residents, which in New York, | 6:05 | |
| which the Russians had reserved | 6:08 | |
| for their delegates to the United Nations. | 6:11 | |
| And apparently some VIP was present that day. | 6:15 | |
| And an angry crowd was surging around the building, | 6:19 | |
| a cordon of police was trying to hold them back, | 6:23 | |
| and my driver turned around to me with an alarmed face | 6:28 | |
| and he said, "this thing frightens me, | 6:32 | |
| "I don't think I'll live to be 60." | 6:36 | |
| At the rate he was driving | 6:40 | |
| I wasn't sure how long I live either, | 6:41 | |
| but I knew I'd make 60, all right. | 6:43 | |
| And then in a moment or two | 6:46 | |
| we swept along into the traffic of New York | 6:48 | |
| and forgot the Russian peril. | 6:52 | |
| Oh, not quite forgot it, | 6:55 | |
| we're thinking about it right now, this nuclear danger. | 6:58 | |
| Every thoughtful American | 7:03 | |
| is concerned about | 7:06 | |
| the danger of the present war in Vietnam, | 7:09 | |
| escalating into a nuclear war. | 7:13 | |
| And yet with all these new dimensions of dying | 7:17 | |
| there are also new dimensions of living. | 7:21 | |
| When we unveiled the bust of Thomas Edison, | 7:25 | |
| about three years ago | 7:27 | |
| at the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, | 7:28 | |
| General David Sarnoff gave the main address. | 7:31 | |
| And in it, he said this, | 7:35 | |
| he said, "by the end of the century | 7:37 | |
| "the average industrial factory worker will be able | 7:39 | |
| "to produce as much in a seven hour day | 7:43 | |
| "as he does now in a 35 or 40 hour week." | 7:46 | |
| When we think of the dizzying possibilities of automation, | 7:51 | |
| we think of the | 7:56 | |
| dislocation of laborers, | 8:00 | |
| the disuse of skills, | 8:02 | |
| the technological revolutions, | 8:05 | |
| truly we are in a wilderness. | 8:09 | |
| When I recall the difficulty I had in my day, | 8:12 | |
| a simpler time of choosing a life vocation. | 8:16 | |
| I have the deepest sympathy with the students today, | 8:19 | |
| as they think how they will channel their course | 8:22 | |
| in this wilderness of our time. | 8:27 | |
| The young charted changes, | 8:30 | |
| the nuclear perils, the enlarged opportunities, | 8:33 | |
| the new specialties, | 8:40 | |
| truly we do face | 8:42 | |
| a wilderness. | 8:46 | |
| But amid the confusion, | 8:48 | |
| there is one decision we can all meet. | 8:50 | |
| We can make the decision which Hubab made | 8:55 | |
| that day in the wilderness. | 8:59 | |
| We can decide, | 9:01 | |
| that we may not know where we shall be | 9:03 | |
| 10 years from now. | 9:07 | |
| We can and should decide what kind of a person | 9:10 | |
| we want to be 10 years or 20 years | 9:15 | |
| or 40 years from now. | 9:18 | |
| Nuclear age, the nuclear age has not changed | 9:21 | |
| the goals of character building. | 9:25 | |
| And basic to the shaping of character | 9:29 | |
| is that decision, which Hubab made. | 9:33 | |
| whether we will choose to go out | 9:37 | |
| with our eye on personal advantage | 9:39 | |
| or whether we shall go out to serve. | 9:42 | |
| Hubab | 9:47 | |
| chose to serve. | 9:49 | |
| I did that. | 9:52 | |
| He was in line with our Lord Jesus Christ | 9:53 | |
| in the scripture lesson, read by Mr. Harris. | 9:57 | |
| You noted how Jesus replied to his disciples | 10:00 | |
| when they came asking who would be greatest | 10:04 | |
| in his new kingdom. | 10:06 | |
| Jesus said out in the world, | 10:08 | |
| "we rate greatness by those who have dominion over others, | 10:11 | |
| "but not so with you. | 10:16 | |
| "With you, he that is greatest | 10:18 | |
| "is he that serves. | 10:22 | |
| "Just as the son of man came not to be served, | 10:24 | |
| "but to serve." | 10:29 | |
| Oh, it is true, isn't it? | 10:32 | |
| In our state of seeking society, | 10:34 | |
| we often do measure people by the number who serves them. | 10:37 | |
| We rate generals by the number of soldiers they command. | 10:42 | |
| We rate business executives | 10:46 | |
| by the number of people they direct. | 10:48 | |
| We rate sometimes social standing | 10:51 | |
| by the number of servants employed. | 10:54 | |
| But not so in Christ rating, | 10:58 | |
| greatness is in service. | 11:02 | |
| And you know that Idea is getting ingrained | 11:05 | |
| into our civilization. | 11:10 | |
| The idea that it's greater to serve | 11:14 | |
| than to be served. | 11:17 | |
| After we're gone, | 11:20 | |
| we rate people by the service | 11:21 | |
| they've rendered. | 11:26 | |
| As a definition of fame, | 11:28 | |
| which I have frequently used at the Hall of Fame. | 11:31 | |
| It was given by Henry van Dyke, | 11:33 | |
| when he was unveiling the bust of an electee some years ago, | 11:36 | |
| he said, "fame is durable, | 11:40 | |
| "good, renown, | 11:43 | |
| "earned by service, | 11:45 | |
| "approved by the wise | 11:48 | |
| "and applauded by the common voice." | 11:51 | |
| At first, the servant may not always be recognized, | 11:54 | |
| but give time to people | 11:58 | |
| and the common voice applauds the man who serves. | 12:01 | |
| I participated yesterday in the funeral service | 12:06 | |
| of a leader of industry | 12:09 | |
| who has been given credit for building | 12:12 | |
| the largest manufacturing enterprise in the world, | 12:14 | |
| the General Motors Corporation. | 12:18 | |
| Papers estimated his fortunate, | 12:22 | |
| some said $250 million. | 12:25 | |
| But his brother told me | 12:29 | |
| that Mr. Alford Sloan, | 12:32 | |
| to him, the mere possession of millions | 12:34 | |
| didn't mean much. | 12:39 | |
| He enjoyed the game of making it | 12:40 | |
| and he worked hard at the job. | 12:43 | |
| And then he enjoyed the game of giving it, | 12:46 | |
| and he worked equally hard at that job. | 12:49 | |
| And the editorial of the New York Times actually said, | 12:52 | |
| Mr. Sloan will be remembered, | 12:55 | |
| not of course in part for the great enterprise he built, | 12:58 | |
| but also, and even more | 13:02 | |
| for his philanthropy. | 13:05 | |
| And I need not stress that here on this campus | 13:09 | |
| where the very name, | 13:12 | |
| connotes great enterprise | 13:14 | |
| and great service. | 13:17 | |
| As a young man who has become almost a legend | 13:20 | |
| in modern times. | 13:24 | |
| Dr. Tom Dooley, | 13:25 | |
| he served for the time as a officer | 13:28 | |
| in the Navy, medical officer, | 13:30 | |
| where he ministered to some of the refugees | 13:33 | |
| from the communist held North Vietnam. | 13:36 | |
| Then he established and staffed a hospital in Lowe's. | 13:40 | |
| He died at age 34 | 13:45 | |
| in 1961 of cancer. | 13:47 | |
| When he was at his near his death, | 13:49 | |
| he was preparing a book. | 13:51 | |
| And in that book was a letter to a young doctor. | 13:53 | |
| May I read these lines from it, Tom Dooley. | 13:57 | |
| As a doctor, you must be a part of your time. | 14:00 | |
| Isolation from and indifference to world affairs | 14:05 | |
| are completely pasted over. | 14:09 | |
| You can no longer be just a doctor | 14:12 | |
| or just a researcher | 14:14 | |
| or just a teacher. | 14:16 | |
| All men have claims on man. | 14:18 | |
| Yes, | 14:22 | |
| no man is an island. | 14:23 | |
| And the question that each must face is this, will I serve? | 14:26 | |
| Or will I be content | 14:32 | |
| just to be served? | 14:34 | |
| Now go back to the Hubab. | 14:38 | |
| Hubab not only was willing to serve, | 14:40 | |
| but he was willing to serve as a guide. | 14:42 | |
| There must be a joy | 14:47 | |
| and a zest in being a guide. | 14:49 | |
| Did you ever watch a company of sightseeing tourists | 14:52 | |
| as they were going through the louvre of the British Museum | 14:56 | |
| or someplace of interest. | 14:59 | |
| After a little while the sightseers get tired, | 15:01 | |
| they lean on one leg | 15:05 | |
| and on the other. | 15:06 | |
| And then when they go into a room, | 15:07 | |
| they look for the place to sit down | 15:08 | |
| before they look for the masterpieces on the wall. | 15:10 | |
| But the guide, he is just indifferent to fatigue. | 15:13 | |
| He's glad, he's at a zest. | 15:18 | |
| Oh, you sometimes see it in the classroom. | 15:21 | |
| Student may look a bit listless, | 15:24 | |
| but the teacher, if he's a good teacher, he gets a joy. | 15:25 | |
| He's giving information, he's guiding. | 15:29 | |
| And I think you have to admit that sometimes in church, | 15:32 | |
| the preacher seems to enjoy what he's doing | 15:36 | |
| more than the people do what they're doing. | 15:38 | |
| There's a joy and a zest in being a guide. | 15:42 | |
| And | 15:46 | |
| guidance is one of the most imperatively | 15:48 | |
| and increasingly important services of our time. | 15:50 | |
| The faster the speed of change, | 15:56 | |
| the more we need to see the guide lights ahead | 16:00 | |
| for our daily tasks for the long looks. | 16:05 | |
| How we read avidly the scientist | 16:09 | |
| who can foretell technological change, | 16:13 | |
| how we consult the columnists who could interpret news. | 16:16 | |
| And I like to think | 16:21 | |
| what if a minister lives up to his role, | 16:22 | |
| he too is a guide. | 16:26 | |
| Dr. John Henry Jowett, the great Presbyterian minister | 16:29 | |
| told of an experience he had | 16:32 | |
| when he was a student at Edinburgh. | 16:34 | |
| It was his custom to go out to small Scottish villages | 16:37 | |
| to preach over the weekend. | 16:40 | |
| And this particular Sunday, | 16:42 | |
| he had gone to a little village. | 16:44 | |
| It was a rainy Sunday. | 16:46 | |
| When it came time for him to return to Edinburgh, | 16:47 | |
| his host gave him a lantern. | 16:50 | |
| And he said, the lantern helped him | 16:53 | |
| to pick his way among the puddles along the slippery road. | 16:55 | |
| But when he turned the corner, | 16:59 | |
| the station light came into view | 17:02 | |
| and that gave him direction. | 17:04 | |
| We need both lights. | 17:08 | |
| We need that lantern of light, | 17:11 | |
| which the summer said, gives a lamp unto my feet. | 17:14 | |
| We need the long lights that give a light unto our path. | 17:18 | |
| Oh, in this day of such confusion | 17:24 | |
| about baffling world problems. | 17:27 | |
| It's so important to have | 17:31 | |
| that lantern for the daily guidance. | 17:32 | |
| Thomas Carlyle was so dead right when he said, | 17:37 | |
| "if you do the duty next to you | 17:41 | |
| "and then the duty next to that, | 17:43 | |
| "it's amazing how the light begins | 17:46 | |
| "to break on the ultimate duty." | 17:48 | |
| One of the reasons we're so baffled by our wildernesses, | 17:51 | |
| we're trying to see those great solutions. | 17:54 | |
| Most of us though have sense enough to do the next duty. | 17:59 | |
| It's a simple principle that I learned, | 18:03 | |
| well, I learned it in high school. | 18:07 | |
| I have a rather bad habit, | 18:09 | |
| when I got a new book, | 18:10 | |
| I'm looking at the back pages first, | 18:12 | |
| I don't know why I do it, I just open the back. | 18:14 | |
| That wasn't so bad that it came time in high school | 18:17 | |
| to take up the study of geometry. | 18:20 | |
| I don't know whether new math studies geometry anymore, | 18:23 | |
| but I did. | 18:27 | |
| And I opened my textbook on geometry from the rear | 18:29 | |
| and I saw all those complicated figures. | 18:32 | |
| And I said, if that's geometry, that isn't for me, | 18:35 | |
| I would have quit at that moment. | 18:39 | |
| But when my teacher got hold of me, | 18:41 | |
| he began with the first in the book, with the axioms. | 18:43 | |
| Things equal to the same thing | 18:47 | |
| are equal to each other. | 18:49 | |
| That's the only one that I can ever remember. | 18:51 | |
| So I have to stop there, | 18:54 | |
| but we began with the axioms | 18:55 | |
| and we gradually worked our way up | 18:58 | |
| to those parallelepipedons. | 19:00 | |
| It's a homely philosophy there to guide in that next duty, | 19:03 | |
| to walk through the routine | 19:09 | |
| of daily toil, | 19:12 | |
| where tomorrow and tomorrow creep on in their petty pace | 19:14 | |
| and to give a light of purpose, | 19:19 | |
| but redeems daily toil. | 19:22 | |
| To walk with people | 19:26 | |
| whose minds are jostled off balance | 19:28 | |
| by this rigorous life of ours | 19:31 | |
| and give them counsel, | 19:34 | |
| which will adjust their mental health. | 19:36 | |
| Just yesterday a very well-known doctor in New York | 19:40 | |
| was telling me that he was so interested | 19:43 | |
| in the relation between medicine and religion. | 19:46 | |
| Because he said, we in the hospitals can treat the buddies, | 19:48 | |
| but we need men to help their spirits | 19:52 | |
| to walk through hospital corridors | 19:55 | |
| minister to the spirits of people. | 19:58 | |
| To walk through the muddied morals of our day, | 20:01 | |
| where people slip so easily into self-indulgence | 20:05 | |
| and remind the people of the fallacy, | 20:10 | |
| which one of Scott Fitzgerald's young men discovered | 20:13 | |
| when he said, we took what we wanted | 20:17 | |
| until we no longer wanted what we took, | 20:20 | |
| the fallacy of self-indulgence. | 20:24 | |
| To walk through the valley of the shadow of death | 20:28 | |
| and help people see hope | 20:33 | |
| and faith and love. | 20:36 | |
| That's the guidance our wilderness needs. | 20:38 | |
| But of course, | 20:42 | |
| along with this daily local personal guidance | 20:43 | |
| must go the long view. | 20:46 | |
| Every thoughtful person today ought to be concerned | 20:48 | |
| about those hearings in Washington. | 20:53 | |
| One of our great broadcasting companies, | 20:56 | |
| got into a controversy this week, | 20:59 | |
| whether they should clear off of their programs | 21:01 | |
| and let people hear those senate inquiries direct. | 21:02 | |
| Anybody that isn't concerned | 21:09 | |
| to have more light on what's happening in Vietnam, | 21:12 | |
| it's hardly worthy to be a citizen. | 21:17 | |
| We wanna know for what we're fighting, | 21:19 | |
| for whom we're fighting, for what good we're fighting. | 21:23 | |
| Yes, every person wants guidance | 21:27 | |
| and our hearts go out in sympathy to our president. | 21:32 | |
| I think sincerely trying to find guidance. | 21:35 | |
| We need guidance in world affairs, | 21:39 | |
| but we need guidance even beyond the reach of science, | 21:43 | |
| however world minded that is. | 21:48 | |
| When Washington University in St. Louis | 21:51 | |
| about a dozen years ago was observing its centennial. | 21:54 | |
| It had as its head, | 22:00 | |
| a great Nobel Prize winning scientist, Arthur Compton. | 22:02 | |
| So, it was natural that they should bring | 22:06 | |
| to that campus for the celebration | 22:08 | |
| the most distinguished scientist at the time. | 22:10 | |
| But the committee also invited others. | 22:13 | |
| And in the letter of invitation | 22:16 | |
| the committee said this, | 22:19 | |
| the committee on program declared that, | 22:21 | |
| I quote, "in concentrating on the means, | 22:22 | |
| "it shall not be less concerned with the value | 22:26 | |
| "to which they should be directed. | 22:30 | |
| "Therefore, the university is inviting to the campus | 22:33 | |
| "speakers who will relate life to its ultimate values, | 22:36 | |
| "considering such questions as these. | 22:42 | |
| "What is the basic character | 22:45 | |
| "and problem of human existence? | 22:47 | |
| "Can life as a whole | 22:51 | |
| "be said to have meaning and purpose? | 22:52 | |
| "If so, what is it? | 22:56 | |
| "What things are most worth believing or hoping? | 22:57 | |
| "What values deserve our supreme allegiance? | 23:02 | |
| "Beyond all the reach of our scientific impressions | 23:07 | |
| "must come concern with those ultimate values. | 23:11 | |
| "That's why we study religion | 23:17 | |
| "to get the values and the ends of life." | 23:22 | |
| Back in a day of confusion | 23:27 | |
| at the beginning of the Second World War, | 23:29 | |
| William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury | 23:32 | |
| made a statement, | 23:36 | |
| which I repeat today because I discovered last night, | 23:38 | |
| that among some of the young men considering ministry | 23:43 | |
| there's a feeling that perhaps worship is no longer a value. | 23:45 | |
| Archbishop Temple, speaking to Oxford students said this, | 23:51 | |
| "this world can be saved by one thing | 23:55 | |
| "and one thing only, and that is worship." | 23:58 | |
| Oh, you said that's a preacher talking, | 24:03 | |
| he wants to get people to church. | 24:05 | |
| Wait a minute, listen to how he defines worship. | 24:06 | |
| To worship is to quicken the conscience | 24:10 | |
| by the holiness of God, | 24:14 | |
| to feed the mind with the truth of God, | 24:16 | |
| to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, | 24:20 | |
| to open the heart to the love of God, | 24:25 | |
| to dedicate the will to the purpose of God. | 24:29 | |
| Take those just in thumbnail fashion. | 24:33 | |
| To worship is to quicken the conscience. | 24:36 | |
| Out in the world our consciences get flabby | 24:41 | |
| by compromise and disuse. | 24:43 | |
| And then we bring them before God, | 24:46 | |
| to the one one altogether holy, | 24:49 | |
| testing by those eternal rightness of things. | 24:51 | |
| That's to worship. | 24:56 | |
| To worship is to feed the mind on the truth of God. | 24:58 | |
| Out in the world our minds get filled with propaganda | 25:02 | |
| and prejudice and false reports and half-truths. | 25:06 | |
| Then we come before God | 25:10 | |
| to test our cells by those time tested principles | 25:13 | |
| of the scripture | 25:17 | |
| and to confront the one who said, | 25:19 | |
| you shall know the truth | 25:22 | |
| and the truth shall make you free. | 25:24 | |
| Free from error and ignorance, | 25:26 | |
| pride and prejudice. | 25:31 | |
| To worship is to purge the imagination | 25:34 | |
| with the beauty of God. | 25:38 | |
| Out in the world our imaginations get sullied by sordidness | 25:41 | |
| and tainted | 25:45 | |
| by vice and vulgarity. | 25:47 | |
| And we bring our imaginations | 25:51 | |
| to confront God, | 25:55 | |
| and think about whatsoever things are true. | 25:56 | |
| Lovely, just | 26:00 | |
| and of good report, | 26:02 | |
| think on these things. | 26:04 | |
| To worship is to open the heart to the love of God. | 26:07 | |
| Out in this cold world and cold war | 26:11 | |
| we button up our hearts. | 26:15 | |
| We pull down our metal visors. | 26:17 | |
| We suspect people all around us, | 26:20 | |
| we always are thinking of like bad men | 26:22 | |
| are trying to do to us. | 26:24 | |
| But when we come to worship | 26:27 | |
| we think about what the good God has done for us. | 26:30 | |
| To worship is to dedicate the wheels to the purpose of God. | 26:35 | |
| Out in the world our wills get self-centered and wayward | 26:40 | |
| then we bring them to think of him | 26:45 | |
| who stood in Gethsemane, | 26:48 | |
| and pray that he might escape the cross | 26:51 | |
| because he knew its agony. | 26:54 | |
| And yet also prayed, nevertheless, | 26:56 | |
| not my will | 27:00 | |
| but thine be done. | 27:02 | |
| That's the kind of guidance our wilderness needs, | 27:06 | |
| a guidance that can look beyond the material | 27:11 | |
| to the things that are invisible and eternal, | 27:15 | |
| that can stand where the specialties meet | 27:18 | |
| and help us to see life steadily | 27:21 | |
| and to see it whole. | 27:23 | |
| That's | 27:26 | |
| the guidance that will be eyes for our wilderness. | 27:29 | |
| Fine young congregational minister lost his life | 27:33 | |
| during the Second World War. | 27:36 | |
| Mr. Theodore Hume, | 27:38 | |
| he was flying from London to Sweden | 27:40 | |
| on a mission for the World Council of Churches. | 27:44 | |
| And his plane was shot down over the North Sea | 27:47 | |
| and he lost his life, killed by the Nazis. | 27:50 | |
| I met his father shortly afterward | 27:54 | |
| and I expressed my sympathy, | 27:56 | |
| and the father was almost a radiant face, said, | 27:58 | |
| "well, at least we do know now what Theodore." | 28:01 | |
| That's his son's last words were | 28:05 | |
| before he left the ground. | 28:07 | |
| Because he said at the London airport, | 28:08 | |
| "when my son Theodore | 28:10 | |
| "was about to take the plane for Sweden, | 28:11 | |
| "a Swedish clergyman was coming to London | 28:14 | |
| "and onto America. | 28:16 | |
| "As he got off the plane, he said, | 28:18 | |
| "'Mr. Hume, better not take that plane. | 28:20 | |
| "'The Nazis are lying forward it's dangerous.'" | 28:24 | |
| Mr. Hume straightened up and said, | 28:28 | |
| "but I must take it, I'm on a mission." | 28:30 | |
| If we could have the same sense of mission | 28:36 | |
| to be guides in the wilderness of today, | 28:41 | |
| my faith is | 28:47 | |
| we can avoid the wars | 28:49 | |
| of tomorrow. | 28:52 | |
| Let us pray. | 28:55 | |
| Our father | 29:01 | |
| lengthen our vision, | 29:04 | |
| deepen our devotion | 29:07 | |
| that we may serve thee | 29:10 | |
| in the name of the son of man, | 29:12 | |
| who came not to be served but to serve. | 29:16 | |
| The Lord, bless you and keep you, | 29:21 | |
| the Lord make his face to shine upon you | 29:25 | |
| and be gracious unto you. | 29:28 | |
| The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you | 29:31 | |
| and give you peace, | 29:35 | |
| now | 29:38 | |
| and evermore. | 29:39 |