Last Sunday the first point from my message on Proverbs 3 was “to cherish and value the Word and wisdom of God”. I do believe in the power and inspiration of God’s Word in the Bible. I was encouraged to read in Monday’s Argus-Leader newspaper the following two quotes.
The first from Noah Webster, the author of Webster’s dictionary and known as the ‘schoolmaster of the nation’. “The moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of our civil constitution and laws…all the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
The second quote by another Webster named Daniel a famous American politician and diplomat during the formation of our nation said, “If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the scriptures. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell you how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all the glory in profound obscurity.”
As the people of God may our lives ever be formed and directed by God’s truth found in the Bible. Joshua 1:8 says one who meditates on and does the Word will “ be prosperous and successful.”
Today will be the tenth anniversary of the terrorists’ attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and The Pentagon Building in Washington DC. There will be much news coverage and many activities to commemorate this evil and dark event in our nation’s life. Most of us remember other personal dark times in our lives. I appreciate what Joan Chittister OSB teaches about darkness. “The dark spots in life – those times when the present seems unbearable and the future seems impossible – seem often to be empty, useless moments. It’s only later, when we look back, that we can see how really rich those periods were for us. Darkness, in fact is the beginning of light. It is the one place where we are obliged to see what we have never been willing or able to understand before. Darkness is spiritual ambiguity, holy contradiction, disarming mystery. The one major function of darkness in this world, whatever kind of darkness it may be, is always, in the final analysis, enlightenment. What we learn when we cannot see our way through a hard place in life are insights that we failed to discern in better situations. When life is dark we have the sense to wonder why…Enlightenment is the moment in life when we have little left outside ourselves and suddenly discover something inside ourselves that compensates for all of it.”
Let us pray for God’s light to shine upon our path and life that we might benefit from darkness and be wise in God’s ways.
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