Finding harmony
“Footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened.”(T S Eliot,‘Burnt Norton’).
Not only believers of every religion, but citizens of the world, the human race must stand before the door it has never opened.
That door opens to peace on earth, harmony among people, support by the strong for the weak, gentleness with strength in deeds, kindliness with guidance in words.
This kingdom belonging to eternity yet is lived in by people in time and space. The pristine Eden. The name on the gate is service and its key is sacrifice.
Next weekend is Remembrance Sunday.
Today, I suggest a way of life worthy of Remembrance Day.
A different way of life starts within every individual and is motivated by the power of our own personality.
Who we are as unique people is the vital spark of real life.
Modern society, with its impersonal treatment and devaluing standards, has reduced the significant status of the individual person.
However, the human spirit within the soul may be reduced, but can never be removed, diminished but not destroyed.
Look at Jesus. He appealed to the individual person.
Jesus did not consider rank, position or public prestige to be prime considerations.
Rather, Jesus sought out the individual person.
He healed the wounded person, renewed the broken, encouraged the downtrodden, and inspired the marginalised.
Jesus found the personality in everyone and brought it to life.
Boris Pasternak, in his epic novel‘Dr Zhivago’, wrote:“The Gospels tell us this new way of life is born in the heart and is called the Kingdom of God. There are no nations in the Kingdom, but only persons. This is Christianity, it is the mystery of personality.”
The basic instinct in the human psyche is self preservation.
But the sublime divine instinct in the human soul is care for others.
One wretched sight that should appal everyone is the striving among a multitude of hungry people to grab some of the limited food supply from one relief agency lorry.
This is the basic instinct of self preservation.
But this true story reveals another picture where the action of the personality reveals the divine side of human nature.
Many young boys were in the column of captured German soldiers marching to a labour camp.
A Russian peasant woman rushes to one young lad and gives him an apple.
When questioned, she replied:“I have lost my son, that boy too has an anxious mother.”
That is the way Jesus Christ lived.
He subdued the basic, selfish human instinct.
He lived entirely according to the God-given instinct to care for others
That is the meaning of the temptations at the start of Jesus’ ministry.
Then, during the following three years, Jesus committed himself entirely to the care and cure, the health and welfare of ordinary men and women.
Had that been all Jesus accomplished, then he would have been assuredly the greatest human being ever to have lived.
But he did more. Jesus died to resolve the human fate of death.
In one supreme decision of mind and soul, Jesus subdued his human feeling to God’s will.
In Gethsemane, Jesus cried out:“Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from my lips, but not my will, but Thine be done.”
Then Jesus went to Calvary.
As Pasternak wrote:“We live in a state of history and that history as we know it began with Christ and was founded by him on the gospels. The spiritual equipment is given to us in the gospels. First, the love of one’s neighbour. Second, the two concepts in the make-up of modern man, free personality and life regarded a sacrifice.”
Sacrifice is the giving to others, regardless of the personal cost. It is placing the other first at the neglect of self.
Countless parents are sacrificing themselves for their families, while many in society are toiling tirelessly for others with no regard for themselves.
For many, sacrifice is the harsh reality of life.
May God strengthen those who toil, encourage those who falter and fill those who empty themselves for others.
“Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends”(John 15.13).