Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“If you meet me and forget me you have lost nothing, but if you meet Jesus Christ and forget Him, you have lost everything.” Anonymous.
A question from not too long ago…haunts me again this morning.
Have we forgotten?
The morning rain couldn’t wash away the memories of a weekend with our family gathered around the occasion and celebration of a family wedding. These are the things which are forever burned in our memories, things like the foundations of our faith and country, those lives who have gone before us and whose shoulders we stand upon today, the roots of our families and the memories made with them.
Yet, looking around lately across the landscapes of our nation and world, I have begun to wonder again…
Have we forgotten?
I wondered about that as my eyes fell on the words “Est. 1636” embroidered on a tee-shirt our son Nathan gave me a few years ago when he returned from a Cambridge reunion with many of his Harvard Law School classmates. Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, my son’s alma mater, Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number one was that students seeking entrance must first know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures so as to…
“Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies, is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
Couldn’t possibly forget that heritage, but I wonder…
Have we forgotten?
My eyes fell on my copy of “McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer”, by William Holmes McGuffey, also the author of “The McGuffey Reader” and referred to by President Lincoln as the “Schoolmaster of the Nation.” Page fifty-nine asks the question of the young reader:
“Do you see that tall tree? Long ago it sprang up from a small nut. Do you know who made it do so?”
And then offers this answer…
“It was God, my child. God made the world and all things in it. He made the sun to light the day, and the moon to shine at night. God shows us that he loves us by all that he has done for us. Should we not then love him?”
The McGuffey Reader was used for over one hundred years in our public schools, with over one hundred and twenty-five million copies sold, until its use was stopped in 1963. Our then Supreme Court ruled Bible reading unconstitutional in our public school system with the reasoning that “…if portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could and have been psychologically harmful to children.”
Couldn’t possibly forget the roots of our Nation, but I wonder…
Have we forgotten?
I returned to the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, French statesman and scholar, derived from his work entitled “Democracy in America” written following his tour of America beginning in 1831 as he tried to determine the secret of America’s genius and strength. He wrote:
“Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention…The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other. Religion in America must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country. From the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.”
Have we forgotten?
I returned to the words of Abraham Lincoln calling for on April 30, 1860 a national day of humility, fasting and prayer when he said:
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven…But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”
Couldn’t possibly be so today, but I wonder…
Have we forgotten?
Courage my friends, courage. And summon it forth, for it is time to remember Him anew—for the future of our lives, the lives of our children, and grandchildren and for the future of our Nation—for today, tomorrow and for all eternity.
In His Name—Scott
