SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 113, 22 February 1941, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

NEWS OF THE CHURCHES. DEVOTIONAL READING. (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association) . A LIVING FLAG. A certain preacher painted a. vivid picture from the Great War years in Antwerp. Tile birthday of the King of the Belgians had come round, but the people were warned by the German authorities that no public demonstration or flag-waving sj could be permitted. When the day came, however, there was a feeling among them that something was going to happen, and, sure enough, there passed along the main street, between the* lines of onlookers, three little girls, of whom one was dressed in black, one in yellow, and one in red. They represented the living flag of that small, freedom—loving people. “Christ wants everyone of you,” said the preacher “to he a living flag.” FAITH. “Faith has an eagle’s eye and a lion’s heart. It has a lion’s heart to hear present evils, and it has an eagle’s eye to see future good.” FORWARD. “Our only way, the way forward : and forward for us men must ever be to-, wards something finer.” FAILURE. “Failure consists not in falling down but in continuing to lie down when you have fallen.”—-Sir Abe Bailey, in a letter to “The Times,” on October 26, 1936. PAID AT FLOWERING TIME. • “A group of men in the hotel lounge were talking what I took to be German. ‘No,’ said my companion, ‘it is Dutch. They are Dutch bulb-growers visiting England to collect their accounts. It is the custom of the trade to •be paid at flowering time.’ I liked that phrase. I know others beside the Dutch bulb-growers who are paid at flowering time. “My neighbour, for example, who toils in his garden while I set off jauntily for my walks over the Downs, he has been ‘collecting his accounts’ 'in these early April days. He is being paid for every moment of his patient industry—paid in beauty and fragrance in the coin of the crocus and the daffodil. He lent to nature on longisli credit, hut he knew ho would get his loan back with interest. “Preachers and school teachers are prominent amongst those who get paid at flowering time. They do not earn high wages in our ordinary current coin, and in the coinage of mind and spirit they lend out large sums for the sowing of seed. They have to wait years sometimes before the glory of life breaks through the hard earth—but they get back all that they lent, and more.” TfflEt FOOL’S PRAYER.

“No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool; The rod must heal the sin; blit, Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool. “ ’Tis not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; ‘Tis by our follies that so long We hold the earth from heaven away. “These clumsy feet, still in the wirl, Go crushing blossoms without end; These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust Among the heart strings of a friend. “The ill-timed truth we might have kept— Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? The word we had not sense to say— Who knows how grandly, it had rung ! “Our faith no tenderness should ask, The chastening stripes must cleanse them all; But for our blunders, oh in shame Before the eyes of heaven we fall! “Earth hears no balsam for mistakes; Men crown the / knave, and scourge the fool That did his will; but Thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool.” —E. R. Sill. WHAT FAITH IS. Dr. ,T. A. Hutton, the editor of “The British Weekly,” has said: . “Many years ago the present writer in that access of courage which Jk apt to come upon a preacher wheijjjme is deeply stirred, made an exclamation which rather startled himself: ‘I see it all in a phrase. My faith is my vote!’ ” A PiRAYER. “Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, Giver of light and life, so teach us those things which belong to the heavenly kingdom, and those duties which are of the earth, that we, stirred by the light and life of the peace of God, may be enabled faithfully to do the things committed to us, looking ever unto Tliee for light and life, that, being lifted above ourselves, the life of God in the soul of man maybe ours, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, may then keep our hearts and minds, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” —George Dawson.