Floral Week Ends With A Service Of Thanksgiving

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28513, 17 February 1958, Page 3

Floral Week Ends With A Service Of Thanksgiving

The only memory that would live in the minds of countless thousands of Christchurch citizens, now that the floral festival wee£ had concluded, would be one of colour and excitement, gaiety and aesthetic pleasure, the Rev. W. M. Hendrie, Moderator of the Christchurch Presbytery, told more than 2000 persons who attended the floral festival thanksgiving service in Cranmer square yesterday. “The occasion of which this day and service are the climax has no doubt brought much pleasure and. satisfaction to many people,” Mr Hendrie said. “There is n<? reason to doubt that they have been stirred, excited, and given much to remember. Yet, while many citizens have appreciated it, one wonders in what way they have done so; and in particular one wonders what their reaction is to the fact that we conclude it with a service of Christian worship. “It seems to me that there will be many thousands of citizens and visitors who will chiefly be aware of the colour; the gaiety, the ingenuity, and the aesthetic pleasure they have enjoyed, who will be grateful for the beauty of what they have seen—but who will fundamentally believe the occasion is just a sentimental, restful, wistful sort of thing inserted into what is the normal greyness and hardness of life, as a gay and colourful whimsy from which they must turn on Monday to the realities of life.

“I suspect,” said Mr Hendrie, “that few would be found who believed that the floral week was anything more than a decoration, a fiesta, a welcome respite, and escape, from which we now turn reluctantly back to life.” There would also be some who would find, he said, another confirmation of their belief that the Church’s chief function was to encourage such escapes and to seek refuge in sentiment and insubstantial dreams. The situation had always been like this, he added. Man had suffered from the constitutional conviction that reality was what he did, what he achieved, what he proposed, and what he was involved in. “Consider the Lilies” “He seeks perpetually for the truth within the realms of his own interests and occupations,” Mr Hendrie said. “It always comes as a shock to him when anyone says, ‘Consider the lilies, how they grow’.” Yet these words, said Mr Hendrie, were addressed to men of a generation which had not changed much up to the present time. The Jews, to whom these words were addressed, faced at that time the same uncertainties that faced the world today: political turmoil and economic and religious uncertainty were also present. They, too, were seeking a rule of life, direction and pattern. “They, like us, were seeking a pattern which would at one and the same time satisfy God and leave them free. They wanted, as we do, the best possible worlds. And to them were spoken the words of our text,” he said. Moral Courage

A few weeks ago, he said, the Queen had appealed for moral courage in life.

“Here in this text you have the only foundation on which moral courage can rise,” Mr Hendrie. said. “A man can only confront the looseness, laxity, and cheapness of his surroundings—can only stand firm against the popular tide —when he is very sure of his ground. He needs to have a reason for the faith that is in him. And he only has that certainty when he has come to see that he stands in a certain relationship to God—when he has discovered his true status as son of God, when he lifts obedient eyes to God, and says, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?’ Outside that relationship moral courage becomes mere arrogance, and idealism, a sham hypocrisy. It is by accepting the status that our words and deeds alone acquire the ring of sincerity.

“Consider the lilies—consider them indeed. ‘They toil not, neither do they spin.’ They do not seek to justify themselves. They are justified and sanctified, because they accept without demur their given place in God’s creation. ‘And Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,’ ” said Mr Hendrie.

A choir of about 300 singers was present at the service, representing church choirs and choral groups throughout the city. The Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren) dedicated flowers which later are to be given, to the sick in the city. The blooms had been brought by children from Sunday schools throughout Christchurch.