RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23691, 24 December 1938, Page 21

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

By Amp Hus

This is the last appearance of this column for the year, and it will be suspended, as usual, for some weeks, until the Sunday schools re-open in February. "Amplius" desires to offer to all readers the season's greetings. Christmas Thought . . . And the star which they had seen rise led them on ... to the place where the Child lay. Who came To be Himself a star most bright To bring the wise men to His sight, To be Himself a voice most sweet To call the shepherds to His feet. To be a child—it was His will That folk like us might find Him still. The Message of Christmas The most wonderful thing in the universe is the Christmas message, the Eternal Son of God became man for us and our salvation. I can understand a man saying, "1 cannot believe it. It is incredible." 1 cannot understand a man saying, "Oh. yes. I believe that. Of course I believe in the Incarnation "; and yet he rarely speaks about it. He is not thrilled by it. Ho is, indeed, more likely to speak about religious things in peneral than fhi«t amazing deed of God. If a man believes this stupendous, staggering message it cannot be one thine among many things. It is the first, the last, the supreme thing, changing one's whole viewpoint, altering all the minor things, and everything else is minor. The Apostle Paul was like this. Whenever he thinks of this amazing fact he praises God with a full heart. " For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, thai ye trough His poverty might become rich-" .... Jesus was not the highest uw% ir of man. He was the descent of God. "God was in Christ reconciling th p world." He was not a human genius in religion, as Shakespeare was in poetry. He was God manifest in the flesh. He was God coming from the great beyond. ~ , A . "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." said Jesus, in reply to Philip's reques*. " Show us the Father. He not only revealed God, but was the expression of His love He broke the power of sin, and of death. He was not merely a model for us to imitate. He was above all things the revealer of God and the Saviour of men, come to do for us what no man could do for himself, what no man could do for another. . . Kindness is sometimes jarring and even offensive, but brotherhness is always helpful. Here we see the brotherliness of the Son of God. we came to us to share our lot. He was born in a stable, cradled in a manger, brought up in a country township, worked in a village carpenters shop, was friends with humble folk in all the ordinary ways of life. He wa- one with men. women and children in daily life, the brotherly Son of God. "Isn't this Joseph's Son?" Ave. it is He. Joseph the carpenter: same trade as me! „ , . I thought as I'd find it. I knew it was here, But my sight's getting queer I don't know right where as His shed might h'a' slood, . But often, as I have been a planing my wood, . I've .took off my hat just with thinking of He. At the same, same trade as me. Let us then think reverently and often about the meaning of Christmas: that the Son of God became man. real man. for us and our salvation. Let us ponder well what this means in our daily life; let the message of this season possess us. Then we would be impelled to tell everybody until they also realise the life-changing, worldchanging fact. , The Potentials of Peace Again it is close to Christmas. Again we turn our minds to the prmce of Peace. Again we do so in a world where wars in progress are. woven into what we think and read. Ali this forces us back to think again of what the conditions of war and peace are. What is war, and what is peace? When are we at the one or in the other? If we have not had physical combat with a neighbour, do we therefore live at peace with him? We say that a country is inwardly at peace' if there are no civil wars, no strikes, no riots, no crude disturbances within it. But is it? We would say that the world was at peace if tomorrow we could look over it and see no nation engaged in military conflict of any kind with another. But. would it be? Is the absence of armed conflict in itself peace? Or is peace something deeper than some sucli external evidence of strife? It is the causes of struggle to which we need to go back this Christmas season. My neighbour and I may live outwardly at peace and even observe the courtesies of formal social contacts. But if one of us has defrauded the other, or if hatred and jealousy are harboured secretly we live at potential war. We are not at peace. The classes and groups within a nation may be working together outwardly. Strikes, lockouts, riots may have been for a long time unknown. But if injustice, and oppression, or a sense of these, are found, then social war, potentially, is there. The land is not at peace. , The nations of the world may have no guns or bombs aimed at each other at a particular time. There.may not be a combatant army marching anywhere on the earth. But if a deen sense of injustice from the last war lingers, if one people feels that another has deprived them of their place in the sun,, then the nations are potentially at war. The world is not at peace. Actual strife grows out of potential strife, personal, national, or worldwide. It is only as we grapple with the causes that set men off in antagonism to each other that we can effectively create peace. Do you ever deliberately and prayerfully rebuild the personal attitudes between you and others? Thus you are creating personal peace. Are you sharing daily somehow in the removal of injustice and prejudice between classes? In doing so you are building for national peace. Are your intelligence and efforts thrown somewhere into the events of the world, on behalf of understanding and fairness? To that degree you help to make world peace. . , , For the potentials of war yield at last only to the slow growth of the potentials of peace. To the creation of these conditions of goodwill may we ' dedicate ourselves anew. Thus, we can really celebrate Christmas!—lnternational Journal of Religious Education