DOMINION PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

White Ribbon, Volume 25, Issue 10, 1 January 1954, Page 3

DOMINION PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Mv Hear Fellow-members, What a privilege and joy it has been to have our beloved Queen and her husband in our midst! The day in which we live has brought great changes to men and nations, and surely the bond of kinship and love that ties the Queen to the peoples of her vast Commonwealth of Nations should be strengthened by this Royal visit. Truly we *an say and pray, “God save the Queen!” As the year 1953 drew to a close, it brought the sorrow of a national disaster in the greatest train accident we have ever sustained in New Zealand, and we mourned with those whose loved ones had been swept so suddenly away. Hitter indeed was their grief, and in such an hour of sorrow we surely prayed that the God of all comfort would be their stay and refuge. How sustaining is the love of God! 1 want in this letter to personally thank all Districts, Unions atid individual members for the loving messages of sympathy extended to me and my family in the sudden loss of my beloved husband. His “Home Call” came at an afterChurch meeting and his going was so sudden and so unexpected that we were sorely distressed, and the pain of knowing that I should never again hear his voice or feel his comforting presence was bitter indeed. At Christmas time, someone writing to me thought I would find it difficult to accept the message of “A happy Christmas” and wished to remind me that because of the birth of Christ we had the Resurrection. What a glorious truth that is . . . without Christmas there would be no Faster Morn. So to those of you who, too, have known this great sorrow, I would pass on this grand certitude, “I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in Me. though he were dead, YET shall he live.” How abiding and faithful are those words of Jesus, the Lord of Life! What shall I say to you, my friends, for 1954? A year of opportunity lies ahead. The days will come and go, and what comes is in our hands to make or to mar—our human frailty, our tendency to slip can be abundantly overcome if we hold to the Father-hand of God: to falter or to stand still is a greater danger to us spiritually than the attack of an outward foe, for it will not only endanger our own personal relationship with the Divine but will bring sorrow and confusion to our Cause. Our personal pledge “For God, for Home and for Humanity” calls for courage and sacrifice: the mending of broken lives and broken homes; the making of straight paths for little feet; the sympathetic understanding of youth’s increasing problems calls for a deeper consecration. Let us, like St. Paul, glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which, carried into everv battle, stands sublimely victorious. LET US GO FORWARD!

Yours in joyous service, CONSTANCE TOOMER