Sputnik symbolizes all that is fleeting ahd temporary, the sensational, glamorous, lurid distractions that fill our firmaments. The news reporter was right. Follow the news long enough and you will be stone-blind to what matters most. The Prophet Micah lived in times not unlike our own. The good man was perished from the earth, crooked ness prevailed in high places, no confidence could be put in closest friends, families were divided. But Micah kept his sights set on the eternal: “Therefore I will look unto the Lord.” No earthly fireworks or wandering comets obscured his vision. And we, .like him, had better see to it that no Sputnik blinds us to His star. The Giver by Ruth Gibbs Zwall Our God who gives the hills their strength To lift a rugged boulder, Who lends the trees a faith to stand Upon a mountain's shoulder, How shall He give us less than these . . .? He loves His children more than trees. Our God who fills the space of night With promise of a dawning, Who sowed infinity with stars That first creation morning, Who guides the planets day by day . . . How shall He let us lose our way? For He who did not spare His Son Within the Olive Garden But freely sent Him forth alone To win for us a pardon . . . Shall He not give us all beside— The souls for whom the Saviour died? Nothing but Heaven will suffice For those redeemed at such a price. It is regrettable that little is said about the Wise Men at Bethlehem except around Christmas. The lesson is just as timely in July as in December. Besides, our Lord may not have been bom anywhere near our Christmas sea son. Be that as it may, the Magi set a good pattern. They saw His star, not some other. They came to where He was, and so must we, and none who come will be cast out. They worshiped Him, and we must bow before Him and confess Him Lord of all. They gave gifts, and we must give ourselves and all we have. They went home another way, and after we come to Him we go another way, not ours but His. Amidst our little lights, our fireworks, the wandering stars, the satellites, have you seen His star, and have you come to worship Him?
much thought to sleep until we are unable to obtain it. So it goes. So we accept the stars as a matter of course. They are always there every night. God and the Gospel we take for granted. Bewildered by world crises, church con ditions, and personal problems, we watch the fireworks and miss the stars. “We see not yet all things put under him . . . But we see Jesus” (Heb. 2:8, 9), so runs the Scripture. But we become so obsessed about what “we see not yet,” that Him we see not (I Pet. 1:8). Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me. To see stars we need a telescope. We can see more in a minute with a telescope than we can observe all night with the unaided eye. Nobody says, “How foolish to confine myself to that narrow tube when I have two good eyes of my own!” Yet men say, “I do not need the Bible, I will form my own ideas about Jesus Christ.” The only correct view of the Bright and Morning Star comes through the telescope of God’s revelation. There never have been so many shooting stars to divert our heavenward gaze. Jim Elliot, one of the martyrs in Ecuador, spoke of the “decentralizing effect” of tele vision and how he was impressed by the verse, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity” (Psa. 119:37). Church members come to the house of God on Sunday morning all out of focus because they have spent too much of Saturday night beholding vanity, watching mis guided missiles and wandering stars. Some of them com plain that they didn’t see much in the sermon. They wouldn’t! Not only does the Saviour shine as the light of the world but the saints shine with Him. We are “lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15) and “they that turn many to righteousness [shall shine] as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12:3). His ministers are “stars” in His “right hand” (Rev. 1:20). Even the stars in the skies shall fall as un timely figs, but the galaxy of the Saviour and the saints endures. Be not afraid because we have gone into the satellite business and are manufacturing stars. Everybody is look ing skyward, but not at the stars or anticipating the Lord’s return. . . . They are looking for Sputnik. One evening after reading frightening headlines and gloomy news reports and the scary predictions of columnists, I walked to the window where the evening star shone brightly overhead just as always. In my heart I said, “Let men put their little satellites into space and send their doghouses around the earth as they will, ‘He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; [and] the Lord shall have them in derision.’ ” The stars shine over the earth, The stars shine over the sea; The stars look up to God And the stars look down on me. The stars may shine a million years, A million years and a day, But God and l will live and love When the stars have passed away.
DECEMBER, 1963
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