must be a radical change in your habits or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life. 8. Deliberately narrow your in terests. The Jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be special ists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God. If you will nar row your interests, God will en large your heart. “Jesus only” seems to the un converted man to be the motto of death. But a great company of happy men and women can tes tify that it became to them a way into a world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before. Christ is the essence of all wis dom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to in crease in app re c ia tion o f all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it. 9. Begin to witness. Find something to do for God and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. Do not insist upon a place of leadership. Learn to obey. Take the low place until such time as God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are. 10. Have faith in God. B eg in to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you. I f you will follow these sug gestions, you will most surely ex perience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread ? God knows how des perately the church needs a spir itual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived in dividual. OH —The Wesleyan Methodist
CHRISTMAS GIVING
by Walter Cronkite
J esus once told the people of Israel, “Why be anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Now the Christmas shop ping season is on us once again— one more change for us to show how we ignore the spirit o f Jesus as we celebrate His birthday. Christmas shopping seems to start earlier every year. Perhaps to keep it within bounds, we can simply designate an arbitrary starting point — say, the arrival of the annual Christmas catalogue from Neiman-Marcus — the Dal las, Texas, department store. This season, Neiman-Marcus is adver tising three natural black willow mink coats — one for $75,000, another for $50,000, a third for $35,000. The $75,000 and $35,000 coats are already sold — the cata logue informs us — but if you hurry on down with your Dun- and-Bradstreet rating, you could still presumably get a crack at that $50,000 job. In case you’re on an economy kick this year, the store also offers a full-length Em press Chinchilla coat for only $12,500. The ad for this one, in cidentally, shows that behind all that Texas pride may still lie latent inferiority feelings: fo r some reason, the model wearing the coat is photographed, not in Dallas, but in front of the new M etropolitan Opera House in New York City. In accessories, Neiman-Marcus suggest a gold, sapphire, and diamond bracelet— for $7,000 dollars. For the more dashing types, how about those $4,000 his-and-her matching bath tubs? Or the item on the page appropriately titled, “ Things you didn’t know you needed until now” — a ski slope for your own
back yard with a 25-foot vertical drop, snow-like plastic surface and lighting, for night skiing. It goes for $100,000. You’ll find it in the top shop. Neiman-Marcus respects more traditional gifts, especially the English folk song, “ The Twelve Days of Christmas.” From the partridge in the pear tree through those twelve lords a-leaping — at union or minimum-wage rates— Neiman-Marcus estimates today it would cost your true love $1,771.50 plus tax. How do people react to the ever-expansive Christmas-shop- ping habits of Americans? From the Johnson Administration, we can imagine only muted groans as it tries to hold the line on in flation. Economist Thorstein Veb- len is probably trying to leap from his grave to shout, “ I told you so!” What about the Man whose birth we presumably commemo rate on Christmas? Once more, we quote from the Sermon on the Mount, in the Book of Matthew: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes — and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” E ditor ’ s N ote : Became o f the interest created in the editorial given over the air by the well- known television comm en ta tor permission was secured from CBS T.V. to reprint this in our maga zine. Christians have many exam ples for giving, but we are con stantly reminded that never are we so much like the Lord as when we are giving to His work. DU
DECEMBER, 1967
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