IN DAYS OF STRESS

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20953, 4 November 1939, Page 18 (Supplement)

IN DAYS OF STRESS

BARRIERS BREAK DOWN “Love never faileth,” wrote St. Paul in one of his sublimest passages. Of this truth he was doubly sure; he knew it to be true both of human love and of divine. What St. Paul verified in his own experience must be of supreme value to us to-day. Ever since his conversion St. Paul had been the object of bitter enmity. Friends and comrades in his Pharisaic days turned from him with loathing and contempt; not a few plotted his murder. At moments he must have thought himself almost wholly friendless. Even among the Christians there were those one-time ardent supporters who were alienated later by his candour. “Do you now count me as your enemy,” he writes to the Galatians, “because I have the courage to tell you the truth?” Yet in spite of these and other defections love remained. There were staunch friends still when even Barnabas turned away; friends still eager to share his hardships, to journey with him, and to face martyrdom with him. At the close of each letter he thinks with gratitude of his friendships, some new, others of long standing. He recollects, and commemorates gratefully, their unselfish care for his needs. “Many are they that hate me,” he might have said with the Psalmist; but he was sure that love never faileth, and he knew that it grows in value as outward afflictions multiply. Even more sure and more precious to him was his certainty of the love of God. He above all men must have felt the strain of frequent defeat and apparent failure, sudden and inexplicable reversals of his plans, bitter sufferings befalling those

who would have lived scatheless had they not accepted his teaching. Yet not at the darkest moment did he doubt for an instant the enduring love of God. Whatever else went, love could not fail. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” he asked triumphantly. “Shall tribulation, or distress or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or sword?” This indomitable confidence is needed to-day. The forces of war have been let loose upon the world. For thousands life has suddenly become a nightmare; everything which makes it worth while has been taken away. Laughter, happiness, pleasant plans, congenial and rewarding tasks, innocent delights and interests of all kinds have given way to wearing anxieties. On elderly people a temptation to despair presses with special severity since they are disabled from plunging into new wartime occupations. Yet to them the thought suggested by St. Paul can bring the greatest help. Love never faileth. Already it has brought its consolations. There has been revived throughout the country the spirit of neighbourliness. Formal barriers break dowm; in town and village people are more instinctively friendly, readier to do good turns, more prompt to help at the cost of trouble to themselves. There is no one who cannot resolve to cultivate more eagerly this spirit of love in his own life, and to encourage its growth in others. To be among men as those that serve by love is the kind of practical religion most needed to-day. Indeed it is to follow the example of Christ. And always, the source and pattern of human love, remains the unfailing love of God. The present may be dark, the future uncertain, yet we , can be strengthened to share St. Paul’s confidence that “neither things present nor things to come can separate us from the love of God, which 1 is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”