AN EXTRA HOLIDAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 20

AN EXTRA HOLIDAY

T is comforting to reflect now in our profound puzzlement, Now in our fear for the future, trouble. and deep unhappiness, That the twelve men we know of: most susceptible to love and goodness Were angry and ignorant men often and one was a low traitor. It makes you suspect that if He came down to us a second time, came soon, came now, Walking our streets openly and proposing a fresh climate, Bringing us a last chance to live fully and purposefully in that fresh climate, Men would be found presently'to hear and perhaps follow... . That. the sons of Zebedee, shouting, would tie up at the wharf hurriedly, Forgetting the wage dispute and their anger against the new government, That Peter would look up testily, then radiantly, great hands sweating and shaking uncontrollably, Tet piatibey, coat flying, would dash from the Land and Income Tax Department nstantly, That Judas, even sick Judas with his dark, twisted, and all-destroying love, Would hear and for a time follow. : And we should go wandering for a day’s outing to a mountain (O it might be a mountain near one of our large cities), . Go by train and on foot and in special buses (Book Here for the Mountain), ge SR; holiday! Hallelujah, a special holiday! An extra day for the King; bless There to look up piteously at the new bringer of good tidings, fresh hope, fresh courage ‘and understanding; There to hear humbly the awful and liberating words of love, not fully understanding; There to éat afterwards, too weary for fright or question, provisions that came not ‘in the trains or buses. 3 ; With no thought openly (at the time little covertly) of criminal proceedings, Of crosses. :

S. P.

L.