North Central District 

GOD, OUR GUARDIAN

As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.--Ps. 125:2

Someone has said: "Courage is fear that has said its prayers."  It is more.  Courage is fear that has become aware of the ever-loving, never vanishing God.  The panic that is in many hearts at this hour would vanish like darkness before the rising sun if the Eternal Sun once dawned upon their souls.  The anxiety that paralyzes a nation or lowers its morale simply cannot plague one who has entered into fellowship with God.

Centuries ago during the terrible Roman persecution, when Christians were being put to death without mercy, one lone follower of the Galilean stood before the Emperor Julian to receive sentence of death.  Sneeringly, the emperor asked: "And what is your Galilean Carpenter doing now?"  Without hesitation and without a tremor, he answered, "He is building coffins!"

When we are blest with a faith in an unconquerable God, when we know that a coffin is the destiny of every historical movement that denies God, when we are sublimely confident that all souls and all significant values are in God's keeping, when we believe with all our hearts that however dark and disastrous the times in which we live there is "one far off divine event, to which the whole creation moves," nothing daunts us, nothing can subdue us, nothing can dismay us into surrender to evil.

OUR FATHER, we thank Thee for Thy presence everywhere, for Thy love bestowed so richly upon us all, for Thy mercy which forgives our sins, and for Thy power adequate for every situation.  Help us to trust Thee, that we may with undaunted courage meet the ardors of these troubled times and live and die like sons and daughters of God.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.