Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 John chapter 2 verses 8 through 10:
8Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because* the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister,* is still in the darkness. 10Whoever loves a brother or sister* lives in the light, and in such a person* there is no cause for stumbling.
On his death bed Goethe is said to have cried out, "Light, light, more light," -- a significant word from someone who had the light of more knowledge than perhaps any man or woman of his time.
But the Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno responded that Goethe was misguided. The dying claim out to be, "Warmth, warmth, more warmth! For we die of cold and not of darkness."
What times we are living in. What sorrows and terrors afflict this nation. Our morality has not yet caught up with out technology. The light which makes mechanism exceeds the warmth which creates humanism. We are talking of putting a man on Mars, but millions are still not yet even on their feet.
As Dr. King said, "We've learned to fly the air like birds. We've learned to swim the seas like fish. Yet we haven't learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters."
And Jesus said, "The hearts of many will turn cold."
Warmth, warmth, warmth. Our problem is not lack of knowledge. It's not dearth of facts (if we'll heed them). It is want of care, and compassion, and simple, decent love for neighbor. It is lack of concern for the people being killed by bad public policy, poor public schools, and a very sad state of caste that keeps so many from reaching their potential in life.
It is lack of love that keeps justice from rolling down like waters. It's frozen upstream. Blocked by the coldness of a society's heart.
Warmth, warmth, warmth.
Dear God, melt our cold, cold hearts; and make us kindred to one another again we pray.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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