With this issue of The Roanoke Tribune we end another Gregorian year and enter the final phase of our fiscal year before celebrating The Tribune’s 86th anniversary in April. This year we will not be publishing a December 26 issue, but will be instead taking a long awaited, hard earned final week of the year off. Today also marks two days prior to the first official day of winter although from recent registration of thermometers in our area and other parts of the nation, it’s hard to believe it had not already arrived.
As we stand at the brink of another New Year, may we earnestly and solemnly vow to re-evaluate our lives and rearrange some priorities that we might become more worthy of God’s manifold blessings and freedoms which most take for granted–among which one of the greatest is our freedom of choice.
There are numerous individuals and large masses of individuals in this nation and aboard who do not enjoy the freedoms afforded the majority of Americans, restricted primarily by self-imposed limitations. We are and have always been too easily people programmed. How else can such masses remain controlled and manipulated by so few made simpler through ever advancing technology. How much more meaningful are the words offered to a new maturity of mankind through the Baha’i Writings, the spiritual prescription for living in today’s advanced society.
“They (children) must favor character and conduct above the sciences and arts, to guard against the prostitution of each,” the Writings emphasize. “Good behavior and high moral character must come first, for unless the character be trained, acquiring knowledge will only prove injurious. Knowledge is praiseworthy when it is coupled with ethical conduct and a virtuous character; otherwise it is a deadly poison, a frightful danger.”
The Writings further stress that not only children be so trained, but that “All the virtues must be taught the (entire) family–(whether personal or world family for it is becoming more evident that), “The injury of one shall be considered the injury of all; the comfort of each, the comfort of all; the honor of one, the honor of all.” Love (of what) is the key. As we are too judgmental and discriminate in our limited love we may do well by striving to “remove the pith of self” from our lives and subsequent attitudes that God’s love may flow freely through us. Only this pure love can give life to the lifeless, light a fire in the heart that is cold, bring hope to the hopeless and gladden the hearts of the sorrowful.
We already have the resources and technology. All we need is LOVE, for in the world of existence there is indeed no power greater that the magnet of love.
Have a Happy Holiday Season of Love, which will last throughout the year–throughout Life.
