Chaplain’s Column—Rock Roth

As my two year old Grandson says, “Wow!  How did we get to 2014 so fast?  I wrote down in my check book not too long ago ‘1954’.  Have no idea where that came from.  I believe, however, that it is indicative of how rapidly time flies.  I am reminded each time I look into a mirror and see my dad looking back at me that ‘Time waits for no one’.  This brings vividly to mind the last line of John Donne’s poem and Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”

The realization that time marches on has been an issue with man since the very beginning.  In The Encyclopedia of Lost and Rejected Scriptures: The Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha the reoccurring theme is aging and a deep yearning to return to Godliness, i.e., the perfect state of Man before the ‘Fall’.  Periodically, we each need a wake-up call, a reminder, that we have no guarantee that we will survive this New Year.  In fact we have no guarantee that we will survive the day, hour, or minute.  We need to live each day in such a way that we are prepared to meet our Creator!  We are challenged to “Better the community in which we live through our devotion to duty as citizens.  To live such lives of stainless integrity as shall reflect honor upon our country and the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and glorify Thy (God’s) Great and Holy Name.”

 As we commence our journey into  (and hopefully through) 2014, let us each look for ways to better serve our God, our Nation, veterans in need, our nation’s youth, and other appropriate individuals and organizations remembering the parable of the Good Samaritan and that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”