Magyar Egyház, 1958 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1958-08-01 / 8-9. szám
10 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ passed only by his faithfulness to God and country. These men will be strengthened in their ardous tasks by the support of the growing congregation of faithful followers. Financially they will have a hard road ahead as did all of our congregations in their beginnings. We are all dependent only on the grace of God and on the sacrificial giving of our members. The offering and the amount of contributions on the three Sundays showed a good beginning and a serious promise for the future. The future has two main problems: the first is the need of a good pastor, and the other, the need of a suitable house of worship. On the first, our Church will give them a helping hand and hope to fill the position shortly. The other takes longer planning, lots of prayer, lots of work and sacrificial giving, ft will test their strength but will not stop them. This should have been the opening paragraph . . . The Super G was flying about 19,000 feet above sea level, about 5,000 feet above the mountain peaks, ft was cloudy below but sunny above. Mt. Whitney peaked out above the clouds as we passed by. The past three weeks were full of activities, now our hearts are full of questions — yet hopeful, trusting on the grace of God and the faithfulness of our brethren in California. The beloved tunes of the ancient hymns still echoed in our hearts and hopefully remembered the promise of the Word, “The Lord will not cast away his people.” Stephen Szőke. 3,300 MORE REFUGEES TO COME Public Law 85-316, just recently passed by the U.S. Congress, permits the entrance of 3,300 more Hungarian refugees from Austria and Italy. After consultation in this matter with the Presbyterian Resettlement Committee, Dean Gábor Csordás announced that this Committee is again willing to handle the cases sponsored by members of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America. Therefore if anyone from our congregations wishes to sponsor a relative or friend who has fled to Austria or Italy after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the following steps should be taken: Send in the name, birth datas and present address of the refugee to: Miss Margaret W. Gillespie Presbyterian Resettlement Committee 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 520 New York 10, New York. In the same letter also give your own name and address. The letter should contain a statement that you are willing and able to take care of the relative or friend if admitted to the U.S.A. Have your letter endorsed by your Pastor. At the same time write to the relative or friend in Austria or Italy advising him to register with the nearest office of the World Council of Churches. In Austria: Aspergasse 23, Salzburg; there are similar offices in Rome and Trieste, Italy. The prospective immigrants must also register with the nearest U.S. Consulate. The offices of the World Council of Churches will assist them in this. PRAYER What is prayer? Prayer is conversation with God. When we pray we talk to God and God answers our prayer in His own way. Concerning prayer, let us try to answer at this time these following questions: Why does God wants us to pray?, and: what should be the content of our prayer? There are three reasons why God wants us to pray. First, God wants us to know and feel that we are his beloved children and we should not be afraid to call upon Him, to talk to Him. “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15). The blessing of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ was exactly that God became a loving Father to us, forgave us, and is loving us as his children. Whenever we pray we testify that indeed we believe that God is our gracious Father. Secondly, God wants us to pray because He wants us to tell Him in our prayers all our requests. It is true that He knows everything about us even if we do not tell Him, but He wants to strengthen in our hearts the feelings of love, confidence and dependence on His fatherly providence by demanding us to tell Him our requests. Even, Jesus says that “ask and it will be given you”. (Matt. 7:7). The “normal” relation between God and us, his earthly children, is that we ask Him for what we need. Thirdly, God wants us to thank Him for all His gifts. “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving”, so urges us the apostle (Col. 4:2). What should be the content of our prayer? Jesus Christ in His prayer, which we call the Lord’s Prayer, teaches us as to the content of our prayer. Keeping the beautiful words of the Lord’s Prayer in our minds, we may say that a true prayer contains first of all praise, adoration and glorification of our heavenly Father. Then we have to ask Him to bring about the time when all his creatures both in heaven and on earth faithfully obey His holy laws and commandments, and His will be done everywhere. After this, we tell Him our special request. Everyday we need the gifts of God for our physical wellbeing as well as our spiritual health. Our prayer also should contain a sincere repentance of our sins and a promise that as God is willing to forgive us we are also willing to be forgiving toward each other. Finally we ask God to protect us from all temptations of the devil because we cannot resist him, relying upon our own strength. And a true prayer ends with the expression of our trust in God that we do not pray in vain for God’s is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. He is gracious to hear us, and almighty to give us what we truly need. STEPHEN KOVÁCS DO YOU READ “MAGYAR CHURCH”? Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, at the 39th annual meeting of the Associated Church Press, in Chicago, had this to say: “One of the reasons for the gulf that often exists between the thinking of preachers and laymen is that so few laymen ever see a religious journal.” We, of the “Magyar Church”, know that members of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America see this religious journal. But we often wonder, do they READ it?
