Magyar Egyház, 1992 (71. évfolyam, 1-5. szám)
1992-03-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 7. oldal A LELKÉSZEGYESÜLET KÖZGYŰLÉSE Az Amerikai Magyar Református Lelkészegyesület évi közgyűlését folyó év szeptember 7-én, hétfőn és szeptember 8-án, kedden tartjuk meg Ligonierben, Pennsylvaniában. Hétfőn délután Nt. Hajdú Zoltán lelkésztársunk beszámol a Magyar KIÉ (YMCA) felújításáról. Ugyancsak hétfőn délután kerül sorra Dr. Havadtőy Sándor kiértékelő beszámolója a Kolozsvári Református Énekkar amerikai körútjáról. Istentiszteletünk, amely a Presbiteri Szövetség záró és a Lelkészegyesület összejövetelének megnyitó alkalma, hétfőn reggel 11 órakor kezdődik. Az igehirdetés szolgálatát a Lelkészegyesület elnöke végzi; az istentisztelet liturgiái részében és az úrvacsorái ágendázásban részt vesznek a Lelkészegyesület tisztviselői és a Presbiteri Szövetség képviselői. Kedden reggel Dr. Harsányi András évfordulói megemlékezést tart Komenius Ámos Jánosról. Később, kedden reggel, következik Nt. Boros Gyula összefoglaló beszámolója a Magyar Református Otthonról, a jelenlegi Magyarországra menekültekkel kapcsolatos munkákról és a magyarországi egyházi iskolákról. Szeretettel hívunk meg titeket erre a fontos és tájékoztató gyűlésre. Dr. Szilágyi Antal, jegyző THE LOST SECRET OF GREAT RELIGION Text: Ps. 118:1-9, 19-24, 29. I. It is an old secret — one of the oldest in religion — that people should trust in God, and in that trust find strengh sufficient for the trials of any day. It is plain to even the most casual student that the fundamental strength in religion is confidence in God, in his mercy, in his providence, in his redemptive love. (a) “Trust in God?” you ask, “What is that anyway?” Is it an emotional state of peace and serenity that we reach by continuous repetition of the words, “I trust God, I trust God, I trust God”? Is it a state of peace and serenity that we reach by stifling or ignoring or neglecting honest doubts until it appears that everything falls into line and fits into a pattern of ideas in terms of which we find peace of mind and peace of soul? Or is trust in God simply a state of social conformity in the life of a religious group — a willingness to let our doubts rest, our anxieties cease, and our life find its peace through subordination of mind and life to the will and way of the group? Trust in God, as used in prophetic religion, as demonstrated by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, has not meant any one of these possible perversions of it. What it has meant, to try to put it in three closely related words, is this: (b) Trust in God means (1) Belief in God — a consciously sought, clearly faced, factually grounded, intellectually trustworthy conviction that God is the supreme Fact and Factor in human life and history. Trust in God means (2) Faith in God — a belief in him so strong, so vital, so certain that you are willing to let it guide your life. Trust in God means (3) Confidence in God — a confident knowledge, bom of your own experience that he can be depended upon, that he knows and cares, that he is sufficient for all things, that you can put the hand of your life in his outstreched hand and go where he leads. II. Read it any way you will, the Bible is one long document of trust in God no matter what may befall a person or a people in life. (a) When Job cried, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him,” he was putting the secret of vital religion in an immortal phrase. Read again that breathtaking section on anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount. To disciples who were about to be arrested for preaching the gospel and haled before magistrates who held the power of life and death in their hands, he counsels, “Do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Jesus’ trust in God was so patent a fact about, and so potent a force within, his life that his enemies at the cross chose to articulate what they regarded as their triumph in terms of it. “He trusts in God,” they screamed one to another. “Let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, T am the Son of God.’ ” Yet even this ridicule could neither dampen his spirit nor drown out his final testament of trust: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” (b) The great figures in Christian history discovered the serenity and the strength of trust in God: Paul could emerge from many years of doubt, anguish, and spiritual tragedy with this word of trust on his lips, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against the day”; St. Augustine could bring his long and fretful journey through the philosophies and theologies of his day to complete (Continued on Page 12)
