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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Dont Be Afraid to Ask Favors of God Bell Syndicate WNU Features. 33 wartime we stop our cars and smilingly invite the uniformed lads to jump into them." By KATHLEEN NORRIS THE longer I live the more firmly do I believe in the nearness of God and the power of prayer. The rule that was given us by an obscure carpenter, who never wrote a line or had an influential influ-ential friend, and who died the death of a common criminal, crim-inal, is still the only true rule by which we humans may live in security and peace. When anyone says to me that he would like to have seen a miracle, I think of THIS miracle, that we hold no name in all our history worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with that of Christ. Poor and unknown, un-known, yet his words still ring about the world, and his law, so utterly opposed to all natural human law, is the one thing that can save us yet. When this war is over, and the monstrous evil that darkens the world Is suppressed, let us hope that those In power will remember that unless the law of Christ influences their councils, there will be no peace, and that before today's babies are out of high school the whole horror will begin be-gin all over again. No matter how they dress their treaties in magnificent magnifi-cent phrases, no matter how many willing and unwilling signatories they obtain for them, unless forgiveness and brotherhood become the universal univer-sal law, there will be no peace. The secret lies there, in the Sermon on the Mount, and it lies nowhere else. When peace comes let's try to feed our workers as well as they are being be-ing fed in war. Let's not forget, and slip back into the selfish old ways. Let's not ever tolerate poverty and idleness, slums and squalor again. Let's hold fast in peace to the generosity, gen-erosity, the intelligence, the self-sacrifice and co-operation that we exhibit ex-hibit so eagerly in war. Constant International Visits. We shall have to keep up an immense im-mense army for a long, long time. Even a peace-loving woman like myself, my-self, who has suffered a great deal for her championship of the nonintervention non-intervention cause, can see that. We shall have to have half-a-million men ready to take to the air; why not have them visit foreign countries to bring friendship and help, steadily, as a regular thing, so that the flag that these countries have come to know through war shall become to them a symbol of everything that is forgiving and helpful. In war there is a demand for limitless limit-less labor, to rush the work of defense de-fense and destruction. We pay for it gladly, readily, and what we buy is blown to bits and sunk into the oceans by the hundreds of millions. Why can't we keep up this magnificent mag-nificent plentitude of employment in peace times, paying for roads, schools, bridges, libraries, until there is no hamlet In all America where learning and usefulness cannot be found by the humblest comer? In wartime we women knit thousands thou-sands millions of warm garments; we gather little coats and boots; we ship them to the far corners of the earth to comfort cold little creatures crea-tures who, in wartime only, seem so akin to our own. Why can't we keep that up in days of peace? There is no tiny, shivering Chinese child, buttoning button-ing a generous wool-lined coat about her, who cannot be told that America has sent her that because America believes in a shining God who said that all men are brothers. In wartime we take to food restrictions re-strictions joyfully, and the markets are filled with philosophic women who are quite ready to face any privation pri-vation if it is demanded by "the boys." In wartime we stop our cars and smilingly invite the uni- 'PEACE I LEAVE' If you haven't done so lately, late-ly, take out your family Bible and turn to St. John 14:27. Read those stirring words, "Peace I leave with you." Read on a little . . . "For the Prince of this world Cometh." Even in the hour of His own sorrow Christ prepared His disciples for the fact of His revelation, just as we must now prepare to make the most of the peace for which we are so fiercely fighting. And we must prepare pre-pare for peace, not in a militant mili-tant spirit of spiteful revenge, but with the calm knowledge that with the help of God we can make our world a little more like his Kingdom. formed lads to jump into them. Clubs are formed for them, so that their evenings shall be safe, sandwiches are piled up by the thousand, cards and games are collected. They must be protected from dangerous amusements, amuse-ments, they must be filled with good beef and coffee, warmly clad; there must be music, and girls with whom to dance. But in peace times, more shame to us, hungry and idle and shabby lads roam the streets at night and fall into all the mischief that idleness and poverty and cold and hunger and shabbiness encourage. encour-age. And we punish them for it. Love Is Power Behind Good. It is hard to see the light of God's law through our stupidity and the darkness of our vision. But it lives on; it inspires us in every bandage that we roll, every cookie that we bake, every sweater we knit. Love is the power behind them all, and it is to that love that we must trust. When a sense of helplessness and hopelessness overwhelms you, then remember that stronger than all the leaders put together is the miraculous miracu-lous force of prayer. Remember that no woman, her heart sick with anxiety over the absent sons, her brain bewildered and tired by the problems that loom vaster and vaster above us no woman ever interrupted interrupt-ed her dishwashing or her ironing to kneel down and say the old prayer that begins, "Our Father," without arising from her knees stronger in courage and refreshed in spirit. Every prayer that goes to God is a spark of light in the dark. It finds some bitter need somewhere, on the cold mountains of China, in the crowded huts of India; it eases some suffering, it softens some blow. Send your gift of prayer, if you like, to today's most heartbroken mother; send it, if you like, to the boy who is lying half-conscious in some base hospital, and have his nurses wonder why he is suddenly better, why he has fallen at last into a healing sleep? Fantastic to think that we can send prayer abroad, to spread peace and blessing among those whom we never will know, and whose thanks never will reach us? Well, there are many fantastic delusions in this world, such as that money brings happiness, or that a beautiful girl is always a happy girl. We fool ourselves about half the things we know, or think we know. But not about prayer. Peace and infinite good are as plentiful as the air we breathe, as close as the air we breathe. In every spare moment enter into the empire of God's peace, spread this union of prayer all over the world and perhaps, when the war is won, and the days of readjustment come, we will find it stronger than we have ever dreamed, we will find ourselves worthy to formulate the plan that shall bring us a little nearer near-er to the Kingdom. |