If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Interpretation
The contemporary church must embody the selflessness of early believers to remain relevant and meaningful.
This quote emphasizes the importance of the church maintaining its foundational values of sacrifice and community service, akin to the early Christian church. Without recapturing this spirit, the church risks losing its significance and the dedication of its followers, potentially becoming just another social institution devoid of real purpose in modern society.
In practice
During a sermon on community service, this quote can inspire congregants to engage more actively in helping others.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.
Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.
Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.
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