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.
All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.
Now, race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.
...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
Let our lives be good, and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.
When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'
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