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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Twentieth Century American Public Address..... I have been struggling to study for an exam for this class tomorrow. I've had a rather negative attitude about the class. Listening to speeches about taxation and war propaganda just doesn't seem to quite capture my attention much. Although, as I was reading William Jennings Bryan's Acceptance Speech of 1900, I found myself not only inspired by the man's choice of words, but his straightforwardness in not sugar-coating the truth-- the truth of the gospel. Here is an excerpt from the speech.
"The young man upon reaching his majority can do what he pleases. He can disregard the teachings of his parents; he can trample upon all that he has been taught to consider sacred; he can disobey the laws of the State, the laws of society and the laws of God. He can stamp failure on his life and make his very existence a curse to his fellow men, and he can bring his father and mother in sorrow to the grave; but he cannot annul the sentence, "The wages of sin is death."
I think my mind will look for any excuse to not study this historical stuff..... Instead, I am pondering on the darkness and utter lostness of a life that has frequent inclinations to sin, in comparison with a life that may still have a frequent inclination to sin, but also acknowledges the heavy cost of that sin.
As I sit here, putting off studying some more, a JJ Heller song came on Pandora radio. It's called "Small".
Here's part of it:
"broken moldings all around

Broken people hit the ground
When they discover that you’re not here for our benefit
You love in spite of us
You use the least of us to prove the strong aren’t really strong at all."
For every time that I am inclined to sin and actually feel strong in the world's eyes, I pray that I would be shaken to the point of trembling at the massiveness of my Saviour.
Jesus, teach me to not hurt you by disobeying you. Father, help me to cling to Your word each day.
Amen.

1 comment:

TSHarrison said...

Amanda -
Great post. I love the quote by Jennings Bryan.
It's been a long time; thank goodness we have the internet. Tell your brother I said "hi" sometime.
Keep up the blogging...I'll be reading.
-trevor