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Public Addresses            89

These are difficult days for sensitive and thoughtful people.
For as long as we can foresee, we shall be confronted with the
stark dilemma of a world where most of our problems are
moral and spiritual—where we may have peace and plenty
or else the demoralizing choice between incineration and
irradiation. In the Time Being, we have got to learn to live
daily and to do our daily tasks, without lapsing into a mind-
less routine or flying off into the flapdoodles of hysteria. We
can do this, with a certain serenity and confidence, with a
certain zest and ironic good humor, with fairly steady nerves
and upborne courage—only if our fives are in God’s hands, by
our own commitment, and if we are willing that our death
and destiny shall also be within His providence and grace.

Who trusts in God, a strong abode
In earth and heaven possesses.

Our lives are in God’s hands. The test for us is if we are
really willing to have it so. The genius of the Christian faith
is not that life is made easier or more exempt from the toils
and anxieties of the Time Being. Rather, it is the persuasion
strong enough to secure our firm reliance that

. . . neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord
(Romans 8:38-39).

If we are sure of this—or if we come to be sure of this—
then we can live even in this Time Being (which is all the
time we’ve got at our disposal) with as high a heart and as
steady a hand as any generation ever did, knowing that our
well-doing is not in vain, in the Lord!

Albert C. Outler

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