Tuesday: The Human Outline in the Granite
WEEK 45
TUESDAY
THE HUMAN OUTLINE IN THE GRANITE
Isaiah 11:6-9
We saw yesterday that God has two hands: the hand of grace and the hand of judgment. If we won’t take from the hand of grace, we have to take from the hand of judgment. The early Christians took from the hand of grace and walked out of war into freedom and love. We are taking the hard way, from the hand of judgment.
I have stood three times since World War II at the place where the first atomic bomb fell in Hiroshima, Japan. Each time I have stood there with a group of Japanese Christians; we have bowed our heads in prayer that no Hiroshima will ever happen again to anybody anywhere, and dedicated ourselves to peace. Nearby the Japanese have enclosed with an iron railing a very significant relic of that awful death flash. On the granite steps of what was a bank building there is the outline of the figure of a man seated. Around this outline the granite has been bleached white by the flash. But the man left his outline clearly defined in the original dark color of the granite. His body kept it from being bleached. All that was left of the man was his dark shadow in the granite. It looks like a fossil in the granite.
Is that symbolic? If we use the atomic bomb in a third world war, will we annihilate humanity; and then will visitors from Mars, searching through the ruins of what was once our proud civilization, come across the dark outlines of a man with the granite bleached around him? Will that dark outline be the only trace left of humanity upon the earth? And will the visitors shake their heads and say, “Atomic war did it”? Overdrawn? Yes, of course; but there is just enough truth in it to make us pause and think and renounce war by compulsion as the early Christians did by choice. It is not a question of whether we will renounce war; we shall have to or perish. The question is whether we will do it by compulsion or by choice. For thirty years I have renounced it by choice because of my Christian faith. I am not sorry I have.
O Christ, I thank you that you are always right; the ages being witness. And you were never so right as in this business of war. We are being forced to your mind. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The seeds of war, conflicts within me, shall have no part in me today.