Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 35. "The Place Whereon Thou Standest is Holy Ground."

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 35. "The Place Whereon Thou Standest is Holy Ground."



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 35. "The Place Whereon Thou Standest is Holy Ground."

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"The Place Whereon Thou Standest is Holy Ground."

Now, really the meaning, the great heart meaning, of some of the words we are using rather freely in these quiet talks together, can be gotten only in that way. The words "ideals," and "friendship," and "love," and "home" need a life that embodies them, and a face that unconsciously reflects that life, and a tone of voice, and a mood under the thrall of such a life, before their real meaning can come.

And the meaning of the things we are to speak together of now, in this particular talk, will come in their fineness and depth, and yet in their simplicity, only as you, who are listening so kindly, will bring to "them something of, yes, much of, the sympathetic mood of those listening to most hallowed things, in a quiet corner, where only heart-tones are used.

"We have been coming in, step by step, until we have now reached the innermost holy of holies of these quiet talks on home ideals. The home is the holy of holies of the world's life, and of a man's personal life. The life-friendship is the holy of holies of the home. Now we bare our heads all anew, and bow them low, as with hushed breath and reverent eye and ear we enter the holy of holies of the life-friendship.

"Ideals" conceived, and believed in, and then woven patiently into the fabric of life, will lead surely into the one great life "friendship" that God plans for us. That friendship builds a "home" in which to abide. Into that home others may come only by invitation; and only those are asked to come who are sympathetic, and who help us, and whom we may help Now we are entering that home, built so carefully by friendship's hands; and we are to talk and to taste of its treasured sweets, and to drink great draughts of its strength. We have talked quite a bit about love. Now we want to talk about it a bit more.

Love is creative. It has creative power. It is at its best, and is doing its finest work, and is truest to its best self, when it is creating. It longs to create. It yearns to bring into being one upon whom it may bestow the ecstasy of living, one with whom it may have full fellowship, and who will delight in having fellowship with his creator. That means one like itself, for, of course, there can be fellowship only wherein there is likeness. That likeness must be full, if the fellowship, and the enjoyment both of creator and created, are to be full, too. This is the very life of love in its freest, highest expression.

This is the first great picture of God that looks out into our faces, as we open those rare old first Genesis pages. God is love. That word "love" is written over the heavens; and over the whole life of the race, tangled up as the life threads do get. It is the one word written under the whole of this simple creation story. God created. He had to, for He is love. The very words for God, so familiar, "Father," "Son," "Spirit," tell of the creative love of God, back in untimed, uncalendared eternity.

He longed for a being like Himself, upon whom He could lavish His love, and whose love would be as sweet incense to Himself. The man was to be a bit of His own very self in powers, in character, and in the right to choose. He was to be as really an autocrat in the realm of his will, as God is in His. With deepest reverence it can be said, God couldn't help creating man, and creating such a man as He did. It is the love-instinct, the God-instinct, to create.

And this very instinct to create, is a bit of the likeness of God in which we men were made. When God said, "Let us make man in our image," He was obeying the same love-instinct, the same parental-instinct, that He put into us.