This I Believe

I’d like to start with a quotation: “The world is too much with us late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” I believe that all our mature years are spent relearning the truths which were given to us in childhood, at least that has been my experience. To me, there is nothing so wonderful as the pristine purity of a child’s heart, nothing more astounding than the pragmatic functioning of a child’s mind. I see, though, that there is a danger of my misusing the freedom and privileges granted me by the Creator, a danger to the extent that I run the risk of losing all semblance to the person God brought into the world as a child.

I have come to realize in my middle years that I must renounce most worldly thoughts and standards of its measurement. After many years of personal struggle, I am convinced of the literal truth of Jesus’ words that “unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” If I am a mature person, as I suppose myself to be, then I must return to the simple truths taught to me as an average child. In them, I can find the cure for my personal woes. And it occurs to me as a human being, interested in and a part of the world at large, that there lies the cure, too, for civic and international woes.

Somewhere, sometime, a man must ask himself, What am I doing on this Earth? I have had to do that, and to add, How did I get here, and where am I going when I leave? For myself, I can come to no other conclusion than the one I learned when I was 7 years old in my parochial school catechism: “I was placed on Earth to know and to love God and to serve him on Earth so that I may be with him someday in Heaven.” All the powers of darkness—and believe me, they exist—are united to drive from my mind and heart this simple precept. My fight is to hold fast to that belief. I can do so only with God’s help.

Therefore, I believe in prayer. Whether I am at work or at play or in my home, it keeps me in constant touch with God. In this fast-moving life, human standards are mutable, continually changing. Only one standard has never changed, as I see it, and never can change, because for me it is the standard and order of the universe: It is the standard of God. When I am in tune with it, or striving to attain it, I am justifying my existence on Earth and preparing for my next existence. For me, there is no other reason for being on Earth. This I believe.