HAL BRADY: A Date with Destiny

The late Ralph Sockman, former minister of Christ Church in New York City, once said, “Ours is a day of destiny and we must rise to the statue of ‘people of destiny.’ We must act with speed and decision, but above all with a sense of direction.” Believing that to be true of our time, I’ve titled this article “A Date with Destiny.” And today I want to write on the elements of a nation’s greatness.

The first element of a nation’s greatness is the sense of spiritual destiny! Immediately after God spoke to Abraham about his land, Abraham built an altar to God. Whatever else that means, it means that Abraham had a sense of his spiritual destiny. The reason the Bible is in a class apart from other ancient history is because through all its human record there is this overtone of Divine reality. The Hebrews believed that they were God’s people and that God had a purpose and a destiny for them. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve read some of this same kind of thinking in the early history of our own country. Our early colonists fled religious persecution and came here for freedom — political and spiritual freedom. These early fathers and mothers were not all saints by any means, but were men and women who believed in and feared God. They founded this nation upon faith — faith in God and spiritual ideals. Writing in his book “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and may be believed that no Democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” And we forget that to our own peril.