The Litany of Shalom

The Litany of Shalom

by Glenn Harding

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

This was a litany that, the other night in Washington, I attended a group of people that are following through on Frank Laubach’s literacy work. And I don’t know whether any of you know Katie Bull, but she’s a very precious soul and very loving and outgoing. And I don’t know where she got this litany, but it’s very characteristic of her. And this group was really, I felt, was carrying on Frank Laubach’s spirit in a very beautiful and wonderful way. And she had worked it out as a shalom service. Shalom being the Jewish word for peace.

And she also had us sing that song. Do you know that shalom song? It’s a beautiful thing. But then it led into, after a period of sort of concerns for the world and so forth, to this litany. And since I just have the one copy, I’m going to read each line and then ask you to repeat it in unison after me. And I think you’ll understand why I feel that this is a part of our service today. Say it loud. Say it clear. Say it clear. Bread for North Vietnam and bread for South Vietnam.

Bread for Israel and bread for the Arab world. God is bread for the poor and bread for the rich. Bread for East Pakistan. Bread for West Pakistan. Bread for prisoners. Bread for prison guards. Bread for women and bread for men.

Bread for the black, bread for the white. Bread for the reader, bread for him who cannot read. Bread for the reader, bread for him who cannot read. God is bread for the illiterate millions. God is bread. Bread for peace, bread broken for all people. Bread for peace, bread broken for all people. Wine of hope poured out for all nations. Wine of hope poured out for all nations. The nations will come to God’s banquet. The nations will come to God’s banquet. Soon the nations will come. Soon the nations will come. All nations are already on their way.

For the war is over. Listen, the war is over. Hey, listen, folks. The war is over. Hey, listen, folks. The war is over. Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. Now, this is just a sample of the way in which the love of Christ reaches out to us all. And I love this because it makes it an affirmation on our part. You can say, why, this is ridiculous. The war isn’t over. But the war in heaven is over. And as we move into heaven, the victory is won and the war is over. And so it comes to this point of where we can move into heaven in the love of God, in the love of Christ, from the cross and beyond to the resurrection.

And this, of course, is where we need to find out about love. Because… And here I want to read this passage that you’re all familiar with. There’s no going beyond this. Faced with all this, what can we say? If God is for us, who can be against us? He did not even keep back His own Son, but offered Him for us all. He gave us His Son. Will He not also freely give us all things? Who will accuse God’s chosen people? God Himself declares them not guilty. Can anyone then condemn them? Christ Jesus is the one who died, or rather, who was raised to life, and is at the right side of God. He pleads with God for us. Who then can separate us from the love of Christ? Christ Jesus is the one who died for us. Now let’s just pause there for a moment. And just realize how eternally true this is. Now it is true that we often are unaware. We throw up barriers. We throw up mistaken ideas. We throw up all sorts of things, but His love is eternally there. Eternally there. And all that we need to do is to sweep aside, to open the door to His knock. And He is with us. For He is loving us…

Always. Always. Who then can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it? Or hardship? Or persecution? Or hunger? Or poverty? Or danger? Or death? As the scripture says, for Your sake we are in danger of death the whole day long. And this, of course, is a thing that is so true in our world today, that these dangers are about us. But what difference does it make if we meet the test?

We are treated like sheep that are going to be slaughtered. No. In all these things we have complete victory through Him who loved us. For I am certain that nothing can separate us from His love. Neither death, nor life, neither angels, nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present, nor the future, neither the world above, nor the world below. There is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God, which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord. What an amazing thing. Let’s all say amen. Amen. Now dear Lord, we do thank You for this priceless gift. This wondrous thing. The only reality. Your eternal love.

Now dear Lord, I want to look out through these eyes on everyone here, and know that Your love is flowing through these eyes to them. And dear Lord, I pray that the same will be true of everyone here. That you will look around you, and let the love of God flow out through you. To the person next to you. To the person beyond you. To the last person in the room. Take their hand if you… If you feel… What’s that wonderful song about… Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water. And all the rest of it. I wanted to get that. Because I don’t know without getting the music. But it’s grand. So put your hand… The one next to you. And remember that this is the hand of the… Hand of Him who stilled the water. See. See. Because this is the way we’re all joined together. This is the way we’re all one. This is the way. And it doesn’t make any difference whether someone accidentally hits you on the cheek. I almost was tempted to bring down some music this time about…

The… Of an old Negro preacher who started out… Remember… If a brother smoked beyond the left cheek, turn around and hand him the other. Please. If you can’t turn good for evil, what’s the good of being a brother? Says, when the angry passion rises within thee, say, Satan, go, get thee behind me. Then stop and count a hundred. Then go about your business. Da, da, da, da, da, da. It’s all right. Oh. It’s a great song. And because it… Fortraves that whole thing, you see, that comes out of the… The… Love there. But I told you that I was gonna talk a little bit about eternal life. Because, you know, with this thing that says that God sent His Son so that we could have eternal life shows that that is His desire for every one of us, that we have eternal life. But I wonder how much we know about eternal life. Now, frankly, I’ve never given too much thought to it myself until just recently. Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood on this.

You see, when I was a young fellow, I was not too certain what I believed or didn’t believe and so forth and so on. I was talking to a couple of young folks recently who were probably right in that stage of life, you know, where they’re wondering about this and wondering about that. And that was true of me. And I said, no, I’m more interested in the life right here. And I feel that if I live this life the way it ought to be lived, why, whatever comes after that will be taken care of. And there’s truth in that. But, you know, it isn’t enough.

And so then all of a sudden, for a certain period of years, things began to come into my hand. Now, I had not expressed any interest in this. But they came into my hand that began to turn my attention toward the reality of the life everlasting.

And now I can look back and I can see why those things were brought into my hand. Because they were to prepare me for the things that were to come. When I began to lose some of the members of our family and so forth. And this was all preceding that. So that by the time that began to happen, why, I was convinced by that time of the reality of the life beyond. And so, with that conviction, then I was able to meet these situations. Now, this is a thing that the Lord is doing for all of us all the time. Many of the things that we cannot understand that are happening in our lives are happening because He is preparing us. Do you realize how He tried to prepare His disciples for what was to come? And the last supper, you see, all of that discourse there was to prepare them. To tell them in advance. Although they didn’t hear what He was saying. And it was only later on, you see, that they recalled what He had said. When they saw how the events… But His whole effort was to prepare them. For what He knew they were going to have to meet. Now, I feel that the camps have been in this way.

I feel that the camps were brought into being at the time they were. At the beginning of the Depression. Because the people had been turned away from real faith in God and in prayer. They’d certainly been turned away from belief in the answers to prayer. And we knew that… And the Lord knew that at that time we were going to need this very much. And the camps came into being, in my belief, because the Lord knew we must be prepared for the days that were to come. And so, in the time of the Depression, when practically everything else was going down, the camps were coming up. Every camp that was started began to expand and to grow. And they began to multiply, just like the song books here, a little bit earlier.

And so, now this can be followed out. And there is a time now for which we are being prepared. And I feel that this wonderful movement of the Jesus generation, and all the things that are happening, is a part of this preparation. Now, some move in one direction, some move in the other. But you see, we need many facets. Because God’s love is many-faceted. Not only is there no limit to His love, but it is many-faceted. It expresses itself in many, many different ways. But at any rate, by the time that my mother was to pass on, because I had, by that time, become… Had the conviction that… In life eternal. I was able to… Well, I don’t exactly… I was able to be a part of a tremendous experience. Both for her and for me. I happen to be the youngest child. I don’t know that I’ve ever shared this with any of you before or not. I expect maybe I have. But at any rate… And I was very close to my mother. And in her illness at this particular time, I was about the only one that could come in and get her to laugh and to relax a little bit. And then her pain would be eased and so forth and so on.

And of course, we were also praying. But on this particular night, we came in and I asked my sister who was looking after her. And I said, how’s mother? And she said, oh, I don’t know. She said, I’m afraid not too well. And then I had a very strong feeling that I should stay. And so I said to Esther, honey, I’m going to stay. And our home was only a couple of miles away. And so I said, you take the children on home and I’m going to stay. And so I said, Glenn, since you’re here, I’m going to get some sleep. Because she’d been up with mother a long time. And so I sat with mother. And I tried to get her to relax. But I didn’t have any success that night. No, no success at all. And so, of course, I was in prayer. And then a message came to me of something that I must say to her. And I didn’t want to say it. Now, you see, I thought that I had released my mother. We’d been praying for her. And I thought that I had given her to God. But, you see, it isn’t until we come up against the nitty-gritty that we realize how far we often are from having done what the Lord requires of us.

The thing that is essential. I don’t like to say that the Lord requires it of us. But the thing that is essential, you see. If you’re going to let go of something, you’ve got to let go of it. There’s no two ways about it.

And so, when this came to me, to say this to mother, I didn’t want to say it, which just said, you haven’t given her over. And so, I struggled with it. And I pushed it away several times. And then I knew I must say it. And so, I said, Mother, you don’t belong to us anymore. This is the thing I didn’t want to say, you see. You don’t belong to us anymore. You don’t belong to yourself. You belong only to God.

And the instant I said this, all of her suffering ceased. And she fell into a deep, peaceful breathing. And then her spirit moved on out beyond with God. And she was closer to me than she had ever been in my life after her spirit had moved beyond.

So, no one need ask me about whether there is a life beyond. Because I know. I know. I know. Now, however, that isn’t enough about eternal life, is it? It’s just that it’s the reality, you see. But what do we do then? Eternal life. You know, someone recently wrote Brother Mandus. You know, in this… I don’t know how many of you get his Power Lines. A few of you do. But he has questions and answers at the end of that. And someone recently said, what is this all about, this eternal life? I’m not sure I want to live forever. I’m afraid this will get rather dreary, you see, and so forth and so on. Well, I don’t remember exactly what Brother Mandus said about this. Although his answers are generally, I think, very, very inspired and very true. And it may have been true of this. But it does make us pause and say, what about this anyway? Am I ready for eternal life? Can I take all the baggage with me into eternal life? Do I want to live with this little resentment that I’ve got forever?

Do I want to live with this idea that I’ve been nurturing and so forth? Always eternal life. Everlasting life. Well, my goodness, unless it’s filled with love, unless it’s filled with peace, unless it’s filled with joy, unless it’s filled with all of the goodness of God, including His mercy and His forgiveness and everything else, unless you can give all that you’ve got, unless you can surrender and so forth, who wants eternal life? The other thing is hell. So, if I’m going to think about living forever, I’ve got to get ready for it. I’ve got to be what God wants and where He wants.

And what He wants. Now, I do believe that in some way that I don’t understand. Now, maybe I better say this before I get too far here. Don’t think that I pretend to know all about eternal life, because I don’t. And I think that one of the greatest mistakes that we are prone to make is to form fixed ideas about a life beyond. Things that we know very little about. The only thing that I might say, as for myself, is that I believe that it is the great reality. But I don’t believe that eternal life is necessarily just endless time. I’m inclined to think that it is something that is beyond time, you see. That beyond space, beyond all of the limitations of the third dimensional life that we are living now. Incidentally, I understand that the Macalester Park Press has published a new edition of Glenn Clark’s book, God’s Reach. And if this is so, I’m very happy about it. Because that book, in some ways, gives a most wonderful resume of some of his most fundamental teachings that have lifted us all in CFO. And he handles it more or less in the level of dimensions.

Up from the first through the seventh dimension. Now, I’m not sure that there are seven dimensions. There may be 70 times seven dimensions, for all I know. But at any rate, Glenn Clark uses this framework of the seven dimensions. And they convey wonderful truths about things. And one of the things that he brings in is about dynamic symmetry. And I’ve been just thrilled with dynamic symmetry ever since I first learned about it in the camps, incidentally. Because dynamic symmetry is something that is a part of nature as God has created it. It’s… You find it in the way in which the plants grow. You find it in the… In the… The ratio of things in some way. The Parthenon, which is such a massive structure, and yet is so beautifully structured that it looks as though… When you see it in the moonlight, it looks almost as though it would float. I had the privilege of spending months in Greece at one time, in which every day I drove past the Acropolis on a motorcycle twice a day, going down to Piraeus and then coming back that evening. And then on various occasions, we would go up and sit at the Parthenon in the moonlight. And it’s a heavenly beauty. But the point is, what makes the Parthenon, this massive thing, look as though it’s about ready to float and to take off?

It’s because it is constructed according to this… This ratio of dynamic symmetry. And it moves from one to two and two to three and then three to five and then five to eight and eight to thirteen and so forth and so on. You see, it’s never quite the same, but it grows in a way. And with the result, the sea shell… I guess that isn’t quite what they call it, but in this book he has the picture of the sea shell, which shows how according to this ratio, that thing evolves, you see, and it’s spread. So it’s expressed in nature, all through nature in a perfectly wonderful way. But the point is that what it does, it comes out in an ever-growing and ever-widening spiral.

Now, this is the interesting thing about this. Some people have called it power under control. They might even say unlimited power, but under control. Now, maybe you can’t… maybe that’s a contradiction. Now, you better find out about that, Annette, because Annette told me that I said a contradiction this afternoon, see? So maybe this is a contradiction. But at any rate, this thrills me because this is what happens, you see. We go through certain experiences in our life recurrently, but they don’t have to be on the same level.

You see, if you begin to spiral up, you make a complete circle, you see. But as… but when you come out, you’re higher up than you were before. And then you go on and you’re still higher, and you’re still broader. And so you sweep out until finally you’re sweeping up into infinity, both in outreach and in upreach.

And so you get a hold of this dynamic symmetry that they’re talking about. And this happens in our lives. And I even feel that it applies to the negative and the positive. Now, always in the camps, we have emphasized the positive. And this, I think, is tremendously important. God sent His Son to… and gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. But He sent Him not to condemn. So this was a positive upreach. And yet we all know that there are negatives in the world. So what… what happens? You just have dynamic symmetry. The positive is always greater than the negative.

And so you move from 2 to 3 and 3 to 5. The 2 was the… let’s say the negative and the 3 the positive. And then the 3 becomes the negative. And then the 5, when you add the 2 and 3 together, makes the 5, you see. And then the 3 and 5 added together makes the 8 the new positive. And the positive is always the greater. And it is always leading the way. And so it leads up and out and above. Well, this probably doesn’t make any difference. It’s just an intellectual thing that pleases me.

I get sort of fascinated with it, you see. But actually, it’s just that the love of God, you see, is always there to lead us up and out. So as we look into eternal life, we don’t know what it’s going to be like beyond there. But we do know that if we’re going to be prepared, we’ve got to get rid of all the old baggage.

And when we do that, then we find that we’re in the kingdom right here and now. And we don’t have to wait for eternity. Eternity is with us. And we’re moving on with them. And so unless we are filled and possessed with the things that we want to go with us through eternity, we’re not ready.

Now, isn’t that a glorious thing? I just want to go back one moment to this fact, or this part. You see, what this does is that it encompasses more and more. We’ve got to remember that Jesus said, and in this scene of the Last Judgment, if you’ve done this to one of the least of these, my brethren, you’ve done it unto me.

He, being God-perfect, was able to embrace everyone, everyone without exception, and did so embrace all of us. We haven’t reached that point yet. But as we begin to move on this course of His expanding love, you see, we include more and more, just as this litany suggests, you see, that we include both sides each time. They’re all in the love of God. They’re all in His plan, in His purpose, until the whole world shall come to kneel at the feet of our Master and Christ. The only way that can come is when His love possesses us for everyone, whomever it may be. And when this happens, then we find that the contagion of God has taken hold of us. Dear old brother Rufus Moseley used to say he didn’t know why goodness shouldn’t be as contagious as smallpox.

It ought to be a whole… and it is a whole lot more contagious than smallpox. And yet a lot of us, you see, haven’t discovered that yet. Goodness is contagious. My goodness. All I have to think about is Frank Laubach, Glenn Clark. Frank Laubach was one of the most contagious people in his goodness that I… I think I’ve ever known. Because he’d spot someone, and you could just feel that person infected with Frank Laubach’s love for his silent billion people, you see. And you know individuals all around who have that contagion of Christ’s love. And this is what we must all become a part of, this contagion. So that no matter… Now, some will resist. Sure, of course. Otherwise, what’s the use of it, you see? This is our job. This is our privilege. This is our opportunity. And this is the road to life eternal, which then will embrace all. And we will all come to be one at the feet of our Master. Now, I don’t want to… I guess our time is up, isn’t it? And I don’t want to belabor this point. But I just want to say that I believe that this is what I’m… the Lord is preparing us for in our world today.

He knows the things that have to be met, and the things that have to be overcome. And He knows what is necessary in us for us to be able to be victorious. So, Lord, we pray for Your victory in Thy name. Will you say that with me? That we shall all do that? Lord, we pray for Thy victory in Thy name.

And all the people said, Amen.