The beginning of my life helped shaped my character, beliefs, and way of life. My parents, Neal and Durell Dickerson Justus, were Christians and I grew up in a Christian home and community. The small white Baptist church was in sight of our house just up the road. I well remember the summer revivals held in that church, which was also my school room for the first five grades.
It was on a summer night during a revival in our combined church/school building that I heard a sermon that so fit my thoughts and condition at the times that I forgot my shyness and walked up the aisle to shake the minister’s hand and tell him I believed his message that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. While I have fallen short of the perfect “saint” over the years, I know I was lost but was found and saved by Jesus on that warm summer night.
“Individual liberty depends on keeping government under control.” ~ Ronald Reagan
Today, our nation and the world need the only hope of true and final peace which comes from Christ, who was born into the world in the flesh in order to pay the full price of my sins and that of the whole world. He paid in full for sin but we can only receive full pardon and salvation by repenting and believing in Him as Lord and Savior.
I was a child during the enormous outbreak of World War II. Only someone living then in person can comprehend the great upheaval of patriotism and sacrifice that came after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. As someone said, that attack hastened the fate of Japan and Germany by America’s entry into the war. Sooner or later we would have declared war, but this attack and our great resources of people and material meant victory would now come.
I see the bitter, all or nothing, fighting between Republicans and Democrats today and feel a sad lack of old fashion love of country and dedicated service. Amid rising clouds of war and threat to America from nuclear missiles, our parties are waging a bitter battle for power, control of the nation and money. Battles for control within the party are bitter and divisive. Where are the patriots? Where are the statesmen? Who is protecting and obeying the Constitution? “Individual liberty depends on keeping government under control.” (Ronald Reagan)
