Wednesday, October 20, 2010

I BELIEVE IN YOU

Gettusburg Times - Apr 17, 1926


I BELIEVE IN YOU
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

In the summer of 1909 Theodore Roosevelt and Robert E. Peary met. Peary was about to set out on the ship “Roosevelt” for his final dash to attain the North Pole.

Each man grasped the other's hand. Roosevelt looked into the eyes of the great and intrepid explorer and gave this as his final goodbye: “I believe in you, Peary.”

April 6, 1909, the North Pole listened to the waving of the Stars and Stripes!

Many who visited the World's Fair in Chicago in the early nineties remember that famous picture: “Breaking Home Ties.” There were the different members of the family, including the dog. But the face and figure of the mother predominated in interest. It silently uttered: “My boy, I believe in you.”

You can walk around with a darkened heart. Tears may wash its walls. The lights may all be dimmed, and the wind and rain of the outer world may chill each one of its chambers. But if there can yet be heard within this divine creation of the great God just one echoing voice of faith and love from but a single one beloved and that voice saying but this “I believe in you,” then nothing else matters.

All of us at times breathe with an instinct of heaven in our souls.

Empires have been lost, states have been dissolved, cities have been deserted, and choice human beings have stumbled, starved in heart, and fallen in their trucks—all because there wasn't somebody around to say: “I believe in you!”

How cheap and gross is admiration, flattery, adulation and mechanical applause beside this little touch of words, imported from the stars: "I believe in you.”

After that, life, with all its impossible tasks, becomes possible. And worries melt like fresh dew before the morning sun.