| United NewsTM News of the UNITED CHURCH OF GOD, an International Association |
United Church of God P.O. Box 541027, Cincinnati, OH 45254 Phone (513) 576-9796 Fax (513) 576-9795 |
September/October 2001 Vol. 7, No.8
Crowns of Glory
The
senior citizens of United have contributed so much to us for so
long. They deserve our honor and appreciation.
by John
Bald
The senior citizens of the United Church of God
constitute a valuable resource for the Church, one which can easily
be overlooked or go unappreciated. The Scriptures plainly tell us,
"You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an
old man" (Leviticus 19:32). This is so we can learn to demonstrate
respect and appreciation so often lacking in our culture
today.
Many individuals today are more strongly influenced by
the practices, mores and structures of the times in which they live
rather than by their heritage. The strong tendency is to act as if
what is happening here and now is the sole standard of what is
right, correct, proper and acceptable. Unfortunately, this vastly
narrows the individual's knowledge base and his fund of available
information when important decisions need to be
made.
Nebuchadnezzar once said, "Is not this great Babylon,
that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power...?"
(Daniel 4:30). When he said this, he was doing just what I
mentioned. He was using the present as his only standard of
measurement and evaluation. He gave no thought or consideration to
the effort and labor of many other people who had preceded him, many
of them at the time of his statement being "senior citizens." He
gave himself credit for that which the efforts of many people had
made possible.
This is a commonplace occurrence with human
nature. We fail to recognize the contributions of others, many of
whom may be elderly or deceased, for the privileges we now
enjoy.
NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw has written a splendid book
entitled The Greatest Generation. In it he tells the stories
of a number of individuals, the unknown as well as the famous, and
their contributions made during World War II. Without those
collective contributions, all made by people who are today "senior
citizens" or deceased, this world would be a vastly different place.
You and I would not enjoy today's relative peace and tranquillity
had they not, in their youth, done what they
did.
An Outstanding Example
In this context, I am reminded of a truly
outstanding example of a senior citizen in the Church, now deceased.
She was Nina Kubik, the mother of Victor Kubik, a member of the
Council of Elders in the United Church of God. During World War II
she was a teenage slave laborer in Germany, taken by the Nazis when
they invaded Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. After the war
she married and lived in a displaced persons camp for four years. In
1949 she (being pregnant with son Oleh), her husband, Igor, and son
Victor emigrated from Hannover, Germany, to the United
States.
The family traveled with a group of friends and
acquaintances and settled as a group in the Minneapolis-St. Paul
area of Minnesota. This group of Ukrainians lived in close proximity
to one another and assisted one another in adjusting to a very
different way of life. In doing so they, quite naturally, formed
very close bonds and ties.
Later, Mrs. Kubik was called into
the Church and this markedly changed her lifestyle and her
priorities. She had less time than previously to spend with her
friends in the Ukrainian community.
As time went on this
concerned her deeply as she tried to serve both the needs of the
Church and of her Ukrainian friends. So great was her concern that
she left instructions that a letter be read at her funeral by the
presiding minister. This was done. My wife and I were privileged to
be able to attend her funeral and to hear her words, coming, as it
were, from the grave.
In the letter she stated that she
realized that in recent years she had not spent as much time with
her Ukrainian friends as she had previously, but she wanted them to
know that it was not because she thought any less of them. She
stated that she wanted them to know that the reason was that she had
found the "pearl of great price" and that she felt compelled to
pursue the way which was pictured in the Bible as that incomparable
pearl.
That was one of the most moving experiences of my life
and I was very impressed by her expressed concern for her longtime
friends as well as by the need she felt to serve the God she had
learned about in the Bible.
Honoring and Appreciating Our
Seniors
Such things as this
constitute a part of our heritage. These are the kinds of actions
which have preserved our faith in these traumatic times. We should
know of and appreciate efforts and examples such as these for they
have helped to make possible what we are able to enjoy in the Church
today.
We should speak often with our senior citizens to
learn not only about what they did as young people in a society very
different from what we see today, but also to learn how they came
into the truth. We can learn about the challenges they encountered
in living godly principles in times so different from those in which
we live today.
Many of our seniors could teach us much,
not only from what they saw and did, but also from errors which,
being human, they made. They can give good advice about areas and
situations for us to avoid. The value of avoiding grievous errors-of
learning from another's mistake and not having to live through the
consequences of avoidable error-is priceless.
At the
height of World War II there were approximately 15 million Americans
in the armed forces. Today thousands from what Tom Brokaw called
"The Greatest Generation" are dying every year. They constitute a
diminishing and irreplaceable resource. The same is true of our
Church seniors. We will not always have their examples before
us.
It is time to both honor them for their contributions
and to learn of and profit by their good examples.
Toward
this end, we would like to have each congregation, as scheduling
permits, set aside a special time to honor its senior citizens.
After Sabbath services would be a good time for
many.
Perhaps by doing this we can repay at least a small
part of the debt we owe to those who have contributed so much to us
for so long. UN\