ONE HEARTBEAT AWAY -PART 52

                                          ONE  HEARTBEAT  AWAY

   PART 52


(Mark Cahill's Book)
Ted Koppel, host of  ABC'S  Nightline, said 
in a commencement address at Duke 
University :

We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. "Shoot up if you must, 
but use a clean needle,"  " enjoy sex whenever and with whoever you wish, just wear a condom."  No!  The answer is no. Not  no because it isn't cool, or smart or because you might land up in jail, or dying in an AIDS  
wardbut no because it is wrong. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions they are Commandments.  
Are, not were. The sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments, is that they codify in 
a handful of words, acceptable human behaviour. Not just for then, or now, but for 
all time.

Even Ted Koppel knows that what God gave us was not the Ten Suggestions, but the Ten Commandments by which 
we are to live our lives.

And these Commandments are not set up to make God happy, but to make us holy, which brings contentment.

For example, one of the places I recently 
was invited to speak was the Officer's  Christian Fellowship, the largest club at the United States Military Academy at
Westpoint. I cannot even begin to describe what 
a blessing it was to be there. It was a humbling and emotional experience knowing how many great cadets had walked those halls, then gone 
on to influence the culture  of America. 

God allowed me to speak for an hour and a half, to one-tenth of the Corps of cadets.  What a blessing it was to meet these young men and women!  The army is in good hands with the 
future officers I met.

When  I finished speaking, one of the cadets 
gave me a book entitled , 
" Absolutely  American,"  by David 
 Lipsky - a phenominal book that follows a group of cadets through their four years at West Point. The author specializes in writing about college-age students for Rolling Stone magazine.

One of the things 

that he wrote in his 
book amazed me.               
He said that after               
visiting students at 
thirty different 
colleges around America, he found that the students at West Point were the happiest 
students that he had met anywhere. 

He was shocked at what he found. He had 
thought that all the rules and regulations there would make the cadets unhappy. Of course, 
there is a bit of moaning and groaning, but they were, without a doubt, the happiest of all the students he had gotten to know.

I began to wonder why that is.  But it is easy to figure out, when you think about it. If we live in 
a world with no rules, we actually have no freedom. We can't really be happy. But when 
there are boundaries and rules we have "all 
the freedom in the world. "  We can be happy people.  Does that sound strange? 


next post   Tuesday 7th November