Reminiscing about peace lecture 1986

In 1986, I was lecture chair at the Nashville church and filed this fruitage report....

We just had our May peace lecture. It was a demonstration all the way around, as our board had originally rejected the idea of a third lecture this year. But at the last minute, our committee unanimously voted to ask for the special peace lecture. The board approved it, and Boston provided a lecturer, all in March!

About a week before the lecture, I was praying with Isaiah 43:5,6. "Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west: I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." Also Psalms 107:3, "And (God) gathered them from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south."

Our church draws members and visitors from about a 40 mile radius in all directions, so these verses were meaningful to me.

As I reaffirmed the attractiveness of the Christ, I looked up "gather". One of the root meanings is "to hold fast". To me this meant that all God's children, His ideas, are already held fast or present within God, All. God's activity is not bringing His children into His presence (as if they were separate from Him). God's children are already gathered in God, and God holds them fast, in other words keeps them safe and secure. The gathering was not in the future, but was already done.

Within the hour, a friend saw the lecture invitation on the door of my office and remarked that her Sunday School class had just heard a speaker on peace. I was able to locate the speaker in the next hour. She was a divinity student at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She told me that on Monday (this was Friday) there was to be a banquet with representatives from several religious groups in the community interested in peace. She offered to take lecture invitations to the banquet. She stood up specially to inform the group about our peace lecture and distributed almost 150 invitations.

At the lecture, God led me to one young woman to ask how she learned of the lecture. She said it was at that dinner!

God had already gathered this group together. My prayer helped me be more receptive to what God had already gathered and done even before our lecture.

-May 26, 1986 E. Moore