'The People, Yes!'

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote in his letters and papers from prison (Prisoner for God, Macmillan, 1959): In the last month or two I have learned for the first time in my life how much comfort and help I get from others.... We often want to do everything ourselves, but that is a mark of false pride. Even what we owe to others belongs to ourselves, and is a part of our own lives. And when we want to calculate just how much we have learnt ourselves and how much we owe to others, it is not only un-Christian but useless. What we are in ourselves and what we owe to others makes us a complete whole (p. 78).

Other greats in human history have witnessed to the same. Carl Sandburg's epic poem ("The People, Yes!") pays similar tribute. And Harry Truman, when asked in leaving the presidency of our nation whether he felt diminished by becoming just another commoner once more, flashed back by declaring that he was "highly honored to be returning to the people."

Covenanter L. Arden Almquist, after a lifetime of service as a missionary doctor and later as head of our world missions program, said in his marvelous book, Debtor Unashamed (Covenant Press, 1993), that he learned more from the African people than he taught them.

In my own life as a human being--not to mention my vocation as a minister--I can witness in my own small way to the same. It is people that matter to God, and all who learn to love and serve them as he does, even in their foibles and imperfections, finds not only the high honor of being named among them but the reward of losing one's life for his sake and the gospel's in service to them.

Ariana Paz has written of Carl Sandberg: "His words are still relevant today and his belief in the power of people to go forward no matter the odds is simply yesteryear's 'Yes We Can.' These are tough times for our country and for all of us individually but his words to me say, 'yes we will prevail.'"

All leaders, religious and secular, would do well to pray daily and earnestly with hymn-writer Fred Kaan:

Teach us, O Lord, your lessons, as in our daily life
we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith.
Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some,
to love them as we find them, or as they may become.

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 589)