Sign-Off

The date of this writing is May 27, 2015. Like the dated Pages for four years of daily readings, this Page is not written on the date assigned to it. The last Page of the four series was written long ago when the theme was emphasized to my mind. Pages were often generated by something that occurred on the day of writing but suitable to my plan for another date related to life, my wanderings and an irresistible desire to write to my family and Christian students, including their parents, about the meaning of life and the impact of learning for both the natural and spiritual contexts for life – with their overlaps and differences. One goal was to help rescue Christian education from the materialistic mold that higher education is sometimes perceived to have forged. Education is first for the person, and then for the occupation. When perceived and followed well, the Christian life is holistic (one) with mortal life the embryo of the person in nature to immortal life. In that perception the final meaningful earth objective of my natural life is completed each day with its Page. That doesn’t mean maturation is complete. There is considerable editing to be completed, with the gracious assistance of my long ago student, Dr. Sara Robertson, whose education concentrated on effective use of language and the tests of truth and evidence. We have much to do in completing the editing, indexes, and helps that will make this project more useful for persons offering some of their reading time periods to it – but this will point through 1460 Daily Pages, plus a Graduate year. With the helps there will likely be upwards of 2,000 pages – including supporting Pages.

That is not as daunting as it appears in that each Page is its own – designed for today’s life consideration and complete in itself for the day. The five annual series repeat ideas and conducts for life. There is deliberate redundancy so to review some preceding information while adding another dimension to each theme. The accent is to develop life quality in both natural and spiritual venue in the individual while gaining education for social and occupational life in a pattern that is personally satisfying and fulfilling. The guidebook in all is found in the Judeo-Christian Scripture, as authoritative for belief and conduct.

A major concern of mine has emerged from a strong feeling that the public, even many Christians (as observed in the responses of parents of college students), have moved away from education for the individual person’s development to the accent on occupation that will prove lucrative to repay the student for the cost in money and time to earn degrees. This has been a natural move as more and more employment is related to the formal education of students. The result has been, for many, success for professional life and little regard for the meaning of education to the worth of self in the higher context of life. We need to approve ourselves as individuals in the intellectual (cerebral) context of natural life, and to find peace found in pursuing that context in righteousness (right) in a holistic life. Even those who do not follow the Christian context for life need some humanistic (value) religion to gain a sense of orientation. That is found for many in meditation (prayer for Christians), in contributing to social benefit (service to others). Parallels can be extended. Thoughtful persons want to be men and women of integrity – the relationship of known values practiced in belief, motivation and conduct. Formal education often drops away from this menu in the belief that there are so many varied value systems that it will stay with a general secular context working with verifiable facts to draw a pattern of life in social (legal) expectations.

These Pages accent the affirmatives (righteousness/rights) of life. The negatives are found in the absence of the affirmatives (evils/barriers/inequalities/denials/and the like). The effective earth life, both Christian and secular, relates to the growth and practice of the first, the affirmative, and the decline of the second, the negative, in forming personal and social life – the one and the many. For the Christian the whole of life in achieving the purpose is related to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ (spiritual) that concludes with the hope (faith) in the award of immortality. The Christian is aided in developing the expectations of God in the maturing of the affirmations of life and faith in divine expectations and helps.