NO FAITH, NO POWER

When I was growing up in Oklahoma, there was a lake my family and I frequented a lot called Keystone Lake. Keystone was not a natural lake; prior to its creation in 1962, there were towns located there, one of which gives the lake its name. The town was to be flooded to make a large lake for which a dam was being built.

In the months before it was to be flooded, all improvements and repairs in the whole town were stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it were to be covered with water in six months? Why repair anything when the whole village was to be wiped out?

So, week by week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled, more gone to seed, more woebegone. An explanation was given by one town member: "Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present."

(The idea for this illustration came from Halford E. Luccock, "Unfinished Business")