# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S6
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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4 OPENING ADDRESS

i the history of the pioneer days, the primitive conditions under
which our fathers lived and labored, the hunger and privation,
| the sickness and suffering which they endured, realizes what this
petition meant to them. They learned to know and to appreciate
that everything that belongs to the support and wants of our bodies
is the gracious gift of our heavenly Father. God heard their prayer
\ and granted the necessities of life to the individual, to the con-
\ gregation, and to the church at large.

“Give us this day our daily bread” must be our prayer at the
turn of the century. While our people have received temporal
blessings to an extent that they have become prosperous and their
temporal possessions have greatly increased, we are all the more
in need of the fourth petition. We need to recognize all temporal
blessings as undeserved gifts of God, and, above all, must we
1 learn to be thankful. Gratitude is an exceptionally difficult lesson
to learn. We are so prone to forget that all we are and all we
| have is God’s gracious gift. This applies to every individual, to
our congregatioris, to our Districts, to our entire Synod. God has
entrusted our properties unto us. He provides everything we need.
He maintains and supports us.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” We pray this also for
others. Thereby we include all those who suffer terrible hunger
and privation in all the war-torn countries. They are sorely in
need of our prayer and of our help. With this prayer on our lips
we recognize the enormous and challenging relief program which
God has asked us to assume. It is something in which we must
manifest active and sustained interest at the beginning of our
Synod’s second century.

“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who tres-
pass against us.” — Read the history of those early years, read the
\\ sermons which were delivered, and you must be impressed with
| the deep earnestness with which the founding fathers approached
this petition. They took a very realistic, Biblical view of conditions.
They realized the seriousness and the gravity of their failures
and shortcomings, their sins and transgressions, both as individuals
and as a church body. On the occasion of Synod’s twenty-fifth
anniversary the sainted Dr. Walther brought the pointed charge:
“We are no longer what once we were.”

“Forgive us our trespasses” must surely be a very prominent
note in our Centennial celebrations. We have reason to éelebrate
with penitent hearts. We are guilty of many sins and transgres-
sions. In view of the exceptional blessings which God showered
upon us so abundantly, in view of the glorious heritage which
He bestowed upon us, we should have been an altogether different
people, a people all aglow with eagerness to serve Christ and His

’