Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

In Mourning into Dancing, Walter Wangerin tells an event in his childhood. He said he always told people that his daddy was stronger than anyone else in the world. Now, in those childhood days, a cherry tree grew in their back yard, and it was Walter's favorite hiding place. Ten feet above the ground there was a stout limb that made a horizontal fork, a cradle in which he could like face down, reading, thinking, being alone. Nobody bothered him there. Even his parents didn't know where he went to hide. Sometimes Dad would come out and call, "Wally? Wally?" but wouldn't see him hidden among the leaves. "I felt very tricky," Wangerin recalls.

But one day a wind tore through their backyard and hit the tree with such force that it tore the book Wally was reading from his hands and threw him from his limb. Hear the story as he tells it.

Then came the thunderstorm ... It was usual for me to dream in my tree and therefore not to notice changes in the weather. So if the sky grew dark or gave any warning, I didn't see it. [When the wind threw me from my limb] I locked my arms around the forking branches and hung on. My head hung down between them. I tried to wind my legs around the limb, but the whole tree was wallowing in the wind.

"Daddy!" As the wind blew he felt his arms were going to slip from the branches.

"Daddeeeee!"

Daddy saw me, and right away he came out into the wind and weather, and I felt so relieved because I just took it for granted that he would climb up the tree to get me. But that wasn't his plan at all. He came to a spot right below me and lifted his arms and shouted, "Jump!"

"What?"

"Jump, I'll catch you."

I screamed, "No!"

But as the wind continued to blow, he changed his mind. He let go.
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In a fast eternal moment I despaired and I plummeted. 'This,' I thought, 'is what it is like to die!'
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But my father's arms caught me.
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Oh, my daddy -- he had strong arms indeed. Very strong arms. But it wasn't until I actually experienced the strength that I also believed in it.
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In God We Trust

...E pluribus unum was approved for use on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. What many do not know is that the other motto that appears on U.S. coins and currency, In God We Trust, was not officially approved by Congress until 1956. The Congressional Record of that year reads: "At the present time the United States has no national motto. The committee deems it most appropriate that In God We Trust be so designated as United States national motto." Why 1956? Probably because the nation was beset at that time by fears of "Godless communism."

...Although the origins of the phrase are obscure, some think it stems from one of the lesser-known verses of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which includes this line: And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'

...The motto first appeared on U.S. coins during the Civil War, when Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase sent this instruction to the director of the U.S. Mint: "Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in his defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition."

...The use of In God We Trust on American money has been the subject of debate, even before the 1956 act of Congress declaring it the national motto. Some have thought it violates the separation of church and state.

...Theodore Roosevelt opposed it. Ah, but his opposition was for a quite different reason: He thought it a sacrilege to inscribe the name of God on something so common as money!

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