FFF 7:1 (Jan 1961)
Editorial: The Cover
The cover of this volume pictured a hammer crushing an egg.
Crushed! Helpless and so fragile. What potential it had for life. Now it lies crushed.
So rudely, so clumsily attacked. Yet it does prove something. It proves that the cold hammer is so much stronger than the brittle shell. It proves that it is so easy to destroy — if the hammer is big enough and the blow is hard enough.
Yet, can the hammer, or the hand that clenched it, pick up that shattered object and restore its symmetry? Can an instrument of any kind be found that will gather together that life potential, and replace it as it was?
No, now it is too late. The hammer is the victor, rough and crude. A tender new life has suffered a crushing blow. It can never be the same again.
Surely no one would be so senseless as to unleash such blunt destructive power against such a fragile object.
Yet, do you, do I, engage in this very folly with the saints of God? Am I always ready with the big hammer, the crushing rebuke, the subtle implication, the unkind word of criticism that smashes down upon some fragile soul packed with potential for God, and leave it dazed, broken, shattered?
I win the dubious victory of words and lose Christian character. Worse; do fearful damage to some gentle or guileless soul to such an extent, that it will take a Greater Hand than mine to mend the broken life, the crushed aspirations and to heal that which my clumsy cruelty caused.