William Hinson, senior minister of First United Methodist Church in Houston, tells about the experience of his brother-in-law Miles when he was a boy taking piano lessons. Trained to locate middle "C" just beside the "W" on the family's Wurlitzer piano, he managed to learn one piece well enough to be included in the usual student recital. The evening of the recital, he strode confidently onto the stage, seated himself at the piano, then froze in horror. The piano was a Yamaha!

This is a metaphorical picture of where most people find themselves today. Familiar guidelines have given way to unfamiliar ones. Nothing seems to be what it was. The great cultural shift occurring in the world at large seriously affects the thinking of people in the most guarded citadels of faith and learning. Eventually it must overpower even the strongholds of conservatism and fundamentalism.

Once the astronomers' telescopes were refined enough to discern what was really happening in the heavens, all the dogma in the world could not reverse the inevitable conclusion that the earth danced around the sun with the other planets, not the sun around the earth. There is always a time-lag for the absorbing of truth, and the more conservative the institution, the greater the delay; but truth will eventually work its way over, through, and around all barriers. Meanwhile, everybody is affected, albeit in varying degrees, by the changes being felt. We are all uneasy to find ourselves sitting at a Yamaha when all we've ever known is Wurlitzer.