Week 39 Sunday
Week 39 Sunday
A Trackage for Fellowship
Matthew 25:34-40; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 1:22-23
We have been studying corporate living in the small disciplined group. We must go further and look at the laws that underlie corporate living. There is a way to get along with people, and that way is God’s way. That way is written into the constitution of our relationships and is definable according to certain well-ascertained laws of association.
As you begin corporate living, let it be burned into your consciousness that life is social and that there are definite laws of association and corporate living. You can make a trackage for fellowship. Corporate living requires intelligence as well as good will.
(1) You must not try to dominate the group. That is fatal, for it begets the same thing in others; and the stage is then set for clash and strife. At the threshold of corporate living is self-surrender. “I cannot dominate her mind,” said a bewildered man who was dealing with a strong-minded woman in his employ. I told him he had to give up the desire to dominate and begin to cultivate the will to cooperate. That changes your attitude and allows you to see the truth in the other person’s position rather than to be always trying to get your position across.
(2) You must not try to use the group. It can be sensed at once if you are trying to use the group for any ulterior purpose: self-aggrandizement, self-display, business, social climbing, a desire to stand in.
(3) Acquire and cultivate the power to put yourself in the other person’s place. That imaginative sympathy is the key to life, in fact, is life itself, for life is sensitivity. One of the secrets of Jesus’ power over us is just this quality of imaginative sympathy. But it is not just sympathy in imagination; it is sympathy in fact, or, literally, “suffering with.” Our hunger becomes his; our bondages are his very own: “I was hungry and you gave me food, . . . in prison, and you came unto me” (Matt. 25:35-36). To the degree that we acquire and cultivate this spirit of imaginative sympathy, we are Christian and can get along with other people.
O God, in this delicate, difficult, but delightful business of getting along with people, give me skill and insight and patience—infinite patience. You are patient with me in spite of my blunderings—help me be patient with others, for they, too, have to put up with me. Amen.
Week 39 Monday
Further Steps in Corporate Living
Proverbs 25:8-11; Matthew 5:25; 7:1-5; 1 John 2:8-10
We continue our ladder for corporate living.
(4) Determine to hold no secret criticism of one another. A motto in our Ashram says: “Fellowship is based on confidence; secret criticism breaks that confidence; therefore we will renounce all secret criticism.” If there is no outer criticism, then we know there is no inner criticism; so the fellowship is relaxed and unrestrained. We must welcome the mutual helpfulness of constructive criticism, for the best of us are only Christians in the making. If we are afraid of criticism, we are living on the defensive, living by fear rather than by faith. Let us lower the barriers and welcome the worst, and we will probably find the best!
(5) Don’t look for perfection in people. You have to get along with yourself in spite of yourself, so make up your mind to get along with others in spite of themselves.
(6) Look on others, not as they are, but as they can be. That was the secret of Jesus’ influence on people. He believed in them when they couldn’t believe in themselves, for he saw them, not as they were, but as they could be by his help. That attitude will give you, not a querulous mood of dissatisfaction with others, but a constructive mood of expectancy of possibilities. I find myself responding to Jesus’ faith in me when I have no faith in myself. I have faith in his faith!
(7) Determine to settle differences as they arise; don’t let them get cold. Most misunderstandings could be dissolved by quick action. If you let them go, they fester. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him” (Matt. 5:25 KJV).
(8) Refuse to look for slights. Those who look for them usually find them. Have a great purpose that absorbs your attention so that you will actually not know when you are slighted. As someone says, “Having a share in shaping the world is much more important than our private happenings.”
God, my Lord, we begin to see that your way is the way, not merely of theology, but of life. For you have set us in relationships. To be is to be in relationships. Help me bring to those relationships your unfailing patience and good will, that I may be the dissolver of misunderstandings and the healer of hurts. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 39 Tuesday
Keep the Large Outlook and Spirit
Job 22:21; Romans 12:10-18; 14:17; 1 Timothy 1:4-7; 2 Timothy 2:24-26
We continue our steps for corporate living:
(9) Don’t allow yourself to become petty; keep big. When some elements in Israel would not acknowledge Saul as king, “he held his peace” (1 Sam. 10:27). A smaller man would have gone into a fit of temper. Saul was never more kingly than in that silence under provocation. “I’m not big enough, or those things wouldn’t hurt me,” said a missionary with a sigh, as he found his majestic lifework spoiled by allowing trivialities to upset him.
(10) Look for privileges of service rather than for your rights. The person who goes around insisting on rights never gets them. For rights are not something that can be given; they have to be earned. And they are earned as you give service to others. Those who serve others get more rights than they know what to do with.
(11) Don’t try to do people good; love them. Rabindranath Tagore says, “He who tries to do people good stands knocking at the door, but he who loves finds the door open.”* If anybody wants to do me good, I feel like dodging around the corner; but if anyone loves me, I’m conquered at once. A loving attitude opens all doors, anywhere in the world.
(12) Often decide with the group against yourself. For the group can see more objectively than you can. Keep the power to say, “I’m sorry.” Those who are always right are always wrong. By their very attitudes they are always wrong.
(13) If there is any basic injustice in the relationships in the group, don’t counsel patience only; right the injustice. It is impossible to have real fellowship over and around a basic injustice. That basic injustice will plague your fellowship and spoil it. Right the injustice, and fellowship will come naturally.
(14) Don’t try to have fellowship; work together for great ends and fellowship will follow. If you try to have fellowship, you will achieve only stilted niceties. But if you work for great kingdom ends, the fellowship will come as a by-product. Don’t work for fellowship, but fellowship for great causes.
O Christ, we thank you that in discovering the ends of your kingdom we are discovering one another. The Cause makes us coalesce. Then fuse us together in bonds of great endeavors. For we would not mull around on ourselves, but be freed for your purposes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Published source unknown.
Week 39 Wednesday
Organs for One Another
John 15:11; Romans 12:3-8; Ephesians 4:25; Philippians 2:2-4
(15) Remember, we are organs for one another. This conception of Paul (see Rom. 12:4; 1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4) will keep us from jealousies. If we are organs for one another, then the other person fills out and complements me where I am weak. If a person can sing better than I can, then that person is my organ of song, and I am complemented by that strength. If another can manage things better than I can, then I must not be jealous, but recognize my organ of executive ability in that person. Perhaps there is something I can do better than the others; I am the organ in that particular thing. Such an attitude will cause us to be filled, not with jealousy, but with pride in the others’ abilities.
(16) Expect the best from others. If you expect the best, you will probably get it; if you expect the worst, you will probably get that. “According to your faith, be it to you” (Matt. 9:29).
(17) Help others to help themselves; don’t smother them by being overanxious to help. Be a maker of persons. “Now I’ve really succeeded,” said a great YMCA secretary as he saw an Indian whom he had trained elected to take his place. Developing others is the only success. Don’t be a benevolent tyrant. Let people around you grow.
(18) Keep your power of laughter. When things become tense, burst out laughing on general principles. Practice laughing at yourself before the looking-glass. If you lose your power to laugh, you are sunk. Make your voice smile when you talk. Voice cultivation is cultivating the voice to express love.
(19) Keep the thought ever before your group that the group is disciplined by something beyond itself: the kingdom. The group must never become an end in itself; it must remain a means to the ends of the kingdom. If it becomes an end, it will become self-righteous and “more holy than thou” in its attitudes. It must have a constant sense of accountability to the kingdom.
God, our Lord, help me in this group to be the kind of person I want others to be. Help me remember that people are lonesome and need love. Help me give it unstintingly and without reserve. Help me take the initiative and not wait for others to do so. For you did not wait for me to take the initiative. I thank you. Amen.
Week 39 Thursday
General Thoughts on Group Living
Psalm 133:1; Matthew 2:1-3, 9-12; Acts 6:3; Ephesians 4:13-16
Some general thoughts in summing up group living:
(1) God abides in and uses group life especially. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). It is safer for God to use a group than to use an individual. Use of an individual may result in individualism in society, but use of a group results in corporate emphasis. Individuals find themselves in that corporate living.
(2) The group life must be organized around embodied objectives and not around hazy ideas, if it is to survive. The Redemptionists at Jerusalem lived on in the movement of Jesus because they were organized around the idea of equality to all. That idea is fermenting in the world and may yet save it. The Magi (see Matt. 2), another group movement, were stargazers. They came to the cradle, gave their homage, returned, and were never heard of again. Their movement faded out. It was organized around stargazing; it wasn’t concrete or embodied.
Joe Louis and Lou Nova met for a physical encounter. They represented two ideas. Louis represented the upsurge of desire for the freedom of a people. When he struck a blow, consciously or unconsciously, that blow was for the freedom of a suppressed race. Nova, having dabbled in Hindu mysticism, believed that if you were attuned to the cosmos, you could strike a cosmic blow, the universe would strike as you struck. So a racial punch and a cosmic punch met. The racial punch knocked out the cosmic punch. Why? Well, for one thing, the racial punch of Louis had a concrete cause—the freedom of a people here and now. Nova represented, in his punch, a hazy, disembodied ideal—the cosmos would strike with him. That hazy, disembodied ideal went down before the embodied cause.*
Let the group take this to heart. If its driving ideas are hazy, disembodied, and out of gear with concrete reality, then the group will be pushed aside by movements that have concrete objectives in which the members have a definite task to accomplish. Let the church also take this to heart. The future belongs to movements geared into concrete accomplishable tasks.
God, I would learn to submerge my will and affection in a larger will and a larger affection, that I may find my will and my affection purified, clarified, and enlarged by the group life. Help me lose my life that I might find it again. Amen.
* Joe Louis and Lou Nova fought for the World Heavyweight boxing title on September 29, 1941.
Week 39 Friday
Guidance for Marriage Relationships
Galatians 5:13-16; Ephesians 5:25-33; Colossians 3:18-19
While we are discussing disciplined corporate living, we will pass on some suggestions about making the marriage relationship the best it can be. The most of these suggestions are those of Dr. Paul Popenoe, as expressed in an article by Emmet Crozier in the American Magazine,* with added suggestions of my own here and there.
General rules for both husband and wife: (1) Don’t nag. (2) Don’t try to make your partner over. (3) Don’t criticize. (4) Give honest appreciation. (5) Give little attentions. (6) Read a good book on the sexual side of marriage; marriage has a physical basis that should be adjusted satisfactorily to both.
For husbands: Give ten points to yourself for every question answered in the affirmative.
(1) Do you still “court” your wife with an occasional gift of flowers, with remembrance of her birthday and wedding anniversary, or with some unlooked-for attention and tenderness?
(2) Are you careful never to criticize her before others?
(3) Do you give her money, above household expenses, to spend entirely as she chooses?
(4) Do you make an effort to understand her varying moods and help her through periods of fatigue, nerves, and irritability?
(5) Do you share at least half of your recreation hours with your wife?
(6) Do you take a definite interest in her intellectual life, her clubs and societies, the books she reads, her views on civic problems?
(7) Do you keep alert for opportunities to praise her and express your admiration for her?
(8) Do you thank her for the little jobs she does for you, such as sewing on a button or sending your clothes to the cleaner?
(9) Do you ever pray together, go to church together?
(10) Do you keep the shrine of your heart intact for her?
Our Lord, who has set us in families, and put us there to procreate the race, and to train us in the art of living together that we might make a Family of God out of the world chaos, help us begin where we are. Help us make the kingdom operative in the little things of the home. Thus we shall be ready for the Greater Family. In Christ’s name. Amen.
* Emmet Crozier, “Why Marriages Go Wrong,” American Magazine (June 1933). Some questions are specific to the social conventions of the 1940s, and might be asked of both husbands and wives today.
Week 39 Saturday
Guidance Particularly for Wives
Galatians 3:28; 5:22-26; Ephesians 4:1-6
We continue our study of how to live together in the family unit.
For wives:*
(1) Do you have an intelligent grasp of your husband’s business so that you can discuss it with him helpfully?
(2) Can you meet financial reverses bravely, cheerfully, without criticizing your husband for his mistakes, or comparing him unfavorably with more successful men?
(3) Do you make a special effort to get along amiably with his mother or his other relatives?
(4) Do you dress with an eye for your husband’s likes and dislikes in color and style?
(5) Do you compromise little differences of opinion in the interests of harmony?
(6) Do you keep track of the day’s news, new books, and new ideas so that you can hold your husband’s intellectual interest?
(7) Do you keep up your own prayer life so that you may meet every situation that arises in the home with the sense of poise, of divine direction and insight?
(8) Have you made a little shrine in the home where your husband, you, or your children can retire and be undisturbed for quiet meditation and prayer?
(9) Have you learned to say, “I am sorry,” or are you always right?
(10) Are you keeping up your church relationships and are you making them real, or do you just send your children to Sunday school?
(11) Are you the kind of person you want your children and your husband to be?
General suggestion for both parties:
Refrain from sharing such interests with other persons of the opposite sex as are likely to draw one into a relationship that is a threat to the marriage relation. We can help to keep ourselves from entangling alliances by never starting to share such implicating interests with the opposite sex as would lead to intimacy.**
God, these tender relationships of the home can be a shrine or they can be a snarl. Keep my inner shrine from all divided loyalties and from all querulous attitudes and from all worry and anxiety. Let me approach each day with confidence that “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Amen.
* See the note on Friday’s meditation.
** Regina Westcott Wieman, The Family Lives Its Religion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), 80.