Week 42 Sunday
Week 42 Sunday
Making the Time Process Beautiful
Psalms 8:1-9; 90:12-17; Luke 2:52
As the years go by, they leave their deposit of suffering in our minds, in our memories, in our bodies. We have seen how to meet and use these deposits. But many find that the greatest deposit of difficulty and suffering left by the time process is the fact of the process itself. To adjust ourselves to the time process and achieve abundant living at each stage is important.
Some people remain infantile and never really pass into stages of maturity. They bring over infantilisms with them into the advancing stages. They are misfits. Some who are growing old refuse to adjust to that fact, and are always sighing to be young again—fruitlessly, of course.
To be victorious at each stage, one must accept the fact of change and make out of that particular period through which he or she is passing something very beautiful and effective. For each stage of life has something peculiar to itself in possibility and achievement. Youth is not the only age of possibility; each stage is crammed with possibility of beauty and achievement. John saw in Revelation the tree of Life bearing twelve kinds of fruit, “each month having its own fruit” (Rev. 22:2 Moffatt). On the tree of life here and now “each month has its own fruit”; each period has something distinctive in beauty and possibility—childhood, youth, middle age, old age.
We will not pause at childhood—though it is the most important age—for the simple reason that children will not read this book. But as we go on, the message of childhood to the older stages can be summed up in a letter from a child to his parents:
Dear Mother and Father, I love you. You gave me life on earth in this body. I thank you for it. With all my heart I want to listen to and learn from your experiences in life. I know that from this moment henceforth you will be just the best parents you are capable of being.
Too mature? Probably; but childhood does say that, whether expressed in those words or not.
God, as we begin the adventure of living out each stage of life, give us insight and imagination that we may make each stage distinctive and beautiful. Help us not to waste our time in useless regrets, or in reaching for the moon; but help us to beautify the hours as they come and go, and to press the “signet ring of Eternity” upon each passing moment. Amen.
Week 42 Monday
A Ladder for Youth
Ecclesiastes 12:1; 1 Timothy 4:12; 5:1-2
We will begin with youth, the first stage in the life process, and give a ladder to climb upon.
(1) You are an awakening personality; let your whole being—body, mind, and spirit—awaken simultaneously. In the stage of physical awakening, some young people become acutely aware of their bodies, and especially of the fact of sex. This is normal and right. But it is possible to become so tangled up in sex thought that you become body-minded. This may degenerate into habits of self-abuse, and the culture of the mind and soul be so neglected that you become a mere physical hulk. You must awaken in your total person—in your mind and soul as well as in your body—or you will be stunted in important portions of your being.
(2) Find a Cause to which you can devote your energies and which will give life meaning, coherence, and goal. That Cause is the kingdom of God. “Desire first and foremost God’s kingdom . . . and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33 CEB). If you get the first thing first, then your life will come out right. If you get the wrong thing first, then nothing will come out right.
(3) Find a Person who embodies that Cause—a Person to whom, when you are loyal, you are loyal to that Cause. That Person is Christ. When you are loyal to him, then you are loyal to God’s Order embodied in him—the kingdom. The kingdom meets you personalized. You are not giving yourself to an impersonal order, but to an Order that has become warm and tender and personal in Christ.
(4) Make your life decisions yourself—don’t drift. Some allow their circumstances or their companions to decide their life decisions for them. They don’t act; they only react.
(5) Don’t revolt against the older group and then merely echo your own group. That is substituting one bondage for another. When your group is wrong, dare to be different. Don’t act by pressures, but by principles.
O God, I am beginning this business of living in a serious way. I want a Way. I don’t want to drift from wave to wave of meaningless emotion. I want a Way. If you, O Christ, are the Way, I will follow you through thick and thin, through popularity or through disfavor. I want a Cause—you are that Cause. I choose. Amen.
Week 42 Tuesday
The Ladder for Youth (continued)
Proverbs 7:7-27
We continue our ladder for youth:
(6) Stand on the shoulders of the older group, but don’t kick heads; they’re not wooden—at least, not all of them. Wisdom didn’t begin with you, and it won’t end with you. You will soon belong to the older group; then see that the next generation has a higher vantage point when it stands on your shoulders.
(7) Challenge everything, and then challenge yourself to make things better. The only challenge that will be listened to is a demonstration of something better. The protest must not be merely verbal; it must be vital.
(8) Don’t be impatient if the world doesn’t change overnight at your command. Some youth, because they cannot do everything, do nothing. Don’t be absolutist—do the next thing, and thus prepare for that greater thing.
(9) Don’t try to be a leader—be the servant of all, and out of that service you will gain leadership as a by-product. Jesus said, “Nor must you be called ‘leaders’” (Matt. 23:10 Moffatt). The attitude of the leader is: “I lead; you follow.” It is self-assertive and thus cannot be Christianized. Out of that self-assertive mentality all you produce is fussy managers of other people. Besides, given a dozen people in one situation, each of whom wants to be leader, then what? You have the stage set for clash, struggle for place. Jesus said there was one title he could trust us with: servant; “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35 CEB). As you lose yourself in the service of all, then you will become great by that very self-losing. But note: “servant of all”—not the servant of some, your class, your race, your color—no, the servant of all. Then you will become truly great.
(10) Be thorough in the small tasks and opportunities—out of these small tasks well done will grow bigger ones. “You have been trusty in charge of a small sum: I will put you in charge of a large sum” (Matt. 25:21 Moffatt).
God, my Lord, I am trying to climb out of unworthiness to worthiness, out of barren criticism to constructive contribution, out of myself into you. I cannot do this alone. I need you. I am leaning heavily upon your strength, depending on your resources, drawing on your power. Alone, I cannot succeed. Walk with me down the years, and I cannot fail. Amen.
Week 42 Wednesday
Taking God into Your Life Choices
Joshua 24:14-17; Luke 14:1-14; 22:39-46
We conclude the ladder for youth:
(11) Take God into your choice of a life partner. Base your choice on something more than physical attraction. Find a partner, if possible, in whom you will be interested and with whom you will be in love when the sex side of life has been dimmed and only the mental and spiritual remain. In other words, somebody in whose conversation you will have a lifelong interest. But don’t expect perfection, since you yourself will not bring it to the partnership.
(12) Youth is the age of struggle for freedom—gain freedom through discipline. There are two ways to try to find freedom: one is to throw off all restraint, and the other is to find freedom through disciplined obedience to high, chosen ends. You don’t gain freedom from the police on the street corner by disobeying the law; when you disobey it you are haunted by the police every moment. You gain freedom by obeying the laws for which the police stand. The whole evolution of morals is to take the police off the street corner and put them within your heart. Then you obey from within, and hence are truly free. Those who try to gain freedom by throwing off all restraint are free—to get into trouble with themselves and others.
(13) Start the day right, and you will probably end it right. Set aside some part of the morning hour for a quiet time with God. A doctor, after listening to the discussions of some psychiatrists, said to some fellow doctors: “I don’t know how you fellows feel, but I’d like to go and give my brain a bath.” You will need that daily brain and soul bath, preferably in the early morning. Fix the habit so that it is not a decision to be made daily. It is something to be taken for granted and fixed with no exceptions. When you do without your quiet time with God, then do without your breakfast as a penalty. Pray whether you feel like it or not—pray by the clock, if necessary. There will be a Hand on your shoulder as you go out into the day to begin your adventure with God.
O God, as I begin this day and this new way of life, I put my hand in yours. May I not miss step with you today. May I literally be “controlled by the love of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:14 Moffatt). May my strong urges be taken hold of by your love and turned toward kingdom ends. I offer you my powers as well as my weaknesses. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 42 Thursday
A Ladder for Middle Age
1 Corinthians 13:10-11; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; 1 John 2:14-17
We now present a ladder for middle age:
(1) Watch for decaying enthusiasms and ideals. Look out for a desire for softness and comfort. Remember that if “heaven lies about us in our infancy,”* then the world lies about our middle age. You are very liable to settle down, become safe—and decay. A middle-aged woman said in one of our Ashrams: “I’m about to gel into the kind of a woman I don’t want to be.”
(2) Watch the growing power of money over you. The person may gradually become a purse—stuffed and stuffy.
(3) Watch the growing power of the crowd upon you. In middle age, we cease being different, take on protective resemblance to our environment, fit into the crowd—and die of suffocation.
(4) Watch for a flare-up of sex. “The dangerous forties” must now be extended to “the dangerous fifties,” as the span of life grows longer. Don’t be afraid of this period, for it has its compensations, but watch and control this period of “flare-up.” If you are as good a person at forty as you were at twenty, you may take courage.
(5) Watch your middle. There are four signs of approaching age: baldness, bifocals, bridges, and bulges! Watch those bulges—you may have God fattened out of you.
(6) Be reconverted at forty, on general principles. If you were converted in youth, be reconverted along about middle age to take you through the days ahead with victory and a growing spiritual vitality.
(7) Remain a hero to your children. A youth said in one of our meetings, after his father had spoken: “I want to say ditto to what my father has said, only putting in some exclamation points.” Your child dittoes you, with accentuation.
(8) Keep interests outside of your immediate family, so that when the children grow up and leave, you will not feel lost.
(9) Keep a growing mind and soul after the body stops growing. “Education is change”—then be continually educated.
(10) Keep a living center—God—amid all the changes.
My Lord God, I am now getting to the time of life when the fires of life tend to burn low. O, don’t let them go out within me. For if they die, then I die. As I go along, I am gathering experience—help me make that larger experience into fuller expression. Help me grow in usefulness and power and love. I thank you that I can and will. Amen.
* William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1884), 24.
Week 42 Friday
A Ladder for Old Age
John 21:15-19; 2 Timothy 4:5-8
We come now to the sacred task of setting up a ladder for old age. There is only one way to remain young, and that is to grow old gracefully.
(1) Accept your age. Each age has something beautiful in it. Don’t fight the fact that you are getting old—use it. You can’t be twenty-eight again; then make fifty-eight or sixty-eight* beautiful and useful. Each age has its own peculiar beauty and makes its own contribution. I am fifty-eight, and I love it—I wouldn’t be twenty-eight for anything; fifty-eight is too interesting and too full and too adventurous! I am simply tingling with interests. And in the midst of these interests, there is a calm and an undisturbable poise I did not have when younger. Life begins at fifty-eight!
(2) Accept the liberties that come through advancing age. If youth has its liberties, so has advancing age. A wonderfully useful Quaker nurse said this to a group: “Beyond fifty, after my change in life, I found a freedom and a calm, and an interest in people as people, and not merely as sex beings.” Her liberty to love and help others was very real. Often there is a flaring up just before life changes, but accept the liberty to love more fully and widely when it does come.
(3) Accept the responsibilities that come through that freedom. Your children have grown up and gone; now see what you can do for other children. I know one woman who, when her own children grew up and went away, was responsible for putting through school not less than a dozen children; and she was not wealthy either, except in spirit and in good works. But what other wealth is there? If you cannot take children, then take other responsibilities.
(4) Never retire—change your work. The human personality is made for creation; and when it ceases to create it creaks, and cracks, and crashes. You may not create as strenuously as before; but create. Otherwise you will grow tired resting. Create, create, create!
Creative God, after my body has ceased its sexually creative function, may my mind and my soul be creative, for they never tire, they never wear out. This vehicle of body may not respond as well as before, but help me keep it keyed up, alert and fit, for purposes of the kingdom of God. I am at your service—forever! Amen.
* Today, we might consider that “old age” begins at sixty-eight or seventy-eight.
Week 42 Saturday
The Ladder for Old Age (continued)
Psalm 92:14; Acts 2:17
We continue our suggestions for old age:
(5) Don’t try to tie your children to you too closely—give them room. The children must have sufficient room to grow on their own. Say to them: “Never in the way; never out of the way.” Genesis 2:24 (CEB) says: “This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and they become one flesh.” This recognizes the necessity of young people leaving father and mother in order to grow on their own. Don’t interfere. Remember, you wanted liberty to make mistakes when you began on your own.
(6) Surrender to God your loved ones who have died. Do not mourn over them in useless regret. A mother monkey will often carry around with it the decaying corpse of a dead baby. Such grief is pitiful and dangerous and useless, but not more so than that of a human mother who refuses to surrender the loved ones who have passed on. One such mother, years after her baby had died, had enough milk in her breasts for twins; the doctors treating her physically could not stop the lactation. An understanding friend saw what was happening. The mother had never inwardly surrendered her child; it was still at her breast, as it were. She surrendered it into the hands of God, relaxed, and the lactation stopped. The mother was released. Many older people spoil their lives by useless mourning over departed loved ones. I know an intelligent woman who is making her life, and the lives of those around her, miserable by her useless mourning. She thinks it is showing loyalty to her husband, but really it is a species of self-pity.
(7) Develop the mind clear up to the end and keep fit for tasks here and hereafter. They tell us that the mind never grows old. The brain, the instrument of the mind, does grow old; but the mind can keep the brain fresh and alert if the mind doesn’t let down and sag. Compel yourself to read some portion of a good book each day. Above all, fill your mind with the Book. Then you will never be empty or alone.
Gracious Lord, help me grow old gracefully and beautifully, to come to maturity majestically. Let me fill my mind and soul with you, so that when physical beauty fades, spiritual beauty may take its place. Physical beauty is an endowment, spiritual beauty an achievement; help me achieve it by constant companionship with you. Amen.