Week 49 Sunday
Week 49 Sunday
Grace in the Dungeon
Genesis 4:14; Acts 16:25-26; Philippians 1:12-14
There are many who say: “I am caught in a web of circumstances that bind me hand and foot. How can I have abundant living under those circumstances?” In answer, I refer you to a passage that tells of those who “find grace in the dungeon” (Jer. 31:2 Moffatt). If you find grace at all, you must find it in the dungeon. You are caught—you are not able to get out of the dungeon; then the only thing to do is to get the dungeon out of you—to find grace in that very dungeon.
The people to whom this passage was addressed did “find grace in the dungeon.” They were purified in the exile, and became the instrument of God through that awful experience of national bondage. The dungeon became a door! You needn’t accept your circumstances as from God, but you can accept them as an opportunity for God to use them to make you creative.
A girl of twenty was confined to her bed for a year with a bad heart. The first week was spent in bitter rebellion. Then she read my book Christ and Human Suffering, and it opened the possibility of not merely bearing suffering and frustration but also of using them. It was a revelation to her. The remaining fifty-one weeks of that year were beautiful—the best year of her life. She arose out of that year awakened in soul and in mind. She determined to have a college education, and did so. She is one of the most promising and useful young people I know. She found grace in the dungeon. The frustration became fruitfulness.
Among the most beautiful of Paul’s writings are these lines: “This salutation is in my own hand, from Paul. ‘Remember I am in prison. Grace be with you’ ” (Col. 4:18 Moffatt). You would have expected him to say, “I am in prison. God give me grace.” But no; he puts it the other way: “I am in prison. Grace be with you.” I have found grace in the dungeon—enough and to spare—I pass it on to you.
Gracious God and Lord, if my circumstances become a dungeon, then help me to find there grace enough for myself and to spare for others. Help me not to whine or complain, but to find resources enough to pass on. For I know that your grace is sufficient for me, not merely when life is free and open, but when life turns into a dungeon. I shall find grace there. Amen.
Week 49 Monday
The Dungeon Makes or Breaks Us
Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:28-29; 1 Peter 2:20-21
The dungeon experience can make us or break us. Some it crushes; others it solidifies. People speak of growing pains or growing conflicts. Conflicts may be of two kinds: one where you come out on the lower, defeat side, and the other where you come out on the higher, victory side.
It was said of Jesus that he went into the wilderness “full of the Spirit” (Luke 4:1), and came out “in the power of the Spirit” (v. 14); mere fullness turned to power under the stress of temptation. The dungeon of temptation resulted only in his being strengthened. The Evil One plays a losing game when he succeeds only in strengthening you through temptation. You come out on the victory side of it. The account says: “Then Jesus told him, ‘Begone, Satan! it is written, you must worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone.’ At this the devil left him” (Matt. 4:10-11 Moffatt). When Jesus used the word “alone, . . . the devil left him.” The devil could not stand that word alone. When Jesus uttered it, the devil turned and left, because he knew that to tempt a man who stands on the word alone in a single-minded allegiance is only to strengthen that man. Every temptation strengthens the very fiber of such a man. He finds grace and more grace in the dungeon of temptation.
A gracious Christian lady said to another: “I know you dislike being ill. But I find the only thing to do is to get something out of every experience that comes to me. So make your illness give you something.”
I find it hard to have to wait for people, but I’ve learned to make waiting contribute by forming the habit of immediately turning to prayer whenever I have to wait. I find that praying keeps my temper from getting ruffled, and that I am also not wasting my time. It leaves me an open door out of every dungeon. The possibility of prayer is always open, anywhere, at anytime. If you lie awake at night, don’t fret—pray!
Gracious Lord, help me never to be nonplussed. If I don’t know what else to do, help me to turn naturally to prayer. Then no moment will be empty and fruitless. Every chink of every minute will be filled with the cement of prayer. So life will be held together by poise and calm and victory. I am grateful that I can always find grace in every dungeon. Amen.
Week 49 Tuesday
Finding Freedom through Limitations
Romans 8:26, 28, 35-37; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
We continue our thoughts on “grace in the dungeon.” All our limitations—our dungeons—can be places where we find grace. I have always been grateful that I went to a small, obscure college, for it left me with the sense of being uneducated. I suppose that those who go to great institutions feel secure; to mention the name of the great university they attended brands them as educated. I have felt no such security, so I have endeavored all my life to become an educated person. I gather from every moment, every occasion, and every conversation something that will help educate me.
On the tombstone of a man were these words: “He died climbing.” I would like to have this inscription on mine: “He died learning.” The limitation has been a liberty. I have found grace in the dungeon.
The person who has discovered and revealed to the people of Arkansas their wildflowers is a shut-in, a woman disabled with arthritis. Although her hands are gnarled and twisted, she has painted exquisitely five hundred specimens. Harvard University wants to buy the collection, but there is a public movement afoot to buy them for the state of Arkansas.* Inez Whitfield cheerfully held up her twisted fingers and told how, by the law of compensation, she was enabled to paint those delicate lines. Her cheer and her skill are beyond words; she has found grace in the dungeon. A shut-in knows more about the wildflowers and where they grow than anyone else in the state!
I want to pay my tribute of gratitude to the single people of the world for whom life might have been a dungeon of loneliness had they not made it into something else. Around the world they have married themselves to human need; have made every waif child their own; have brightened families, while they themselves were without families; have lifted crosses from the burdened bodies and souls of people, while they themselves have carried the cross of aloneness. They have found grace in the dungeon and have given it. Bless them!
O Christ, you have shown me how to take hold of the nettle of life when it stings, and make those very stings into sensitivity to the hurts of others. I am plunged into a dungeon. Perhaps I am in this dungeon so that I can see the stars. For I know that nothing can defeat me if I remain undefeated within. I thank you. Amen.
* The Federated Women’s Clubs of Arkansas bought four hundred of Inez Whitfield’s paintings and donated them to the Arkansas Arts Center in the 1940s.
Week 49 Wednesday
Making Irritations into Character
Psalms 22:1-5, 31; 23
Two wealthy women, whose husbands were in the lumber business, went to live in the northern woods. Both were from great cities. The one built a mansion of a house in the woods, had her maids and butlers, imported the people of the cities for weekends, and tried to keep up the general hullabaloo of the city around her. She decayed—the dungeon got on the inside of her. The other lived in comparative simplicity, took an interest in the people in their employ, became one of them, and lifted their level. She is happy and is the salt of the situation. She found grace in what might have been a dungeon.
There is no use fighting against the inevitable. Take hold of it and use it. This motto is over the desk of a high-school principal:
For every evil under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try and find it,
If there be none, never mind it.
The suggestion regarding an evil with no remedy, “never mind it,” is good, but not quite good enough. For that evil may be so present and insistent that you cannot help minding it. For instance, there is the dungeon of an unhappy marriage. It is impossible not to mind it—the iron of it enters into the soul every day. What is to be done?
Two things are possible: First, go over the whole matter anew. See if some of the reasons for this marital unhappiness are not in you. Be objective and relentless with yourself. Don’t defend yourself. If you find places where you are at fault, confess the fault to your partner. Leave it to the other one to confess his or her fault. Don’t confess the other person’s sins. Try honestly to find a way of agreement.* Second, if you cannot, then do what an oyster does: When it gets an irritating grain of sand in its shell it throws a pearl around the irritation. So you can throw the pearl of character around your daily irritations. You can find grace in the dungeon.
O God, my Lord, I come to you with my dungeon life. I know that you can either free me or give me grace to make the dungeon into a trysting place with you. You will make this dungeon a place where daily we shall meet and work out life together in spite of. I thank you. Amen.
* Irritations and annoyance are not the same as abuse. Those in abusive relationships can bring their character to bear in praying for the abuser, but they need not and should not remain in a situation of personal danger or danger to children.
Week 49 Thursday
Making Calamities Serve
Romans 5:3-5; Galatians 4:13; Philippians 4:12-13
Dungeons of various kinds often lead to finding grace there. Milton wrote his Paradise Lost when blind. Clifford W. Beers was once in an insane asylum. Later he wrote A Mind That Found Itself, and founded the National Commission for Mental Hygiene. The mentally upset owe much to a man who himself was mentally upset.
Charles Darwin is reported to have said: “If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done nearly as much as I have accomplished.” A man was set aside with a broken hip; while lying in bed, the wallpaper at which he had continuously to look gave him the idea of becoming a sketch artist, and he became a very successful one. He found grace in the dungeon.
A poet failed on the first night of a public reading and felt the next day that everybody was pointing the finger of scorn at him. He went home and wrote his greatest inspirational poem on the ability “to take it” when you fail. That poem fell into the hands of a man in the hospital who had lost both arms and feet, and it inspired him to become a public reader—and he became a very successful one. They both found grace in the dungeon.
A young man came to our Ashram armless. He eats and writes with his toes. At work period, refusing to be left out, he painted the side of a house by standing on one foot and painting as high up as his head with the other. He is pastor of a university church. He has found grace in the dungeon.
Dr. Mary McCracken is totally disabled in her lower limbs with infantile paralysis. The medical colleges of America refused to allow her to take a medical course, saying she could never practice. She went to China, took her medical degree at Peking Medical, stood at the top of her class, and came back to the very city of Philadelphia where she had been refused a medical course. She practices in an institution for disabled children—practices in a wheelchair.
O God, these people have all found grace in a dungeon. Help me then to take limitations of any kind whatever and make out of them spurs to life and achievement. May I do with my limitations what the river does with its banks—the more confining they are, the swifter the stream. Oh, press my heart with pain that my life forces may flow the faster! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 49 Friday
Great Movements Born Out of Troubled Times
Exodus 3:7-10; Matthew 16:2-3; Acts 8:1, 4
Great movements come out of dark periods. People find grace in the dungeon. Dr. Kenneth S. Latourette has traced some great movements born out of dark periods. In 1789, the French Revolution broke out and was followed by the Napoleonic wars, which lasted from 1792 to 1815. In the span of those distressing years, the following events occurred.
1792: In the year of the Reign of Terror in Paris, the Baptist Missionary Society was organized, growing out of the work of William Carey.
1799: When Napoleon was returning to France from his campaign in Egypt in an effort to break Britain’s communications with India, the church Missionary Society was formed.
1804: About the time that Napoleon was giving England the greatest threat of invasion she has had between the venture of the Spanish Armada and the Nazi attempt in 1940, the British and Foreign Bible Society was organized.
1810: At a time when New England was distraught by our attempts to maintain our neutrality in the Napoleonic wars, and when we were on the eve of our second war with Britain, the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions was organized.
1812: While American ports were being blockaded by the British, the first party of American missionaries sailed for India.
When the world is at its worst, Christians are at their best. In Harold Church, Staunton, England, is this inscription: “In the yeare 1653 when all things sacred were throughout ye nation Either demolisht or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley Barronet Founded this Church Whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in ye worst times And hoped them in the most callamitous. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”*
The Christian takes pains and makes them into pains of childbirth, bringing forth new movements when in the dungeon of calamity and limitation. Philip had “four unmarried daughters who prophesied” (Acts 21:9 Moffatt). They sublimated their spinsterhood and made it spiritually creative. They brought forth new hope, new souls, new movements.
O my Lord, you have shown me the indomitable way. Even in the hell of frustration and pain, you are there, inspiring, creating, and making victorious your surrendered children. How very, very grateful I am that the dungeon can do for me what the fire did for the Hebrew children—only burned off their fetters! Free me, even by fire. Amen.
* https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4035/4494633610_27378e3583.jpg, accessed May 14, 2014.
Week 49 Saturday
The Five Steps Out of the Dungeon
Acts 26:16-18; James 4:6-10; 1 John 1:5-7
Perhaps our world as a whole will have to find grace in the dungeon. As a world, we are suffering from self-inflicted pain and self-chosen bondages. We are in dungeons of our own making. Perhaps we shall find grace in our dungeons.
As I have mentioned previously, Dr. Pitirim Sorokin, head of the sociology department at Harvard, says that the world crisis is the result of the breakdown of a sensate order—an order that believed the only reality was that which comes to us through our senses. That idea has exhausted itself. It is not able to take us any further. Life must form around another idea. Sorokin points to the Sermon on the Mount as that idea. In order to make this transition, Sorokin says that society must go through five stages: (1) Crisis, (2) Ordeal, (3) Catharsis, (4) Charisma, (5) Resurrection.* This is an interesting and startling conclusion, for Christianity teaches that these are the very steps through which the individual or society must go.
(1) Crisis. As the old order goes to pieces, the person or society is confronted with a choice of going down with the old or choosing a new way. The Chinese have a word for crisis made up of two characters: danger and opportunity. Those two things are in every crisis. (2) Ordeal. There is the consequent suffering of having to change. This is the ordeal of repentance and reversal. Roots have to be torn up. The suffering may be acute. (3) Catharsis. This is the cleansing from old ideas and old ways—especially old ideas—that led to this bankruptcy. Repentance is metanoia (literally, “change of mind,” of outlook). (4) Charisma. This is literally “grace.” Sorokin uses the New Testament Greek word, for it is God’s grace we have to get, an empowering to live in new ways. (5) Resurrection. Life is reborn, individually and collectively. Grace has been found in the dungeon. Life had to get worse before it would get better.
Perhaps you as an individual will have to pass through these five steps to Resurrection.
O God, my Lord, we go through dungeons to open doors. How it must wring your heart to have to stand aside and let us fail! But you love us too much to let us succeed on low planes. Precipitate the crisis, that we may go through the catharsis to the resurrection. For we must be new—at any price. Amen.
* See Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (New York: American Book Co., 1937). Sorokin’s list does not include ordeal as a separate stage.