Monday: I Haven’t Got the Guts to Do It
WEEK 44
MONDAY
I HAVEN’T GOT THE GUTS TO DO IT
Galatians 5:19-21
We are thinking on the mastery of stimulants. Unless there is something structurally wrong with a person, when a stimulant would be medically necessary, all taking of narcotics and pick-me-ups is a sign of mental or spiritual or character weakness. They are crutches for lame ducks, and self-defeating, for all pick-me-ups end in let-me-downs. We call them hangovers. The beverage makes you average, and below.
Irving Hoffman in the Hollywood Reporter puts it this way:
If you are a married man who absolutely must drink booze, start a saloon in your own house. Give your wife $20 to buy a gallon of whiskey. There are 123 ounces in a gallon. Buy your drinks at retail from your wife. When the first gallon is gone, your wife will have nearly $60 to put in the bank and $20 to start business again. If you live ten years, buy all your whiskey from your wife, and then die with snakes in your boots, your wife will have enough to bury you respectably, bring up your children, buy a house and lot, marry a decent man, and forget all about you.*
There is more truth than humor in that!
A friend of mine asked a fellow church member why he wasn’t in church for the last two Sundays; didn’t he like the preacher? “Oh, yes, I do. I like him immensely. The fact is that when I hear him preach, I feel like going home and uncorking every bottle I’ve got in the cellar and pouring out the stuff. But I haven’t got the guts to do it, so I stay away from church on Sunday.” One touch of Christ at firsthand; and he’d walk up to that problem and master it. But bottles had him bottled up, less than a man.
A woman surrendered herself to Christ, rose from her knees, opened her purse, handed me her whisky flask, her gold cigarette case, and her sleeping tablets all at one time, and said very simply: “I don’t need these now.” And she didn’t. She had the Real Thing, so the artificial dropped away. It isn’t smart to drink; it’s weak, an escape mentality, dodging out of problems into insensibility. It’s a fool’s business, and don’t let it fool you into being a fool.
O Christ, you lift me up, and there is no letdown afterward. In you I am up and always up. In you I find a satisfaction with no worm eating at its heart. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall obey the laws of health and then depend on Christ alone for stimulus.
* No independent source was found for this quotation. It was published in the 1955 edition with permission from Irving Hoffman.