Monday: The Surrender of the Seven Kingdoms
WEEK 49
MONDAY
THE SURRENDER OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS
Luke 14:25-33
We are studying the mastery of perfectionism, the spirit that, when it can’t do everything to perfection, ends in paralysis and usually in doing nothing. Jesus insisted we be faithful in the little and then the larger will come to us. That is very healthy. No sudden jumping into everything; prove yourself in the little, and the next larger will be awaiting you.
Ivan Pavlov, the great scientist, at age eighty-seven, gave advice to youth regarding three necessary things: (1) “Gradualness.” Don’t be in a hurry. Take each day as it comes, step by step. (2) “Modesty.” Do not be proud; be humble in the presence of fact. (3) “Passion. . . . Remember that science demands from a man all his life. . . . Be passionate in your work and in your searchings.”*
Science comes along and confirms the gradualness of Jesus. Even full surrender of all there is involved gradualness. The surrender is once for all and complete as far as that moment is concerned, but one soon finds that in giving all there is an unfolding of all.
Jesus demands our all. So a full surrender is inherent. The whole of the seven kingdoms must be surrendered: (1) the kingdom of race, (2) the kingdom of class, (3) the kingdom of the nation, (4) the kingdom of religious loyalty, (5) the kingdom of money, (6) the kingdom of family, (7) the kingdom of self. The last kingdom we surrender is the last of the seven, self.
But in all these kingdoms we find, even after a full surrender, areas keep cropping up that have not yet been surrendered. We surrendered all we knew at the time, but fuller knowledge and light show further areas to be brought under his sway. So no one can say, “I have surrendered all”—full stop. The best that one can say is, “I have surrendered all I know.” That makes for an all-ness as well as gradualness. It sends us on toward perfection, yet saves us from perfectionism. It is stimulating and saving. It prods us but saves us from paralysis.
O Jesus, your wisdom is so wise, and your stimulus is always a stimulus to a further sanity. I can follow your mind safely and all out. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I surrender all I know and all I don’t know. When the don’t-know is revealed, it is revealed as surrendered.
* Ivan Pavlov, “Bequest of Pavlov to the Academic Youth of His Country,” Science, 83, no. 2155 (April 17, 1936), 369. (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/83/2155/369, accessed March 21, 2017).