Week 34 Sunday
Week 34 Sunday
The Question of Unmerited Suffering
1 Peter 4:12-19
We come now to another type of discipline—the discipline of circumstances and unmerited suffering. We have been considering a chosen discipline, something that we impose on ourselves. But what about disciplines we do not choose, things we are compelled to bear without our choices?
A discerning friend, after listening to the message on the Way—how it fitted into life and life fitted into it—said, “The message of the Way is too neat. What about the tragedies of life, when life doesn’t come out so neatly?” He did well to call our attention to this phase. Our answers cannot be too neat, for life isn’t too neat. You find stark tragedy that doesn’t make sense, doesn’t add up.
This is one answer: the way of refusing to recognize anything as evil. Meet suffering and pain and catastrophe with a barrage of mental affirmation of the good. This method has a very great truth in it. It is better than affirming evil as evil, suffering as suffering, and letting it go as that. You can get rid of a great deal of suffering and evil by simply affirming them away; “a great deal,” but not all. And that residue that cannot be affirmed away is the rock upon which many go to pieces, physically and spiritually. The Way must be able to answer everything, including that residue. Can it?
Yes, for the Way never asks you to affirm away all evil. You can affirm away a great many physical and spiritual evils that are rooted in wrong mental attitudes, but there are structural diseases that are facts, and no amount of mental suggestions can change those facts. Functional diseases can be removed by affirmation, but structural diseases can be alleviated only by affirmation.
What, then, is the answer of the Way? It is this: God wills to heal all diseases—they are not the will of God. God heals through surgery, through medicine, through climate, through mental suggestion, through deliverance from mental attitudes that produce disease, through the direct operation of the Spirit upon our bodies, and through the final cure—the resurrection.
O Christ, I know, I know that disease and evil are not your will. They do not fit into your kingdom. They cannot be a part of your final purpose. Show me the Way to overcome them. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Though I must pass through the thick of trouble, thou wilt preserve me” (Ps. 138:7 Moffatt).
Week 34 Monday
You Can Use Suffering
Philippians 1:12-14; 2 Timothy 3:10-12
The Way recognizes that some diseases can be gotten rid of now, but some will have to await the final cure in the resurrection. The Way would abolish all evil of the body and mind, but there is a residue that must await the final cure. The mortal frame breaks down finally in a mortal world; we are not constructed to be eternally here.
But the Way offers this possibility for the residue that cannot now be remedied: You can use it. You can take it up into the purpose of your life and make it contribute to the rest of life. There is no pain, no suffering, no frustration, and no disappointment that cannot be cured or taken up and used for higher ends. In either case, you have a way out. You are relieved of it or enriched by it. You are not nonplussed; the Christian never is. Christians always have a way out. We are never stymied, for if we can’t do this, we can do that, both equally good in the final results. The Way always has a way.
This is one of the essential characteristics of the Way, and here it is unique. Hinduism and Buddhism explain everything and leave everything as before. The Way explains little and changes everything in sight, for its answer is not a verbal answer; it is a vital answer.
An architect who made a beautiful city in an Arizona desert told me that the architecture of an area is determined by the lack of materials. Because they can’t get those materials, they have to take others, and these determine the architecture. The lack produces the constructive type; they make their lacks work. You can make your lacks work; you can make them drive you in new directions.
A lack of attractiveness might drive someone into constructive usefulness, for beauty can be a snare that keeps us from achieving. Beautiful or not, those who turn their energies to accomplishment are successful. Many people who lack talents decide to make the most of what they have; they offer themselves to God, have their existing talents heightened, and go beyond other people more richly endowed. Their lacks determine their architecture. Japanese Christians in desert camps made artistic things out of cabbage leaves, and Christmas cards were beautified by sagebrush—all they had.
O Christ, your lacks too were made into beauty. You glorified a carpenter’s shop, made the commonplace into the sacred, made of the hillsides a temple and a home, and finally on a cross, made the place of a skull into the pilgrimage place of the world. Help me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The sufferer is saved by suffering only when the suffering is used for good.
Week 34 Tuesday
Life Is Determined More by Reactions
Romans 8:35-39
We saw yesterday that the lacks of life could determine the architecture of life. A young army officer said this, “Weather, in war, is always favorable, if you know how to use it.” That is the point: if you know how to use it. The fact is that everything that comes to you in life is favorable, if you know how to use it. Everything, except one thing: your own personal sin. That is never favorable; its results are always evil. And yet even that can be made into usefulness. God can help you to use even your sins, now forgiven and conquered, to help others in their moral battles.
Life is determined perhaps more by reactions than by actions. Life comes to you without your acting, it forces situations upon you without your asking or your acting. It is then that the reaction counts. You can react in self-pity and in frustration; or you can react with confidence and courage and make the evil thing make you better. Its origin may be evil, but by the time it gets through you its destination is good; you have turned evil into good.
A woman of culture surrendered herself to God, and then troubles began to pile in: her husband was more and more unresponsive, and her daughter, a brilliant girl, went to a mental hospital. The woman brought them both back through her marvelous spirit. The daughter, restored by her mother’s love and faith, said, “Mother, everything is poured on you. You get over one thing and then it’s another. But you sit there and smile. You’re wonderful.” She is. This is how the mother sums it up, “Nothing hurts me now. I have power to come back from anything.” Her teeth were falling out; the dentist said nothing could be done. She surrendered the matter to God, prayed, and her teeth tightened up. “You’ll die with them,” said the dentist in astonishment. It was this woman’s reactions that made all kinds of weather serve her. Nothing hurt her; everything helped her.
Edwin Markham says that “sorrow stretches our hearts for joy.”* It does, and more—it stretches our hearts for new achievements, for new usefulness. Sorrow plows the field for God’s sowing and our harvest.
I thank you, O Christ, that I can be saved from all self-pity and all frustration. I shall react to whatever comes in your way. And your way is the way of making everything serve. Even a cross serves, and the worst becomes the best. I follow for I see. I am unafraid. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Who turns a rock into a pool, flint into fountains!” (Ps. 114:8 Moffatt).
*Edwin Markham (1852–1940) was an American poet and Poet Laureate of Oregon (1923–31). No published source was located for this quotation.
Week 34 Wednesday
Blocks Become Blessings
2 Corinthians 7:4-6; Galatians 4:13
We said yesterday that it is not what happens to you but your reactions that determine the result. The same thing may happen to two people. One reacts in one way, the other in another. The results are entirely different.
Jesus planned for quiet with God, but the crowds broke into his plans for quiet. “He welcomed them” (Luke 9:11 Moffatt)—welcomed them when they broke into his plans. And more, he “spoke to them of the Reign of God, and cured those who needed to be healed,” and he fed them. The greatest thing there was not the preaching of the Reign, or the healing, or the feeding; it was the Spirit through it all, the Spirit that could take an interruption and make it into an interpretation. That Spirit lives on after the immediate actions die away. Jesus got back to his prayer hour; he didn’t allow the local interruptions to interfere permanently with his long-range purposes. And then the prayer hour carried within it the victory of the interruption. The reaction was the reward.
The account again says, “The Pharisees . . . plotted against him. . . . But as Jesus knew of it he retired from the spot” (Matt. 12:15 Moffatt). He could beat a strategic retreat and bide his time. The Way is not the way of the bulldozer, plowing roughshod over everything, but of the stream that runs around obstacles and always gets there.
A detour is the shortest way around an impossible block. A detour can be made into a period of fretfulness or fruitfulness. You and I received the gospel because of a blocking (“The Holy Spirit having stopped them” [Acts 16:6 Moffatt]); Paul turned from Asia to Europe, and as a result, the gospel came through Europe to us. We are the result of a blocking. You can make all your blockings a blessing to somebody and most of all to yourself. Paul said, “My affairs have really tended to advance the gospel” (Phil. 1:12 Moffatt), and yet he wrote that from prison.
Christians under trouble don’t break up; we break out.
O Christ, I thank you for this victorious way of life. Nothing stops it—permanently. For it has an incorrigible victory within it. Help me to take this way of meeting life. Then I too shall be incorrigibly victorious. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “At the Flood the Eternal was enthroned as King . . . bestowing strength upon his people” (Ps. 29:10-11 Moffatt).
Week 34 Thursday
He Bore Me Away into a Desert
Acts 16:25-34
We continue our study of the Incorrigible Way.
John says, “I . . . found myself in the island called Patmos, for adhering to God’s word and the testimony of Jesus. . . . I found myself rapt in the Spirit, and I heard . . . ” (Rev. 1:9-10 Moffatt). He was isolated because he was true, but that isolation brought revelation. Shut off from people, John was open to God. He couldn’t see any future for himself on a lonely island, and yet he saw the whole future of humankind. Islands of isolation are good listening posts. Shut off from the presence and the voices of the world, yon can hear God more easily. When the present offers you little on your island isolation, the future will offer you everything.
Again, John said, “So he bore me away rapt in the Spirit to the desert, and there I saw . . . ” (Rev. 17:3 Moffatt). John was not only on an island now; he was in a desert on the island. Within the isolation was awareness. Sometimes our isolations are hard to bear, but the apparent barrenness that also comes with isolation is harder to bear. Often isolation seems to get us nowhere and bring us nothing. But John “saw”—what?—the downfall of the empires of the world! In the barren periods, we may do little, but we can see God do much, everything. And what does it matter whether we do things or see God do them? We sometimes think we and our work are indispensable. Our work is dispensable. Our union with God is the one thing that matters. If you are “in the Spirit,” in the will and purpose of God, then you are fulfilling your life purpose, whether you are in a desert or elsewhere.
The hymn “Lord, We Are Able” is translated into an African language as “Lord, We Can Take It.” That’s it, “We are able” to do things, or “we can take it” when we can’t do things and life does things to us, such as setting us down in a desert. For “we can take it” and use it. The Chinese have a saying, “I can eat bitter.” We can eat the bitter, assimilate it, and make it contribute. When you are on the Way, you can eat bitter, for the bitter is often the disguised better.
O living Christ, you too ate bitter, even the bitterness of the cross. That bitterness in the root became sweetness in the fruit. That Calvary became Easter morning. I want to make all my bitter into the better, for me and for others. Then shall I live abundantly. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “His feet were forced into fetters . . . till the promise of the Eternal came true, the promise that tested him” (Ps. 105:18-19 Moffatt).
Week 34 Friday
In the Darkness
Isaiah 37:3-7
Let us look at another passage, “I will grant him [the conqueror] to see the Morning-star” (Rev. 2:28 Moffatt). The conqueror sees the Morning Star—Christ—in every dark situation. Kagawa, the great Japanese Christian, said, “In the darkness I found God face to face.”* “Go out to the valley,” said God to Ezekiel, “and I’ll speak to you there” (Ezek. 3:22 CEB). God speaks to us in dark valleys; there we find God face to face. So “whoever is walking in the dark, without a ray of light, let him have confidence in the Eternal, and lean upon his God” (Isa. 50:10 Moffatt). You can see the stars, even in the daytime, from the bottom of a well.
Nitrates come out of the most barren part of Chile; the barrenness enriches the world. The dark clouds hold the rain that makes things grow. Incidentally, the clouds are dark only to you. In an airplane above the clouds, there are no dark clouds; all clouds are white from above. There are no dark happenings when viewed from above. From an airplane, I saw a boat twisting here and there, going down a broad river in Brazil. I supposed the people on board wondered why this unnecessary waste of time in twisting to this side and that. But from above, I could see where the sandbanks and deep waters were, and that the pilot was picking out deep waters for safety. So he had to twist back and forth. And so the long way round was the short way home. Your frustration may be guiding you past a sandbank. You will see it all clearly someday—from above.
The South American Indians like bitter medicine. They don’t think that sweet medicine is beneficial. They like iodine to be put into wounds, though it smarts. “It hurts good,” they say. You can make your hurts good or bad by the way you take them. If your hurt makes you nourish self-pity, then it “hurts bad”; but if your hurt drives you to dedication, then it “hurts good”—it is healing you. To put it in other words, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your imagination.”** Your imagination is now free to understand and sympathize with others.
O Christ, you are teaching me to understand, to understand by undergoing. I could never learn otherwise. So let it hurt—good. For I would have my imagination trained to understand, and to enter into the pain of others. So give me my lessons and help me learn. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Before my trouble I went wrong, now I do thy bidding” (Ps. 119:67 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
**Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923/1976), 52. The original quotation is “Your pain . . . encloses your understanding.”
Week 34 Saturday
Making Grief Glorious
Isaiah 49:21; 58:10-11
Jesus said, “Better get into Life a cripple” (Mark 9:45 Moffatt). Here Jesus describes those who limp into Life. But the point is, they get into Life.
There are those who, made for love, are denied a home and children. They are inwardly bitter and frustrated. They limp into life, and then death. There are those, however, who, denied the expression of sex creation and a home, sublimate their sex activity into creative work, parenting the orphaned and creating newborn souls. They are fruitful on another level. I quoted before, “I am one of those old maids you have helped to see the way to take life and love it!” This woman is entering “into Life a cripple; she is limping into Life. But she is doing it joyfully and richly. And when you look at that life, you find the limp is gone! This woman is no “old maid”; she is eternally a mother, mothering hopes and love and newborn souls. Parenthood, on the physical level, lasts for about twenty-five years, but this larger parenthood lasts throughout life and eternity!
A mother lost her son, turned inward in self-pity. This self-pity produced pains, and she’s a chronic invalid with everybody babying her. She is a festering place in the family.
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.*
Two people face loss. One limps into Life, and the other limps into death. A pastor lost a loved daughter, and his reaction was, “I’ll now have to laugh enough for two.” And he did.
A doctor grieved over a beloved wife who was infected by a doctor just coming from delivering a child. He spent $30,000 to bring her back to health, nearly lost his faith, and was almost demented, “O God, why didn’t you stop that doctor at the door?” As he walked along the street one day, the Spirit said, “Can’t you say what Jesus said: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’?” He did, right then and there. His despair was taken away, and he was released and happy. He entered into Life—without a limp!
O Jesus, we feel that you did just that. Without a home, you are at home everywhere. And we all feel at home with you. For you are at home in our sorrows and frustrations, at home there to release and give victory. You are touching everything and changing everything. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “I render thanks to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has made me able for this” (1 Tim. 1:12 Moffatt).
*Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts, 1900.