Week 35 Sunday
Week 35 Sunday
Using Cyclones
Isaiah 51:7-8, 12; 54:17
We continue this week our meditation on unmerited suffering.
The war has left a harvest of devastated homes, hearts, and hopes. “Why didn’t God stop the war?” is the anguished cry. How could God do so without taking away our wills, depersonalizing us, making us things? The war was of our making. We produced the conditions out of which Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo grew. The soldiers at the front were not dying for us; they were dying for our sins. The only good that will have come out of this war is what we rescue in making a new world for everybody.
“Well, what is God doing?” God is doing what God has always done: helping us to rescue a good out of a bad, to make a new world out of an old one. God did that at the cross. Jesus took the worst thing that could happen to him (his death) and made it into the best thing that could happen to the world (its redemption). God is doing that now, helping us make the worst serve the best.
Jesus said, “He [Satan] has no hold on me; his coming will only serve” (John 14:30-31 Moffatt). He made even Satan serve. When Satan has no hold on you in self-pity, self-centeredness, or bitterness, then his coming will only serve you, make you better and more useful. So the very efforts of Satan contribute to Christian ends. There is “a teleology of suffering”—suffering can have purposive ends.
Ten years ago, a young man was so badly injured in the legs by fire that the doctors said he would never walk again. He determined he would. He exercised his legs at night when free from observation. He learned to walk again—not only to walk, but to run. He won a national championship in the 440-yard dash. He made his impediments into instruments.
I asked a pilot what was the worst difficulty in flying through the Caribbean. Was it cyclones? He replied, “No. We can even use cyclones; they move slowly at the center, so we get on the edge and get a hundred-mile-an-hour wind behind us, and then coming back, we get on the other edge. We use them going and coming.” Using even cyclones! Going and coming!
O God, I know I can use everything when I am in you. Nothing can hurt me, nothing can make me afraid, and nothing can stop me. I thank you that I’m unbeatable and unbreakable—in you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Thou are on every side, behind me and before, laying thy hand on me” (Ps. 139:5 Moffatt).
Week 35 Monday
God and Man Working Together
Romans 8:28; 2 Corinthians 4:7-12
Yesterday we saw that God could not arbitrarily do away with suffering without depersonalizing us. But God can and will do away with suffering with our cooperation. God has left us unfinished masters of an unfinished world.
A gifted horticulturist has spent a lifetime developing what many experts believe to be the most beautiful rose in the world. A friend, admiring it, said, “What a wonderful rose God has made.” The man replied, “God did not make this rose. God and I made it.” In the end, when we look upon the new creation, we will be able to say, “God and I made it.” God has furnished the raw materials and shaped them into beginnings, and now invites us to cooperate in shaping them into God’s ends, which are really our ends too.
In the meantime, we have an unfinished world full of mistakes and sins, and these cause suffering, much of it unmerited. Almost all of our sufferings are human-made. The residue of suffering that comes from so-called acts of God, we will find in the end has a purpose in the sum total of things. Earthquakes will be found to serve some purpose. Floods are now being discovered as very often the result of human greed and folly in cutting down the forests from the mountains. They call the Yellow River “China’s Sorrow,” but it should be called “China’s Folly,” for the mountains have been denuded of trees and cannot hold the moisture, and so the Yellow River floods its banks because of that folly. But we are learning how to control floods, and in learning how to control floods, we are learning how to control ourselves.
In the making of the world, we are making ourselves. God has made the world and us interdependent. As we go down in character, the world around us falls into wrack and ruin. As we go up in character, the world around us goes up with us. No wonder Paul says, “Even the creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19 Moffatt). When we are Christian, the world will be creative—to the full.
O Christ, I come to you, for you have made the world and me, and you are trying to make us—together. Help me to cooperate this day in creation, in creating things and myself and others. I love the adventure of it. Thank you for giving me a share. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The Eternal is good to all who look to him, and his compassion covers all that he has made” (Ps. 145:9 Moffatt).
Week 35 Tuesday
If Fate Throws a Dagger
2 Corinthians 6:3-10
God has made the world unfinished, and the unfinished part of it sharpens our souls. There is enough resistance in things to make the world an emery wheel upon which to sharpen our wits.
A friend with whom I talked in Cuba was ruined by a freeze in Florida in 1895. He went to Cuba to begin over again, developed a new orange out of a native sour orange, a tree that bears fruit all year. He was decorated by the Cuban government for his contribution to Cuba. But it was a calamity that started him over again, a freeze that froze him out to better things.
Someone has said, “There is no bad weather; there are only different kinds of good weather.” There is no bad weather, except as you take it badly. Adverse weather is only perverse weather as we fail to harness it to our purposes. Adverse winds can blow you forward, if you know bow to manipulate the sails.
“If fate throws a dagger at you, there are two places to take hold of it—by the blade or by the handle,” says a Chinese proverb. If fate throws calamity at you, you can take it by the blade of self-pity, and it will cut you, wound you deeply. But if you take it by the handle, you can make it make you.
Bishop Angus Dun, of the Episcopal Church, stood in the midst of a Washington hospital ward filled with disabled soldiers, the wreckage of war. He deliberately undressed before them to show the braces he had been compelled to use all his life. He had worn them so well that few suspected that he was wearing them, living against constant resistance. It’s the inner spirit that decides whether the pain shall be a goad to desperation or a goad to doing. A woman was in a hospital for ten years because of an accident that broke her spine and severed the spinal cord. She said to Methodist Bishop Schuyler Garth, “They say that life begins at forty. I was forty the day after the accident. Life began for me then.” It really did. People flock to her bedside to learn how to live, for she is living abundantly and radiantly. “There is no such word as difficulty in the dictionary of God,” said a missionary to Mexico. For difficulties can become doors.
O God, I’ll have to change my vocabulary, for I am changing my attitudes. The things I’ve called stumbling blocks I’m now seeing as stepping-stones, the resistances are becoming resurrections. All things serve. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The Eternal delights in his people, adorning the afflicted with a victory” (Ps. 149:4 Moffatt).
Week 35 Wednesday
The Way Makes a Difference in Death
Philippians 3:20-21; 2 Thessalonians 1:4-6
There is no “Wailing Wall” in the Christian way. An undertaker said to a friend of mine, “I have noticed that Christianity makes a difference in death. Christian people know how to take it better.”
I almost dreaded to go into a home where the son-in-law was killed while a pilot in the South Seas. There was the daughter, a young mother and her baby. What could one say in the presence of this immense sorrow? But they talked about it so naturally, so altogether victoriously, that I found there wasn’t anything to say. They had the answer! The service was not a memorial service, but a dedication service. One looks back; the other looks forward. They would dedicate themselves to the unfinished tasks of the young pilot, tasks he never got to, tasks of doing away with war, for he hated the thing he felt compelled to do. As a life dedication, they would do what he couldn’t.
When friendly neighbors saw Mary leave the house, they supposed that she was going to the tomb of her dead brother. “They imagined she was going to wail at the tomb” (John 11:31 Moffatt). They could see nothing to be done except that—wail at a tomb, the picture of hopeless despair. But Mary did not go to a tomb. She went to a Person. And that Person knew what to say, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (v. 25). He was the answer.
A friend of mine, a layperson, was asked to conduct a funeral, so he went to the New Testament to see how Jesus conducted funerals. He discovered “that Jesus didn’t conduct funerals—he conducted resurrections.” Jesus never conducts funerals of anything. He conducts resurrections of everything! For everything in his hands lives! Turn over your sorrow, your frustration, your disappointment to him, and in his hands, it will live. Hosea saw this, “I will . . . make the dale of Trouble a door of hope” (Hos. 2:15 Moffatt). A woman, not seemingly pious, lost her only child and said, “This is the time I am religious.” Her dale of trouble had become a door of hope. She didn’t go to a “wailing wall”; she went to Jesus.
O living, saving Christ, I come to you. For you are not a road with a dead end. You are the Way, the Way for me now in my trouble. For through you I am invincible. I can’t be beaten, except beaten into shape. I am in your hands and so is my sorrow. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “My road may run through a glen of gloom, but I fear no harm, for thou art beside me” (Ps. 23:4 Moffatt).
Week 35 Thursday
The Dale of Trouble Becomes a Door of Hope
Isaiah 41:10-13
Carlyle said of Tennyson, “He carried around a little bit of chaos, and he was always turning it into a cosmos.”* Jesus was always doing that. “He will fix it for you, for he knows just what to do,” says the spiritual.
And often he saves us not from the pain but through the pain. A guide and an inexperienced climber had to stay all night in the Pyrenees; they couldn’t make it back. Toward dawn, there was a tempestuous wind that twisted trees, started rocks rolling down the mountainsides, and the inexperienced climber was terrified. The guide reassured him, “This is the way the dawn comes in the Pyrenees.” And sometimes our dawns come through storm and tempest. A doctor said to a member of one of our Ashrams, “You are not going to live long; your disease is incurable.” “All right,” the man replied, “whether by life or by death, I want to glorify him.” He is simple and happy, making the most of the passing hours. He is now living in the dawn, even though the storms of dissolution are blowing fiercely around him. Someone has said that “spikenard, when jostled, lets the perfume out.” The jostling of approaching death has served only to let the perfume out.
I said to a very dear friend one day, “Yes, but I always come up smiling.” “Yes,” said the friend, “and more, you go down smiling.” I have laid this compliment at the feet of Another; I learned it from him. He not only came up smiling; he went down smiling, “My peace I give to you” (John 14:27). This in the shadow of the cross.
Sometimes the ability to go down smiling heads off the going down. A missionary in China was taken out to be beheaded. When she got to the place of beheading, she burst out laughing. Her captors asked her why; it was no laughing matter! She replied, “I was just thinking how funny it would be to see my own head rolling down the hill, for as my head would roll down the hill, I’d be on my way to Glory. That makes me laugh with joy.” “Well,” said the bandits, “if it’s going to make her happier, why should we please her that way?” And they let her go!
O Christ, you give us the power to smile going down and coming up. For there is no loss in you. Everything is sheer gain. For whatever happens turns out through you to contribution. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Thou didst bid me hope; this comforts me in trouble, thy promise puts life into me” (Ps. 119:49-50 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation, but apparently Thomas Carlyle did write an admiring letter to Alfred Lord Tennyson. See http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/460317?uid=3739976&uid =2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104306243181.
Week 35 Friday
“I Can Take It—Can You?”
Psalm 42:1-7
Someone asked a woman who had been on her back for eight months how she was. The reply, “I have pain in my back, in my head and arms, but outside of that I’m fine.” In other words, if you have an area of pain, think of the areas without pain! If you have one sorrow, look at your joys.
Evangelist William L. Stidger tells of being asked by a train porter to take charge of a blind soldier on his way home. When they walked onto the porch, the father and mother learned of the boy’s blindness for the first time. The mother burst into tears; the father was shocked and shaken. But the boy, his head held high, said, “I can take it.” The father recovered himself and said, “Son, if you can take it, so can we.” They had the spirit.
Rust will crumble a metal, while hammer blows will only harden it. The rust of continuously placid, untroubled living may crumble your spirit, but the hammer blows of trouble may harden you. Paul speaks of “this pain divine.” Pain is divine if it leads you to finer character and contribution. But “this pain divine” comes only from what Paul calls “this pain God is allowed to guide.” If resentment and self-pity and complaint are allowed to guide your pain, then you are guided into frustration. But if you turn it over to God and allow God to work out the matter with you and for you, then it ends exactly as Paul says, “in a saving repentance never to be regretted”—a saving of you and others (2 Cor. 7:10-11 Moffatt).
In India, the farmers winnow wheat by holding up a basket of wheat and chaff and letting it slowly fall so the wind can blow through it, driving the chaff away and leaving only the wheat to fall to the ground. The winds of sorrow and trouble blow through your spirit, but they do nothing except to separate the chaff from the wheat. You become a sifted soul, sifted of everything except the worthwhile. The Brazilians have a saying, “God can write straight even on a crooked line.” The lines of your life may be crooked, not make sense, but God can write straight, can bring good out of crooked events. The outer events of Jesus’ life were crooked, but God wrote redemption on them.
O God, I surrender to you the crooked lines of my life. They don’t make sense. But I know you can write straight, even on a crooked line. So they are at your disposal. Everything good out of everything bad—that’s it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Rock, rescue, refuge, he is all to me, never shall I be overthrown” (Ps. 62:2 Moffatt).
Week 35 Saturday
Steps in Using Sorrow
Isaiah 9:2-3; 38:17-18; 43:2
We come to our day of summing up the steps to meet sorrow and frustration.
The psalmist says, “A deadly trouble courses in his veins” (Ps. 41:8 Moffatt). But no trouble need be deadly unless you allow it. Again, the psalm says, “My soul is melting with secret sorrow” (Ps. 42:4 Moffatt). But the sorrow need not melt the soul, need not, if you no longer make it “secret.” Bring it up and face it.
Take these steps: (1) Bring the sorrow into light and face it frankly. To bring it up and out sterilizes it. (2) Do everything you know to remove it. Listen to God, who may tell you what you can do. (3) Surrender the sorrow into the hands of God and let it stay there. In your heart, it festers; in God’s hands, it becomes useful. Don’t give it to God today and take it back into your heart tomorrow. Say to yourself, “God has my sorrow.” (4) Talk it over with some friend, but don’t “syndicate” your sorrow. A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; but having shared it, don’t talk it over with too many people. You are liable to become morbid. (5) Don’t consciously or unconsciously wear a martyr’s crown. Don’t bid for sympathy. You are liable to exaggerate your trouble to get more sympathy. Even wearing the martyr’s crown for a short time may open the door to a martyr’s complex. (6) When you are beginning to feel sorry for yourself, go to the looking glass and burst out laughing at yourself. When you can laugh at yourself, you’re safe. (7) Smile before the world, even when you don’t feel like it—smile on principle. (8) Don’t pray for release, but pray for power to use the sorrow, and release will come as a by-product. Brother Lawrence said that when he prayed for release he didn’t get it, but release came when he prayed for power to stand things. (9) But don’t pray for power to stand things; pray for power to use things. Go on the offensive. (10) Your greatest contribution is to show a spirit through everything that happens. It’s not what happens but the way you take it that counts.
O Christ, I know you are my way out, for you have gone through everything and have overcome everything for yourself—and for me. In you, I cannot go down. I will come up and come up smiling. My joy is not in my circumstances. My joy is in you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “That I might live, ever mindful of God, in the sunshine of life” (Ps. 56:13 Moffatt).