Week 29 Sunday
Week 29 Sunday
Living Relaxed
Psalms 37:8; 127:2; Philippians 4:6; 1 Peter 5:7
In our quest after victorious living, one of the most important things to learn is to live inwardly relaxed. This age seems against it. Its whole demand is high tension, high pressure. So we do not die of the diseases our forefathers died of; we go at high pressure until the boiler bursts. Nervous diseases and heart failure are the outcomes of inner tensions. And all this destroys not only the body but the mind and soul as well. Freedom and efficiency depend upon relaxation.
A bee was beating itself upon my windowpane in a frantic endeavor to get out to freedom. I tried in vain to rescue it, but the more I tried, the more it beat its head against the windowpane. Finally it fell to the windowsill exhausted. And, lo, as the window was raised a bit, it crawled out and immediately flew away to freedom. Until it relaxed and let go, it could find no freedom. Some of us are inwardly tight, screwed up and frantically beating ourselves against the windowpanes of our circumstances and tasks, and vainly trying to find freedom and power. We shall never get it until we let go. So the phrase “Let go, let God” is more than a catchphrase; it has sound wisdom in it.
A missionary came to our ashram with a serious, drawn countenance. He did so want to be good and effective as a missionary, but both goodness and effectiveness eluded him the more earnestly he pursued them. He was getting nowhere. I saw at a glance where the difficulty lay, got him to relax and trust—which, of course, meant self-surrender—and, lo, goodness and effectiveness are now his. He is a relaxed soul!
Relaxation means that you have ceased to worry. You are trusting, and trusting means drawing on the inexhaustible resources of God.
O Christ, we thank you that amid all the strain of things you had the relaxed spirit. Give that to us, that we too may fully live. Amen.
Week 29 Monday
More about Living Relaxed
Psalm 112:7; Isaiah 26:3; 30:15; Mark 4:38; Romans 15:13; Philippians 4:7
I once had a new stenographer, an Indian youth, who was really eager to do well. He pressed so hard upon his pencil that the whole table shook. I watched the pathetic performance for some time, stopped him, and said: “You’ll never be a good stenographer unless you cease trying so hard. Now, let go, and relax, and believe that you can do it, and let the pencil glide smoothly and naturally across the paper.” We laughed together, and that laugh helped to let go the tension, and in a little while he had improved amazingly.
Someone has said, “Watch a young lady trying hard not to blush, or a speaker without experience trying to address a meeting, or a novice trying to hit a golf ball, or a patient trying to go to sleep, or a person trying to remember a name—the secret of mastery is not in the flogging of the will.” In each of these cases relaxation would have brought release. Jesus said, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” (Matt. 6:27 KJV). He had probably seen little boys who wanted to be big, trying with bursting cheeks and bulging eyes to grow taller, so through it he talked to us grownups about the folly of it all. Live relaxed, he said.
A very able musician told me that her teacher insisted that every muscle must be relaxed, so that her very soul could come into her fingertips. Then there was mastery. Some live spiritually that way. They let the very power of Christ into every portion of their being, and it is all done so easily. But oh, how effective!
Jesus was so relaxed that the power of God had an unhindered channel within him. Spiritual relaxation meant spiritual release. The machinery of life can be oiled by the peace of God, so it runs without friction.
O Christ, I come to you for strength to be weak, for courage to let go, and through it find your power in every portion of my being. Amen.
Week 29 Tuesday
Relaxed in Our Work
2 Samuel 23:5; Psalms 3:3-6; 16:1, 8, 11; 18:32; 2 Timothy 1:12
I was once asked to give an address on the technique of my work among the educated non-Christians. I was puzzled, for I really did not know I had a technique! But it made me think, and I suppose the center of the technique is just this: relaxed spirit. When I began my work, this word was given me:
And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. . . . Take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. (Matt. 10:18-20 KJV)
I felt that I could utterly bank on that; and I have. I cannot remember a single situation in these years where this verse has not proven true.
As I walked home from a tense meeting in which I had spoken for an hour, and very keen non-Christians, especially militant there, had cross-examined me in no gentle way for two more hours, a lady missionary said to me: “I’m physically exhausted from that meeting tonight. I didn’t know what they were going to ask next, and I didn’t know what you were going to answer, so I have been sitting up in the gallery holding on to the bench with all my might for two solid hours, and I’m physically exhausted.”
I could reply: “Why, my sister, I was having the time of my life. I had no fears or worries whatever. I knew my verse would hold true.” And it did!
My chief opponent said at the close, “You may be able to answer his arguments, but what are you going to do with this calm confidence, this unruffled assurance and peace? Only the power of Christ can give that.” He was right! Amid the rough-and-tumble of things, by his grace I had learned something—it was inward relaxation, in other words, faith.
O Christ, give to me more and more this day this assurance that will take away all worry, all strain, all clash, and make me at your best. Amen.
Week 29 Wednesday
Relaxed amid Opposition
Micah 7:7; 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 16-17; Philippians 1:19-21; Revelation 1:8, 17
It is comparatively easy to be relaxed in one’s work, but amid opposition, sometimes unfair, it is not so easy. I have often fallen down at this place, but where I have been able to retain it, it has worked amazingly.
A missionary who always felt that he must steady the ark lest the whole thing fall to pieces if he didn’t, said at the close of a meeting: “I do not see how he can stand to have the chairman pick to pieces everything he says and kill the whole thing. I would not tolerate it.”
But I could tolerate it simply because I knew he couldn’t “kill” it. My brother thought he had to defend the faith, but the fact is that he didn’t have faith in the faith! Had he, he would not have fretted and worried. Across the years, I have watched hostile chairmen try to take advantage of their positions and spike everything I had to say, and just as often have they broken their own necks before the audience. In the very audience mentioned above the reaction was so strong against the college principal who took unfair advantage that the non-Christians themselves said he was no longer fit to be their college principal. There is an innate fairness in every heart, however smothered it may be, and we can depend on that to give its verdict.
I could not be relaxed amid this opposition if the message were my own, for there I could not be sure. But where we are proclaiming the message of Christ, however poor and partial our interpretation may be, we know that we have at the core of that message something eternal, something standing within Time and yet above Time, something that does not need to be defended, but to be proclaimed and lived, something that is self-verifying. Therefore we can be relaxed even amid opposition.
O Christ, you who stood amid the crowd at the judgment hall, the only calm one amid that howling crowd, give me this day a touch of that assurance, that calm. Amen.
Week 29 Thursday
Shall We Let Down Tensions?
Matthew 6:25-34; Colossians 1:29
But, someone objects, this talk of living relaxed is liable to let down tensions between us and our ideals. Are not the tension points the growing points? If, therefore, we let down tensions, shall we not cease to grow and become flabby? Is not the ideal of strenuous endeavor better than that of inward relaxation?
Our objector is right in saying that we must keep up places of tension in the moral life. Without them we do not grow and ours is an ideal of ceaseless and eternal growth. But Jesus emphasized this very thing when he said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow” (Matt. 6:28). The emphasis was on the method of their growth: “how they grow.” They do not grow by trying, by working themselves up into a frenzy of endeavor, by anxiety and worry; they grow by obeying the laws of their own nature and by absorption from without.
Do the same, says Jesus; obey the laws of the kingdom now within you, draw sustenance and calm. The fact is that you cannot draw sustenance unless there is relaxation and trust. The agitated soul is the poverty-stricken soul. We must remember that it is the calm and relaxed people who are the strenuous people. Strenuous, but not strained. They tell us that at the very center of a twisting cyclone is a place of absolute calm. It is the place where the resident forces of the cyclone reside. Out of that calm comes the power of the cyclone. Out of the relaxed, coordinated spirit comes the power that reshapes the world.
Jesus was never so powerful, never so consonant with his call, never so gripping as when he stood before Pilate calm and silent. That calmness, that silence are not flabby; they are dynamic. Out of them come the resident forces that reshape the world.
O Christ, I know that if I am fussy in my endeavors today, I shall not reshape the world around me. Give me your calm and your dynamic. I shall be weak with only one. I must have both. Amen.
Week 29 Friday
Relaxed under Burdens
Psalm 55:22; Isaiah 10:27; Matthew 11:30; Revelation 2:3
Years after reading it, I looked up the forty-second page of the book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith to see what was on it, for it was at that page that life began anew for me. I found it saying that if you should go to bed and lie there with all your muscles taut and strained because you were afraid the bed would break down under you, you would not rest, but would get up in the morning exhausted. You have to trust to rest. Some people are still holding themselves inwardly taut, afraid that if they let go, the grace of God won’t sustain them. So they live exhausted lives, worn out from within.
An old woman trudged along the road with a heavy pack upon her back, when a man in a wagon overtook her and offered her a lift. Grateful beyond words she climbed in, but sat there, still holding her burden on her back. When the man suggested that she put it in the back of the wagon, she replied, “Oh, but it is so kind of you to carry me, I don’t want to make you carry my burden too. I’ll carry that.” We smile at the old lady, and yet how many of us do just as she did! We believe that the grace of God can save our souls, but we do not trust that same grace to carry our daily burdens, our daily cares and anxieties, the worries of business and of the home; these we still keep on our own backs. Exhausted souls!
From out of childhood days, I can remember only this one quotation spoken from the Bible by my mother, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7 KJV). That was enough to remember, for I saw her do that very thing; she did cast all her care upon God, else how would she have gone through it all?
O Christ, you offer to carry us and our burdens. Help us to surrender our burdens as well as ourselves. For you will carry both! We thank you. Amen.
Week 29 Saturday
Distressed and Scattered
Psalm 86:11; Matthew 12:30; Acts 4:32; Ephesians 4:3, 13-14
We have been saying that there is no possibility of victorious living unless we are inwardly unified, no longer at inward strain but relaxed. Jesus diagnoses our condition and suggests the remedy in Matthew 9:36 (ASV): “But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd.” “Distressed”—inwardly at strain, literally, “drawn in different directions”—no inward unity. “Scattered”—no outer unity.
Here are the two things lacking in humankind: inner and outer unity, at peace with oneself, and at peace with one’s fellow people. And the reason for this condition then was and now is “No shepherd,” the lack of a center around which life can find its inner and outer unity. Until we can absolutely center in some perfect Life, we shall lack unity. That center can be only Christ.
Even the religious world of the West is distressed and scattered because it is often missing this center. Religious people jump from issue to issue, from emphasis to emphasis, from doctrine to doctrine, and the whole thing lacks coherency, unity. If they would take their stand at Christ and work out from him to these issues, emphases, and doctrines, then there would be coherency, because there would be a center. Put one point of the compass on the cross and let the other point take as wide a sweep as you will, then you will be coherent and vital and inclusive.
Moreover, life needs a personal, enduring Friendship to keep it centered and immovably fixed. Christ offers himself as that Friend. When our love is completely and utterly fastened on him, we are no longer lonely, no longer drawn in different directions, no longer at war with ourselves. We have found a center—a center of unity. And I see no center for outer unity in the world save as the children of humanity find it around the Son of God.
O Christ, you are our Center, as your power alone can hold the centrifugal forces of our souls from breaking our unity. Hold us, and we are held. Amen.