Week 34 Sunday
Week 34 Sunday
Light on Life’s Darkest Problem
1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Jesus said he was “the light of the world” on two different occasions. Once was in the Mount of Olives, after forgiving the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-12). This followed his preaching in the Jerusalem temple during the feast of Tabernacles (see John 7). He was the light of the world at the place of religion and of power (the temple), and of sex (the woman caught in adultery). At these three places he is the light of the world. And how deeply we need light at these three places!
But there was another occasion when Jesus said he was the light of the world, in the case of the man born blind.
Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?”
Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents. This happened so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him. While it’s daytime, we must do the works of him who sent me. . . . While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:2-5 CEB)
At the place of unmerited suffering, Jesus is the light of the world.
He was and is! The more I have listened to the various proposals of philosophy and religion about this problem of unmerited suffering, the more I am convinced that he is the light of the world at the place of the world’s darkest problems. Marx said concerning the world as a whole, “Philosophers have explained the world, we must now change it.” Christ, in substance, said that very thing about this problem of unmerited suffering, that rulers and leaders have tried to explain it, or explain it away, and we must now change it—change it into something else. We must use it for the very purpose of the kingdom of God.
Jesus then showed us what he meant. He turned every single adverse circumstance, every single injustice, every single disappointment, every single betrayal and desertion, every single cross and made them contribute to the ends he had in view, the kingdom of God. To be able to use pain and sorrow, this is light, and the Man who can give us power to do this very thing is the light of the world.
O Christ, who spoke the word of light when life seemed dark and mysterious, help me this day to take that light, and live by it, and become light to others at this place of suffering. Amen.
Week 34 Monday
Life for the Mastery of Life
Luke 7:36-50; 10:25-37
The world needs nothing so deeply as these two things: light on the mystery of life, and life for the mastery of life. Jesus gives both, for he was both. Peep through this open door that leads off from the street, and see if you see any light.
A Pharisee asked Jesus to dine with him. Then, to show his own superiority and semicontempt for this Man, he omitted all of the courtesies he would customarily give to a guest. He gave him no kiss of greeting, no water for his feet, and no oil for his hair. It was a social snub. It is one of those things that send some people writhing to their rooms with a permanent wound and a permanent hatred. Instead of it doing that to Jesus, something else happened. The discourtesy of the Pharisee gave the opportunity to a poor, stricken, sinful woman to make up what the host had left undone. And never was there such courtesy: tears to wash his feet, her hair in the place of a towel, and precious ointment. All this came from the depths of the heart and not from mere customary courtesy. The Pharisee hardens and inwardly criticizes him bitterly.
Then Jesus assumes moral control of the situation. He points out to the Pharisee the discourtesy, and then proceeds to forgive both him and the woman. He bracketed them both in the category of needy sinners and forgave them both. He, who lacked the gifts that courtesy should have brought, turned and gave the gift of forgiveness. And by doing so, he was in moral control. Instead of being a snubbed guest, he became the dispenser of a bounty. He did not bear that snub, he used it. And the world sits at the feet of such moral mastery and learns how to live.
O Christ, when I am socially hurt and snubbed, help me not to be resentful and bitter, but big and forgiving, and through it, masterful. Amen.
Week 34 Tuesday
Let the Glory Out!
Acts 26:29; Romans 8:18; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Ephesians 3:13
Hard circumstances often make people. Who has not seen a frail, clinging-vine type of woman, who, upon the death of her husband, straightens up and becomes an oak, around which the growing children twine their lives and are forever grateful for such a mother? But this strength would never have come out and developed had it not been for the tears that watered the vine and made it into an oak.
Says the poet Edwin Markham:
Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch our spaces in the heart of joy.*
The missionary James Hudson Taylor was seated in an inn with a new missionary in China. He filled a glass full of water, and then struck the table with his fist. As the water splashed out, he said to the young missionary, “You will be struck by the blows of many sorrows and troubles in China, but remember, they will only splash out of you what is in you.”
Out of some of the blows of circumstance and trouble splash complaint and bitterness, but out of others splash joy and victory. It brings out what is in you. An aged saint was on the platform of a moving train as it was coming into a station. The train lurched and threw him from one side of the train to the other. When he hit one side, those near him heard him quietly say, “Glory,” and when he hit the other side, “Hallelujah.” The jolting brought out what was in him!
Will trouble serve to shake the glory out? Then you have victory.
O Christ, I thank you that this is what trouble did to you. It shook you to death and scattered grace across the world. Help me this day to have such victory that trouble will only scatter peace and joy to those around me. Amen.
* “Victory in Defeat,” The shoes of happiness and other poems (New York: Doubleday, 1919), 99.
Week 34 Wednesday
Is Trouble God’s Punishment?
Habakkuk 3:17-19; Luke 13:1-5; Hebrews 2:10
Many feel that when trouble comes, it is God’s punishment for some sin. This attitude makes victory impossible. We must admit that this is a world of moral consequence, and that sin does bring trouble. But Jesus repudiated the idea that calamity and sin are always connected. In his comment on the fall of the tower in Siloam and on those whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, Jesus said of the sufferers, ‘‘Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:4).
No, look on this trouble as opportunity for you to show what stuff there is in you.
Why do I creep along the heavenly way
By inches in the garish day?
Last night, when darkening clouds did round me lower,
I strode whole leagues in one short hour!*
The darkening clouds may serve only to quicken your pace toward Home. An Indian proverb says, “The bursting of the petals says the flowers are coming.” So when your heart bursts with pain and grief, the bursting is only that of the cramping sheath-petals to let the flowers out. The heartbreak of Gethsemane was the bursting of the sheath that let the Passion Flower out. And the world is filled with its perfume.
As someone has said, “It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if God can get all the pieces.” Let God put your broken life together again, perhaps in a new glorious pattern. God had to break it to make it.
In the Mission Agricultural Farm at Allahabad, India, they found that when the tops of the eggplants were withered by the frost, the plants gave a second crop. The frost made them discover something. Now, after the plants have given one crop, they cut them back and they give a second. So the cuts that you receive from life may not be God’s punishments; they may be God’s prunings in order to greater fruitfulness.
O Christ, we know that every branch in you that bears fruit you prune that it might bear more fruit. Prune me this day for I would be fruitful. Amen.
* Mrs. W. F. Slocum, quoted in Bertha Condé, The Human Element in the Making of a Christian (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1917), 51.
Week 34 Thursday
Life Strikes Away Our Crutches
John 16:7-8; Hebrews 12:3-12
We must pursue the thought that our troubles may not be God’s punishments, but God’s pruning. A Christian lady, living near where I am writing, was afflicted for some years with spinal trouble and could not walk without crutches. One day as she was coming down the stairs, she slipped and fell to the bottom of the stairs, her crutches being lost on the way. She lay there calling for help, but no servants were near. With a great effort she drew herself up by the banister, began to walk, and has been walking ever since—without the crutches! The fall and the loss of those crutches was the best thing that ever happened to her.
There are many things in your life and mine upon which we lean heavily: family relationships, money, position. They may not be wrong, but they become crutches that weaken our moral fiber. We depend on them too much. Then calamity strikes them away. At first we are stunned and crushed. Our crutches are gone; what is left? Why, our feet, our own backbones, and the grace of God! That is enough upon which to begin life anew.
A famous physician lost everything in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake: his home, his hospital, his medical records, the very tools of his trade; and he was left practically penniless. When a friend began to condole with him, he said: “Pooh! It will be good fun to start all over again. I feel younger already, and now the people will need a physician for their souls.” The old routine broken up, he started a new routine, and wider!
Do not weep over lost crutches. God wishes to make a strong Christian of you. Your backbone has been weakened by too much dependence on things—the tragedy of a material civilization. Stand up and be strong! That is the word of God to a civilization that has had its material crutches taken away. And perhaps to you.
O God, I pray you help me not to whimper and whine, but to stand on my feet, when you take away my crutches. Amen.
Week 34 Friday
God’s Insulations
Romans 5:3-5; 8:35-39
There are two ways that we try to meet pain and calamity: one by isolation, the other by insulation. Some try to win by flight. They lose their nerve and want to run away. A man said to me, “I am praying that either I shall die or my wife shall die.” I am not sure that he put himself first! Perhaps not. “What else can I do?” he added, “for we cannot get along together.” I told him that I thought that he was a moral coward, and that a Christian had another way out. I suggested that he might do what an oyster does when it gets an irritating grain of sand in its shell—it grows a pearl around it. It turns irritations into iridescence. There are many who turn their daily naggings into character, into patience, into beauty. And having stood that lesser thing in the home, they are ready for the bigger troubles on the outside. They are insulated. Troubles become the process by which we put on insulations against greater troubles. It is nature hardening us for bigger strains.
Milo of Crotona, an athlete, wagered that he could lift a bull into the air. He bought a calf and lifted that, and each day as the calf grew bigger he lifted it, so when it became a full-grown bull he could lift it even then. So God increases our strength by helping us conquer our daily trials, until one day we shall lift more than one human load.
At one place in the process of making tin plates, the thin steel plates are put through a pickling bath, where the steel is corroded by the acid, so it will take and retain the insulating tin bath that follows. Without the corroding acid, the tin would not stick and rust would set in. So God lets us go through acid sorrows that we may hold the insulations of grace lest life rust and destroy us.
O God, if today some acid sorrow eats into me, help me to remember your insulations—and rejoice! Amen.
Week 34 Saturday
Summing Up
2 Timothy 2:12; 1 Peter 1:6-7; 5:10; Revelation 2:9-10
Life will bring sorrow to us all. “Affliction does so color life,” said a sympathizing friend to a sufferer. “Yes,” said the sufferer, “and I propose to choose the color.”
I once went to see a woman who had been on her bed for fifty years. Struck by lightning as a young woman, she was paralyzed. No, she wasn’t paralyzed! Only her body was. That room became the center of spiritual power in that city. Her face was chiseled into beauty and dignity. She was choosing the color.
Father Damien de Veister, living among lepers in Hawaii, stood up one day to address them and began, “We lepers.” This was his announcement that he too was a leper. But it made no difference. He too was choosing the colors!
A Muslim teacher wrote me of his decision to become a Christian and also of the loss of his son. “I was standing at the door, and God whipped me in.” Affliction might have whipped him in or out. He decided it should whip him in. He chose the color!
The cry of man’s anguish went up to God, “Lord, take away pain!
The shadow that darkens the world You hast made;
The close-coiling chain that strangles the heart;
The burden that weighs on the wings that would soar.
Lord, take away pain from the world You hast made,
that it love you the more!”
Then the Lord answered to the cry of his world: “Shall I take away pain;
And with it the power of the soul to endure, made strong by the strain?
Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart, and sacrifice high?
Will you lose all the heroes that lift from the fire white brows to the sky?
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price, and smiles at its loss?
Can ye spare from your lives that would climb into mine,
the Christ on his cross?”*
O God, we will fight alongside of you to take away suffering, for it is not your will; but where we cannot banish it, help us to use it. Amen.
* Anonymous, The Christian Advocate (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, July 29, 1920), 95:31, 1020.