Week 49 Sunday
Week 49 Sunday
Cosmic Optimism
Romans 15:4, 13; 1 Timothy 1:1; Hebrews 6:11, 18-19; 1 Peter 1:3
We began this study and quest for victorious living by asking the question of whether life is a bubble or an egg. We have come out, we trust, at the place of a firm belief that life is an egg, with infinite possibilities if we can get hold of the redemptive energies in Jesus Christ.
Tolstoy, in My Confessions and My Religion, says in substance: There are those who say (1) Life is all bad, so get drunk to evade and forget it. (2) Life is bad, but struggle against it—the stoical attitude. (3) Life is bad, so do the logical thing, commit suicide. (4) Life is bad, but live on like myself, illogical, accepting life as it comes. Obviously, this is not the Christian statement, for in Christ we do not merely accept life as it comes, we make life what it ought to be. There is redemptive energy available to change the quality of life itself and to turn the course of life and give it a moral mastery. It is true that this new life has its limitations under present conditions, for there are other thwarting human wills and there is recalcitrant nature.
Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee” (Luke 4:14), but he had to confess that “no prophet is acceptable in his own country” (v. 24). He was thwarted. The seed may be sound, but a lot depends on the soil and other conditions if it is to be fruitful. So there are limitations.
But we are not finally limited by those limitations. We can turn them into contributions. When the invited people in the parable refused the invitation to the feast, the servant was told to “go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in” (Luke 14:23). Thwarted at certain places, the invitation breaks into universality. It uses its very thwartings.
So Christianity has been described as “cosmic optimism.” It is. But an optimism with scars on it.
O Christ, I thank you that I can now face life with hope and with a solid foundation of that hope—for you are my hope. Amen.
Week 49 Monday
Failures
Lamentations 3:21, 24, 26; Romans 5:2-5; Colossians 1:5, 23, 27; 1 John 3:3
Christianity is “cosmic optimism.” As I sit in roundtable conferences and listen to what people say about life, I find that the Christian is the only one—the only one—who seems to have hope and an open door. We may be streaky and poor material, but we know that we have got hold of ultimate reality in Christ.
True, there are failures among Christians, and among sincere Christians too. The reason? I think I saw it one morning after a storm as I sat on our prayer knoll at Sat Tal. A vine had reached its delicate fingers up and across the void until it had grasped the branch of a pine tree. It had arrived! But the morning after the storm, it was a poor drooping thing with its head hanging to the earth—the branch upon which it was clinging had broken in the storm. The vine had fastened itself upon a rotten branch instead of the strong, central healthy trunk.
Many Christians are like that; they fasten themselves upon some dead branch of Christianity, a special rite, or doctrine, or custom, or person, but do not get to the central trunk, Christ. The storm comes, and they go down along with the dead branch. This has happened during the years of economic depression; people have gone down because they were fastened to the culture surrounding the Christian church, with no living contact with Christ, the central trunk.
But where people have hold of the central reality—Christ—they have stood up against things victoriously and have toughened under adversity. In Acts 13:17, it says the people were made “great during their stay in the land of Egypt.” In more ways than one did they become “great.” In adversity, we do become “great,” provided we have hold of the central trunk, Christ. So Christianity is a cosmic optimism only if it is Christ-optimism.
Christ, my Lord, you have become my one steady place amid a world of flux. Help me to catch your dependableness so that people fastening upon me may not be let down. Amen.
Week 49 Tuesday
Dwelling in Tombs
Psalms 43:5; 71:5; Hosea 2:15; Zechariah 9:12
It is said in Luke 8:27 that a certain man lived “among the tombs.” The fact is that we all dwell in a tomb; the earth is one vast tomb largely made up of the carcasses of the dead. We are on our way to becoming part of that cosmic dust. That is the truth in pessimism.
There are, however, two ways to dwell in tombs. One is the way of the man who raved and cut himself. On his way to death, he deals death to himself. The other way to live in a tomb is the way we live in one at the Lucknow ashram. The building was built as a tomb, the central dome-room contains the grave around which many living rooms have been added. We have made the dome-room into our chapel, transforming the tomb into a temple. Here we live in joyous fellowship and service. We live a deathless life amid the dead.
The same verse in Luke tells us that the man living among the tombs was “from the city.” The city with its problems and oppressions had driven him mad. The city is doing that to many people today, for it is the focal point of human problems. It gets on our nerves and defeats us, so we retreat to tombs and live there tormented by devils of depression and gloom and fear.
But Jesus told his disciples to “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). This man had stayed in the city until he was clothed with fears from below. The city can become the place of torment or the place of triumph. It all depends what is on the inside—unholy demoniac fears or the Holy Spirit.
When we have learned the secret of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, then the tomb becomes an ashram. We have found the secret of cosmic optimism amid cosmic death, for in Christ we are deathless.
We thank you, O Christ, that your tomb was but the gateway to fuller life. Help me this day to make my living in this cosmic tomb the breaking of seals that keep me from abundant living. Amen.
Week 49 Wednesday
“There Is No!”
Acts 23:6-8; 24:15; Romans 4:18; 1 Corinthians 15:19; 2 Thessalonians 2:16
The Sadducees were the people who said “there is no resurrection” (Acts 23:8). The best they could say was, “There is no.” They lived on a negation—poor diet! There are many who are living on denials. They are getting more spiritually lean every day. The whole thing seems so anomalous, denying the fact of God and the fact of meaning in the universe with the very powers that God has given them. The faculties that can weigh values and meaning, even when deciding against them, have value and meaning. I once found myself looking for my glasses with the aid of the very glasses I was looking for! I had them on! Thus do people deny reason in the universe with the very reason God has given them. They deny God by the very God-given life within them.
Christians do not deny death. They live in it and then say: “There is a resurrection, because I am resurrected. I live now in victory over all negation, all denials.” We do not deny death. For, as John Macmurray says, “This is the first and supreme lie of the devil, ‘You shalt not surely die.’ ” Many try to get rid of death by denying it. We do not. We acknowledge death and then proceed to overcome it and use it!
A friend experienced five successive springtimes on one journey, as she traveled from the warmer climate of Persia to the colder climates of Russia and Finland. The Christian lives, not in five successive springtimes, but in perpetual spring. There is a renewing taking place at every moment of life. We are under a cosmic yes, instead of a cosmic no.
But you say, “Hopes may be dupes.” Our reply is, “Yes, and fears may be liars.” I know them to be. For when I look at Christ, I can say with Sir Oliver Lodge, the British physicist, “Nothing is too big to be believed, and nothing is too great to be true.’’
O Christ, you save me and my universe, and you put a yes at the heart of both. I thank you. Amen.
Week 49 Thursday
Kuchha or Puckha?
Matthew 7:24-27; 2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Peter 2:6
One of the members of our ashram, a cultured Indian lady of deep spirituality, lost her husband. She went on with her work, undismayed and radiant. Some Sikh village women came to her and said: “You astonish us. We go to pieces under sorrow. You do not. Are all Christians like you? Your religion is very puckha; ours is very kuchha.” Kuchha means unbaked; puckha means well-done. The words are used in various ways: a dirt road is kuchha; a paved road is puckha. A mud house is kuchha; a brick house is puckha. Green fruit is kuchha; ripe fruit is puckha.
These simple women put their finger on the central distinction: the Christian way is puckha—solid, adequate. All other ways of life are kuchha—lacking solidity, adequacy. The Christian way stands up under life. It has wearing qualities. It will outlast all other ways.
In Persia, I saw that only the hills with a central ridge of igneous rock in them stood up under the wear of the centuries. All the others had been flattened out by the rains and the gnawing tooth of time, and had become a part of the plains. Only the puckha have stood up under the wear of things. I find everywhere people being flattened out by the pressures and the wear and tear of life. Life becomes too much for them. But Christians have beneath them the central Rock—that Rock is Christ. That Rock, fused in the fires of the cross, is igneous, the ultimate granite upon which the universe is built.
When Sir Humphry Davy discovered potassium, he danced around the laboratory in glee. The Christian, finding this central Rock beneath one’s feet, dances with a deeper joy. One philosopher observed that “all philosophers are sad.” Why? Well, they deal in ideas; it is all very kuchha. The Christian deals in ideas that become facts—the Word made flesh; it is all very puckha.
O Christ, the Rock beneath my feet, help me this day to help someone who has been on sinking sand to get his or her feet on this. Amen.
Week 49 Friday
“From Henceforth”
Acts 7:54-60; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
We have been asserting that the Christian way is “cosmic optimism.” It is. And it asserts that optimism about both people and things when life is darkest. The Bishop of Ripon, Edward Arthur Burrough, writes, “Christianity combines the most absolute pessimism about man’s unaided powers with an unquenchable optimism as to what, in God’s hands, he may become.”* Pessimism—optimism. But the last word is optimism.
If there were ever a moment when Jesus should have asserted pessimism, it was when standing before the council. They had struck him in the face, blindfolded him, spat upon him, and yet in the midst of it all he stood and said, “Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power” (Matt. 26:64 ASV). What a victorious soul! With both his hands bound, he talks about sitting at the right hand of power. With swollen lips and bloody face, he says, “Final power is mine!” And it is! The ages have confirmed it. But the amazing thing is that he asserted it while in abject subjection to brutal authority.
“Henceforth.” This is an important element in victorious living. He did not say, “I hope that victory will be mine some day,” but, “Henceforth.” He brought it into the here and now. And that bringing it into the present is a part of the victory, a very large part.
When the shadow of the cross fell upon Jesus, he saw in that shadow his Lord’s face, and amid it all said, “Henceforth.” We too must catch and assert the immediacy of the victory. Then we shall be close to
The piercèd side of one
Who died upon an ancient hill,
And left a singing in men’s blood.**
And that song is victory from “henceforth.”
O Christ, you have put within my blood a song. Help me to sing it this day with an immediacy in it. Amen.
* The Valley of Decision (London: Longmans & Co., 1916), 184-85.
** Lola Ridge, Firehead (New York: Payson & Clark, 1929), 62.
Week 49 Saturday
An Inner Corrective
John 15:3; Ephesians 5:25-27; Hebrews 12:8; 1 Peter 4:17
As we talk about holding a cosmic optimism, there rise up before us the many, many futilities and puerilities within the Christian church, and these would dampen, if not destroy, that optimism. These irrelevancies stand out now against the background of world need. We have built up things about Christ that have now become an embarrassment to him, and to us.
A pious monk found that a little mouse disturbed his devotions, so he tied a cat to a post nearby, that it might frighten away the mouse. After his death, his followers wanted to do everything just as the master did, so they tied cats to the posts of the rooms where they meditated. In the course of time, the original reason for tying the cat was lost sight of, and they had long discussions on what kind and color of cat should be used, how far from the worshiper, and so on. Many things that occupy our attention in Christendom are as meaningless as tying cats in devotional hours. This tendency toward irrelevancies within Christendom drives one almost to despair. Except—except for one fact.
There is within the Christian system a corrective and regenerative principle and power in the person of Christ. He has an antiseptic influence on the Christian system. He exerts a constant cleansing impact from within. This inner corrective is our hope.
Christ is today confronting us with the question he asked his disciples, “What were you arguing about during the journey?” (Mark 9:33 CEB). And we are silent, as they were, for we too have disputed about our own greatness, our denominationalisms and petty irrelevancies in the face of world crisis. But as Jesus corrected them, so he shall correct us. His Spirit is mightily pleading through the voices within and beyond the Christian church. And above all, it is pleading through the world need itself. Those who hear that voice shall live; those who do not shall perish.
O Christ, we pray that your call to us may lead us to repentance and obedience and a full following of you. Amen.