What Do You Do When You Are Tired and Worn Out?

“…Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” ~ Bilbo Baggins

There have been times when I can identify with Bilbo.  He was a hundred and eleventy years old, and he had every reason to feel like butter that had been scraped over too much bread.  I suspect that most of us have been there at one time or another.

Even when you have doing your best, or perhaps, especially when you have been doing your best, that thin and stretched feeling can creep up on you.  There are several contributing factors.  Foremost among them is the fact that fallen humankind in a fallen world does not possess limitless energy.  Mind you, I think that limitless energy was part of God’s original plan in the Garden of Eden.  The curse Adam earned was, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread . . . for you are dust and to dust you shall return’ (Genesis 2:19).  We run out of steam because we were meant to be connected with Life Himself, and when that connection was impaired, death, and the potential for exhaustion, entered our world.

There is another factor that cannot be ignored.  At the very beginning, that Arch Liar, the Serpent, fed Eve a bundle of half-truths.  The central fib she was told was that she could be like God by doing things in her own way, instead of in God’s way.  The only safe thing she could have said to him was, “Be gone Satan!”  Make no mistake we are still in that same battle, a battle that will take its toll on our energy, and on our very lives.  Jesus said as much when confronting the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).  There is an Enemy who seeks to drain us of all life and energy.  He is the Murderer of life, love, and joy.

There is a solution.  That solution is to continually, repeatedly, return to active fellowship with the God who loves us.  Isaiah asks us, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable.  He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.  Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;  but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-31). 

The Hebrew word for “wait” also means “to hope, to expect, and to bind together.”  When we are bound together with the Lord by dwelling in His Presence in prayer, in listening for His voice in Scripture, in praise, and in fellowship with the saints, our energy gradually returns.  Experience teaches us that this restoration is positive, gradual, and energizing like the charging of a battery. When we feel stretched and thin, like butter scraped over too much bread; it is then that we discover the great truth that Emmanuel is “God with us”. Then we pray with the Psalmist, “When I called, you answered me; you increased my strength of soul” [Ps. 138:3].

A Personal Journey

             The book had been very inspiring in a negative sort of way.  The story, "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant," had been popularized as a Broadway play, and most people thought of it as a rather innocent fantasy about a man who sold his soul to become a championship baseball player.  I was eleven years of age, impressionable, and fascinated by the concept that there might be a power greater than myself.  It didn't matter that it was the devil.  What did matter was that there was something other, or should I say, someone!  I did what I thought was the logical thing.  I tried my first experiment in prayer.  I got down on my knees behind a chair in our living room and gave my life to Satan.  There was no flash of black lightning, and on the surface I was mildly disappointed.

            In order to understand the significance of my experiment it helps to know that I grew up in a well-churched family.  Sunday worship, Sunday School, choir, youth group and all the other activities normal to churches were a regular part of our family life.  We were orthodox in our beliefs and conservative in our life style.  What was missing was a concept of personal faith.  We looked on ourselves as Christians, but it was something we did, rather than Someone we knew.  What I hungered for was that Someone to know.  That I was looking in the wrong direction never even occurred to me.

            While there were no overt manifestations of the evil one, circumstances were to provide an answer of sorts to my offer.  A friend of mine began working at a local store and began to steal from the cash register.  I was glad to share the spoils. The thefts from the cash register continued on a weekly basis for almost two years.   Those years were to see an increasing involvement in petty theft and vandalism.  School, always difficult at that time in my life, became almost impossible.  By the time that I was eighteen I had spent three years just getting through grade ten.  My school career ended with a conflict in my home that forced me out of school and into the Royal Canadian Navy.

            I enjoyed the discipline of boot camp and reveled in the physical challenges but that six month period was only the calm before the storm.  Immediately on being assigned to a ship in a Canadian port city I took up with the heavy drinkers on board ship.  From the very beginning of my drinking I knew only one possible reason for the use of  alcohol, and that was to blot myself out.  Whenever the ship was in port I spent my time drunk, or planning to get drunk, or begging in order to get drunk and became involved in petty theft and violence in order to sustain the ability to get drunk.  I drank away trade ratings and promotions and thought nothing of it.  

            My ship-board career ended when I was working on a live electrical box and failed to warn the Electrical Officer before he stuck his hand in the box to correct my work.  Within twenty-four hours I found myself assigned to a shore hospital.  They really didn't know where else to put me.  Being confined to the hospital interfered with my drinking so I went AWOL in order to spend an evening drinking.  That act transferred me from a hospital room to a cell in solitary detention.  In order to keep track of me they assigned me to duty as a guard at the brig.  During this time came my second and more constructive attempt to pray.  I had spent an entire night drinking and had been unable to get drunk.  That failure to get drunk put me in a state of sheer panic.  I remember rolling over in my bed and crying out, "Oh God, help!"  Shortly after that I found myself with a conditional discharge and was told that if I stayed out of trouble with the law for a year they would give me an honourable discharge.

            Here is where the miracle began.  When I arrived home several things happened.  First, God temporarily removed both the opportunity and the desire for alcohol.  It was an act of sheer grace.  Second, I went to lunch with my father who leaned across the table and asked me an utterly incomprehensible question.  He said, "Have you asked Jesus into your heart?"  I didn't even know what he meant, but in the following conversation he shared with me that he had asked Jesus to be his Savior at a Billy Graham Rally in Toronto.  I was enrolled in a special school designed to help people who had not finished high-school to take two years of schooling in one year.  I discovered that several of my classmates, all young people who had been out in the work force and were returning for an education, were more different than I could have imagined.  They had a light about them, a radiance that came from the personal knowledge of Jesus and from an openness to His Spirit.  I began to attend evangelical meetings and began to hear the steps of salvation clearly for the first time.  Several times I earnestly sought repentance, but one thing always held me back.   That was the theft from the cash register so many years ago.  

           Finally on an Easter Saturday I read a chapter in a book that bore the heading, "Repentance and Restitution."  The Holy Spirit confronted me with the fact that God, in my case, made a very clear connection between confession and going to talk to the shop-keeper from whom we stole the money.  I got down on my knees in my bedroom and began to pray.  "Father, I can't confess this to you, because If I do, then I will be arrested and then what good will I be to you?"   It was at this point that I heard the voice of God.  Not inwardly, but outwardly with an audible voice!  He said, "Go ahead, son."  I said, "But I can't, because my friend will become involved, and I don't have the right to do that."  He said, "Go ahead, son."  I came up with four or five more reasons, but each time He patiently answered, "Go ahead, son."  I got up off my knees and walked to the corner store and took the owner aside and told him my part in the affair without identifying the other person or giving the date when it happened.  The owner merely asked, "Is it all right in your heart now?"  He gave his forgiveness without lecturing or preaching and in so doing gave me a most precious gift.  I went down the street after our meeting with a tremendous feeling of my burdens being rolled away.  For the first time I felt an immediate sense of the presence of the Father and of Jesus without an accompanying sense of guilt.  But the miracle was not over yet.

            A few weeks later I knelt in a humble living room with a small group of people praying.  It was my first experience of an actual prayer meeting.  The meeting was so dull that the person kneeling beside me kept turning the pages of Life magazine.  Every time he turned a page he would say, "Amen," or "Hallelujah!"  I took a look at that strange performance and turned to God and asked Him, "What am I doing here?"  With that He poured out his Holy Spirit on me with the waves and billows of his love.  I lost all awareness of my surroundings and became only aware of Him.  I stayed under an intense anointing for what seemed like hours.  During all of that experience He was making me anew.  How precious those moments were when He let me know that there was a Power greater than myself and that He Himself loved me.

2014© Copyright  The Rev. Dr. Rob Smith

His Majesty the Baby is Angry

In the pop-psychology of the nineteen seventies the trendy thing was “get in touch with your anger and vent it,” hopefully, appropriately. That’s a big hopefully. In particular I remember a job interview years ago for the Director’s position at a Recovery Hospital in California. They had a separate building out behind the unit that was a Gestalt “Scream Therapy” room. The idea was that the patients were to go in there and vent their anger for relief. That kind of venting just multiplies the anger. The Psalmist gives this wise advice, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” [Psalm 37:8].

In the family, and in the job, learn from the experience of Moses. “They angered him at the waters of Meribah, and it went ill with Moses on their account, for they made his spirit bitter, and he spoke rashly with his lips” [Psalm 106:32-33]. People and situations can drive you nuts! I should know. But one of the five power words in the New Testament is ‘krátos’ which means, ‘might, strength, power, rule or dominion.’  The first place to exercise ‘krátos’ is in exercising self-rule.  Rule over your emotions; don’t let them rule over you. Paul says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. [Ephesians 4:26].

Everyone experiences anger at one time or another. If you are angry, understand why you are angry and talk about it with a safe person. There are a variety of reasons why we get angry. Very often it is because someone, or some situation, is stepping on our toes. The resulting feelings of helplessness often cause anger. Venting anger is associated with our attempts to control people or situations, and that is not only not very realistic, but sometimes downright destructive.

The Young Poet Fallen from Grace

The Tudor Poet John Skelton was one of Henry’s tutors, a Tudor Tutor if you will.  Henry composed melodies and his extant poems were written for singing.  Henry himself played the lute, organ, and harpsichord, and one of his anthems, “O Lord, the Maker of All Things,” was sung in English Cathedrals.

History has left us with the image of Henry late in life as an obese man with severe health problems and a brutal disposition; but he was once a young man filled with vitality and grace, perhaps even with a winsomeness that was attractive, but lo, how the years and exigencies of time and circumstance changed him.

The question arises: How does our increasing age and the exigencies of our own times and circumstances change us?  Will we go on as heliotropes always facing the Sun and always being transformed from light to radiant light; or will we become beasts long after we have been seen as winsome children of God?

 

Originally written in Latin, the following translation was in the time of Elizabeth I

O Lord the Maker of All Thing

O Lord, the maker of all thing,

We praie Thee nowe in this evening

Us to defende through Thy mercie

From all deceite of our enemie.

Let neither us deluded be,

Good Lord, with dream or fantasie;

Our harts waking in Thee Thou keepe

That we in sinne fall not on sleepe.

O father, through Thy blessed sonne,

Grant us this our petition,

To whom, with the Holy Ghost alwaies,

In heaven and earthe be laud and praise.

"Green Groweth the Holly"  by King Henry VIII

Green groweth the holly,

so doth the ivy.

Though winter blasts

blow never so high,

Green groweth the holly.

As the holly groweth green

    And never changeth hue,

So I am, and ever hath been,

    Unto my lady true.

Green groweth the holly,

so doth the ivy.

Though winter blasts

blow never so high,

Green groweth the holly.

As the holly groweth green,

    With ivy all alone,

When flowerys cannot be seen

    And green-wood leaves be gone,

Green groweth the holly,

so doth the ivy.

Though winter blasts

blow never so high,

Green groweth the holly.

Now unto my lady

    Promise to her I make:

From all other only

    To her I me betake.

Green groweth the holly,

so doth the ivy.

Though winter blasts

blow never so high,

Green groweth the holly.

Adieu, mine own lady,

    Adieu, my specïal,

Who hath my heart truly,

    Be sure, and ever shall.

Green groweth the holly,

so doth the ivy.

Though winter blasts

blow never so high,

Green groweth the holly. 

What Does it Mean to Belong?

On Prince Edward Island the shore fields roll away down the hills to the edge of the sea. Queen Anne’s Lace graces the margin of the roads, along with goldenrod just beginning to bloom, and clusters of wild pink bramble roses. The shore fields themselves are a patchwork quilt; squares of variegated green, hay, oats, barley, wheat, yellow canola too bright to look at, endless fields of potatoes; patches of purple heather and untamed fallow fields resting now for the season.

The fields are marked out with hedgerows and the hedgerows themselves are dominated by island pines. The trees, some in the shape of Christmas yet to come, march down to the red rocky shore line. Here and there a single pine stands majestically silhouetted by the sea. As the light begins to fade into darkness the moon rises quickly over the Northumberland Straight casting a broad swath of hammered silver along the rippling waters.

Small farm houses decked out with hollyhocks and orange tiger lilies are set well back from the road. The road itself wends its way gently down towards the harbour. The beacon of the lighthouse shines brightly against the encroaching night. The warm lights of homes clustered together like bramble roses speak of the warmth of families, food, and of refuge from the lonely dark. These are the harbour lights along the shore.

Approaching the Island from the sea the reflected light of the moon rising in the sky casts a silvery sheen on the water off the starboard side of the ferry. Ahead of us the water is smooth and black as we draw close to the shore line. The coast line itself appears only as a humpy rise of deeper black barely distinguishable from the black of the sky and the sea, but there are along the shore some lights at its edge. One light higher than the others is brilliant and blinks on and off with its designated rhythm. If you know this coast and count the rhythm you will identify this lighthouse as the Wood Islands Light, and the lower lights around it as the small cluster of buildings marking the Wood Island ferry landing. We are in fact seeing a visual illustration of an old hymn.

Brightly beams our Father’s mercy from His lighthouse evermore,

But to us He gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.

Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave!

Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.

Christ Jesus Himself is our Father’s Lighthouse. He is the light of the world. From far away those who are lost on the sea of many peoples, nations, and tongues, see His light shining in the distance long before they see the lights along the shore. Lighthouses serve several purposes. Some say “Stay away! Stay away! Here rocks and wreckage will be found.” Other lighthouses mark the way home. It is the lights along the shore that say, “Come home! Come home! Here warmth and refuge will be found.” We are the lights along the shore.

Not all seaside villages are equally hospitable. Those who fish the coastal waters of the Northumberland Straight will tell you there is a difference. In some places you can set your lobster traps and fish in peace, in some places a malicious few will steal from your traps and make life difficult for people of whom they don’t approve. In some very few places bad blood stirred up by an unhappy few makes hospitality vanish altogether.

Islanders have a sense of belonging to the land and to the sea that is enviable. Those who come to the Island “from away” seek the peace and companionable sense of quiet that marks belonging to the Island and to each other. Some will never be able to belong, whether or not they born here, or how long ago they settled here.

Take Mabel, a “Herring Choker” from Nova Scotia, a loud dominating woman with a wooden leg. At dinner with the neighbours the other night she held forth; she would never have Venetian blinds in her home, only curtains. Our hostesses home has blinds in every room; but to Mabel blinds are dirty. According to her, Reggie, the fisherman she has just moved in with, will have to get rid of his blinds. Reggie says with an odd smile that he just paid fifteen hundred dollars for the blinds, to which she retorts that they will have to go out in the trash. Reggie’s response was missed by some in the room, “The day the blinds go in the trash there is going to be a wooden leg poking up from the middle of the trash!” Mabel was not at all daunted and began to loudly obsess about how she was going to clean Reggie’s place. “I’ll wash the walls and the ceilings three times a year.” An old Irish expression comes to my mind, “O, she laughs and she smiles and she shakes her wooden leg.”

Later, as the party thins out, a few quiet bets are offered. “She won’t make it to the next summer!” “No! By the end of winter Reggie will have had enough.” “She won’t make it to the spring fishing season!” What is the problem? She is “from away.” She will always be from away because she can’t really accept what being here on the island really means. She knows everything. She is right. Islanders, many of whom like blinds, need to conform to her standards and she will bloody well make them, starting with Reggie. She will always be “from away” and she is too tough an old dog to change. After all, she has been right all her life.

By spring she will be gone and wherever she goes she will tell others “from away” about the dirty Islanders with Venetian blinds, who are inhospitable and un-accepting because they won’t do what she knows is right. As long as she stays, this little harbour village will be in minor turmoil; but I give her only until next spring.

Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave! Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.” What does it mean to belong? To belong on the Island one has to accept the Island for what it is, but some people, wanting to change the Island to fit their expectations, will always be “from away.”

Simeon’s Song

The pure Word of Israel’s God

Sprang whole cloth woven in my mind,

A Word that could not be denied.

With it came the certain knowledge,

“I have been anointed with fresh oil.”

One day when I was younger,

Decades have slipped away,

I stood at Sabbath reading,

Tasseled tallus o’er my head,

His Word leaping from the scroll.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,

Speak ye tenderly to Jerusalem:

‘Thy long warfare is ended and

Thine iniquity is pardoned!’”

The Word burned within my soul.

I cried: “These words are now my words

God’s true Word spoken unto me.

I shall not die until I see

The comfort of God’s Israel.”

Pious skepticism meets such words,

“There is no Word

save only a famine of the Word.”

His Word I buried very deep,

A heavy burden from my Lord,

Where too often Words that challenge

Our precious lives are stored.

Today that Word has come again.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people

Speak comfortably to Jerusalem

Cry out to her, her warfare has ended,

Her iniquity is pardoned;

Now is the acceptable time,

Now is the day of salvation.”

Now an old man

I stand within God’s temple,

His Word a burning flame within.

“I have been anointed with fresh oil.

The time has come to cry aloud,

This day is the day Messiah comes.

"Lord, you now have set your servant free *

To go in peace as you have promised;

For these eyes of mine have seen the Saviour, *

Whom you have prepared for all the world to see;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, *

And the glory of your people Israel.”

C. S. Lewis and Paddy Moore’s Mother

Sometimes life is what happens to us when we are planning to do something else.  For C.S. Lewis it was the World War of 1917-1918 that deflected him from his immediate plans for education at Oxford.  Shortly before his nineteenth birthday he was drafted and found himself billeted at Keble College. 

By fluke of alphabetical order he found himself sharing a room with Paddy Moore.  The two young men agreed that if either of them died in battle, the one that lived would take care of the other man’s family.   In November of that year Lewis was sent to the Western Front with the 3^rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry where he was wounded and returned to England for recuperation.  Paddy Moore was not so lucky but was missing in action and believed dead.   

At the end of the war Lewis returned to Oxford to continue his education.  Lewis’s brother Warren writes that C. S. Lewis felt a “duty of keeping some war-time promise made to Paddy Moore” and as a result took on what was going to be a life-long association with Paddy’s querulous and demanding mother.  Warren wrote of Paddy Moore’s mother that she “interfered constantly with his work, and imposed upon him (C.S. Lewis) a heavy burden of minor domestic tasks.  In twenty years I never saw a book in her hands; her conversation was chiefly about herself, and was otherwise a matter of ill-informed dogmatism: her mind was of a type that he found barely tolerable elsewhere.”  Lewis faithfully maintained his relationship with Paddy Moore’s mother until her death some thirty years later. 

What is amazing about the story is everything else that C. S. Lewis accomplished while under the stress of living in a household dominated by this old tyrant. He was a voracious reader and creative thinker who left an indelible impression on his peers and on generations to come.   C.S. Lewis is one of the most prolific Christian authors of the twentieth century, and as university professor also wrote books in his own field.   

He did all this while living with Paddy Moore’s mother.  In one of his books during World War II, Lewis reflects the attitude that adverse circumstances shouldn’t hamper you from meeting the more important challenges of your life.  There will always be a crisis of some sort.  Stress never really goes away, it just changes its coat.  Life is what you make of it where you are, in the midst of everything that is going on. 

In the midst of everything C.S. Lewis grew a habit of steady prayer and scripture reading and developed a special fondness for the Book of Psalms.  As his books became popular he prospered and extended his charities to a wide variety of societies and needy individuals.  He was a man whose gaze was so firmly on the heavenly city that the hindrances on the immediate horizon faded in importance.  Rather than being quelled by his domestic circumstances, C.S. Lewis thrived and blessed us all.

One thing I am firmly convinced of is that a crisis is just a crisis.  We’ve seen crises before.  We will see them again.  Stress goes away for a while, then changes its coat and comes back again in another guise.  If we wait for circumstances to change before we do those things that we want to accomplish we will wait forever.  There will always be something that threatens to deflect us from the things we are called to do.  Like C.S. Lewis, instead of being constrained by the crises and stress of everyday life, we face the challenge of stepping forward, right where we are, to meet God’s deeper calling on our lives.