16-Faltering in our Task of Happiness
XVI. Faltering in our Task of Happiness
If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face;...
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake. So PRAYED ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. SOME OPT should make it a part of our daily prayer. We have a “task of happiness” because of our calling, and the gospel we are to live as well as preach.
It has frequently been noted that when ministers get together they are an especially merry crew. In the company of one another their merriment and mirth seem effervescent. In a convention they can be as hilarious as college boys, as when some ministerial wag, at a Presbyterian General Assembly, tipped a bellboy in a hotel full of clergy to page ’ ’ Elmer Gantry. ’ ’ And the gaiety and good cheer is from a natural flow of spirits, not liquid, as in so many gatherings of men. Yet individually this is often far from the ministerial mood. It is not always true of human beings, at least, that the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. Breaking down a cheerful group of ministers into individual units by no means indicates individuals of blithesome and joyous spirit. Sadly enough, we are sometimes like the old man who played his fiddle for the children in the street. He could always be found, with a happy smile and nimble fingers, giving pleasure to a host of children who gathered around him. One day someone spoke to his wife about it, saying that she must be a happy woman to have a husband so jovial and spreading such good cheer. To which the realistic wife grimly replied, “But he hangs up his fiddle when he gets home.” In a Gallup Poll to determine the happiest and most cheering person in a community, probably not many ministers would be named. Many of us are not especially marked by “the joy of the Lord,” which Nehemiah declared is our strength. “We do a lot of griping, and are afflicted with self-pity and envy. “We are often lacking in the very courage and sunny fortitude we so strongly recommend to others. Instead of a joyful noise unto the Lord, we play a dirge. There is the old story, related in many forms, of the Doctor of Divinity who, when addressed as a physician, said, “Oh, no, I don’t practice; I preach.” Of the joy and the exhilaration of our personal religion, as of so many other things, it is too often woefully and literally true of us that we just preach. And in so far as any spirit of personal droopiness possesses us, it is a drag upon us in our pastoral usefulness. Because we have a pastoral task, we ought to be an inspiration and an uplift to others. A true happiness of peace and contentment is possible for us, though we do not always give that impression. Does any real brightness shine in upon others from many of us? The Psalmist said, “They looked unto him, and were radiant.” There is a joy in the Lord that means a sparkle in our eye, a light upon our faces, our heads up and shoulders back, not just in spite of difficulties, but because of them because they have caused us to go down deeper into the sources of life. Our people have a right to look to us as true examples of what a Christian ought to be. It is wholly fitting that we should win them to our winsome Lord by what we are more than by what we say. Our sermons may often be poorly said, but our lives should never be poor preaching. We have chosen a work in which what we are is the greatest of all factors. Our inner harmony of spirit is of signal import for our own lives; but the inevitable manifestation of it in outward joy and gladness is of even greater meaning, as men looking for brightness and hope see it in us and turn to Him who came that their joy might be full.
Let it be remembered that we are very largely the creators of our happiness or unhappiness. It is quite the rule for us to believe the fiction that our ministerial lives are determined by the things beyond our control by the kind of church we serve, by standards set up for us, by being at the beck and call of others, by the pressure of sermons and meetings and committees and organization. As a matter of fact, in a distinct sense a pastor is thrown back on his own resources. There is no one to detail his work. He punches no clock.
He makes no report of a day’s activities. He is permitted to judge for himself of the comparative value of things, of what to do and how to do it. That is a great privilege. It is also a great danger. He can get by with very little. Some of our people will accept cerebral languor for spiritual fatigue. There are some who are always ready piously to approve of whatever their pastor does, to sympathize and to pity. Many of those who may be critical of us are yet courteous and considerate toward us. It is true that there are some things which we cannot control; but we are free to make over these things to serve us, and not to unmake us. We cannot command others. We are subject to voluntary service and support in many things we plan. But that is a pattern in which there is more personal satisfaction possible than if we could command that things be done. There is no one left quite so much to self-determination.
We are left to our own devices. We do make our own bed, whether it be hard or soft.
We choose unhappiness for ourselves whenever we succumb to a spirit of restlessness about our field of labor. It is not always the proverbial mule to whom pastures green are ever on the other side of the fence. A denominational executive tells me that in one state with which he is especially familiar fifty per cent of the ministers would like to change their pastorates. I know without being told that many ministers who know me personally would say, “It is easy for him to talk about happiness from a happy ministry in a fine church for more than a score of years. “ But my church has its problems. No one can always be content. I am not. I would not like to lose my job; but, now and then, I would terribly like to mislay it. I have known black moods when any place looked better to me. The one place to resist this is, of course, on our knees. Furthermore, some of us can never be happy until we go out in the back yard and tear down all the wires we have strung up, running out in all directions, hoping that one of them will ring the bell of a “call” for us. Unless our talk about our original “call” to the church we serve was just pious words, that “call” must sometimes be considered a continuing call to stay where we are. No man can do good work, or be personally happy, and have wires strung all over the place that he is forever pulling to get out of the church where he claims the Lord called him in the first place. And self-pity is self-destroying. Any minister can find plenty of things that will nourish selfpity. E. Stanley Jones tells of coming home from a missionary itinerary, having been delayed beyond the expected time more than twenty-four hours, and arriving at midnight in a torrential downpour. He was feeling, he said, very sorry for himself. Then, as he approached the mission station, he saw a light burning on the porch, and said to himself, ““Well, I am glad that somebody has been worrying about me and is waiting up for me. ’ ’ Upon reaching the porch, however, he found another missionary who hardly looked in his direction, but who began to complain of an aching tooth and of his lack of sleep. Then with characteristic good humor it dawned on Dr. Jones how each was pitying self, and neither was sensitive to the other’s need. And, says Dr. Jones, “To meet trouble with self-pity is only to create a pitiable self.” A sermon was preached to me in a single sentence, which I hope that I shall never forget, when a woman confined to a hospital bed for a long siege of heart trouble bravely and sincerely said, “I have been asking the Lord what he wants to teach me in this. ’ ’ That is the antithesis of self-pity.
Forever trying to measure our gains and to tally our success is fraught with certain dispiritment and gloom. It is not always possible to measure rewards or count returns. And whenever it is possible, this does not necessarily insure a brightness of heart. I was once a guest in the home of a pastor in New York City. It was on a Monday, when the day before the minister had received some twenty new members into the church, some of them adults on confession of their faith. Yet he was in an utterly discouraged mood, much to the bewilderment of another guest, a younger man who was young, too, as an officer in the church. The downhearted host asked this young officer to say grace. I do not know that he had ever prayed in public before, but his unskilled prayer brought the quickest answer I ever witnessed, as he prayed, “Dear Lord, cheer up those who are down in the dumps and haven’t any right to be.” And his pastor burst into laughter with all his dark mood gone. Counting gains helps little. It is traditional to picture a miser gloating in glee as he fingers his golden coins. I doubt if it is ever a true picture. The miser is much more likely to count them and be miserable because there are not more of them; for, as his only joy is in numbers, no amount can ever be enough.
Elijah had a spectacular success before the altars of Baal. Immediately after, he fled in terror and despair. Probably his trouble was that he.had been counting noses too, for he said, “I only am left.” Our human yardsticks seem never able to stake off doubt and fear, to make safe our happiness and contentment.
Apparent failures, also, take their toll of our inner strength and spirit. I once heard a paper read in a group of ministers on “Trends in Sabbath Observance,” in which the leader painted a picture of almost complete spiritual decay. My! But that was a dismal picture of the church and Christian people! He presented no hope or promise whatever, and had no conception at all that the manifestations of religion might possibly not be the same in every generation. I was even more amazed at the number of ministers present who in their comments agreed or enlarged upon the picture of defeat. It was all dispelled, however, by the simple statement of an old German pastor who, steeped in the restrictions of Calvinism but with Calvin’s confidence in God too, said, with a blur of his native tongue still upon him, “I haf been a pastor for more dan fifty years, and I vant to say it is better all along de line.” Even if the worst is true, we are licked before we start if we believe in failure. There are three good reasons why a minister should lay down his task. One is physical disability; another is loss of Christian character; and the third is this sense of defeat.
God can never do anything with a man with his heart in his boots or his tail between his legs.
Ancient Caleb asked for the hill country. He could never be happy or useful in the easy life of the plains.
It is apparent that there are sources enough for ministerial unhappiness and failure at least that many of us find them readily enough. How then can we be happy though a minister? And by happy, of course, we mean happiness in all its content of peace and strength, of adequacy and worth.
We could try, for a change, turning our thoughts to the inestimable privileges that are ours. One of them is that of the many personal relationships of friendship, love, and respect that are ours. There is no coin of material values that could pay for the minister ’s privilege of contacts with people, of enjoying the opportunity of serving them, and of feeling their love and good will.
We all must have some innate quality of loving people, or we would never have gotten into this business of the ministry. No other profession touches human lives at so many points. No man has such an outpouring of appreciation for what he is privileged to do as the minister. A businessman said to his minister who had received a letter of gratitude, “I would give thousands of dollars if I had the opportunity of anyone writing to me like that.” But he just did not have the opportunity that the minister had. We would not change places with anybody else really. Then we can do our job in that spirit too.
We can be proud that we belong to an order of those who give much. There was Frederick H. Baetjer, a missionary doctor who swallowed the deadly germs of a dread Oriental disease in order to get them into this country and to Johns Hopkins Medical School, where he could study them to discover a remedy, and who was willing to risk his own life, since, dead or alive, the germs would be there for scientific study. Our sacrifices are little beside such, and nothing at all beside many prophets and martyrs; but we belong to their order, and when we sing, “Who follows in their train?” we can answer, if in our little way we are faithful, “ We do.”
We are on the winning side in every moral battle of life. A friend, who -was born in the North, and who married a Southern girl, was walking with his eight-year-old son when, passing a Confederate soldiers’ monument, the lad asked what it was. The father explained that it was a monument to the soldiers of the South, saying, “That’s your side, you know; your mother’s people fought for the South.” Then, characteristically of youth, the lad replied, “No, sir, that’s not my side. I’m on the side that won. ’ ’ We are on the side that is sure to win, though our part may be small, the place where we are on guard may be limited, and our field of service restricted. But no army has ever, even in these days of mechanization, found a substitute for the private in the ranks, or a good top sergeant who is close to the heart of things in the army. Generals and captains are essential, but it is the top sergeant and the privates who carry out the orders. We have our great radio preachers, and those who travel the country over in preaching missions and the like, and we have our great city churches, but the heart of the Kingdom of Grod is in the little church, in the privates of the line, and the ministers who are the top sergeants in the army of the Lord/Are we one of these? President Wilson used to say that he preferred to hear what the men on the cracker barrels of the village grocery stores were saying to anything he could hear in Washington. Well, the cracker barrels and the village philosophers have disappeared before the chain stores, but the village church and the village pastor remain the symbol of the backbone of our sturdy thought and life. Paul wrote to Titus, “For this cause left I thee in Crete.” It was a hard job, and an important one; that was why he was there. Paul also said to him, “Let no man despise thee. ’ ’ He meant, of course, so respect your task and so carry it on that none will belittle you. He counted on Titus not to belittle himself. We all have a task that is too big for us, but that is the only kind worth having. The hosts of evil are mighty. “We are perplexed, but not in despair.” The ultimate victory is certain because “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” And there is a personal victory possible for us now. It is expressed in the words of Woodrow Wilson when he said, “I would rather go down to defeat with a cause that will ultimately triumph than win with a cause that will ultimately go down to defeat.” No power on earth can invalidate that ultimate victory. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Whoever we are, or wherever we are, we can know the joy of sheer fidelity to a mighty, ongoing, righteous, undefeatable cause, and lift our heads in pride that we have even a humble part in it.
We have good news to tell. It is a glorious thing to have been chosen to tell it. And we are ministers because something of that good news did something to us one day. We do not know everything, but we do know that. Dr. Daniel Poling tells that one day, when he was busy, his little boy asked him a question about religion. He said, “You go and ask your mother about that.” Soon the little fellow came back again and he volunteered some information, saying, “ Daddy, you don’t know much about Grod, do you?” That struck home, and Dr. Poling laid his book aside and said, with deeper truth than he had ever realized before, “No, son, I don’t know much about God, but what I do know has changed my life.” That we too know. And that we know not from hearsay, or from any book. Isn’t it possible that we might find a new joy in our ministry by getting back to a simple affirmation and proclamation of a life-changing gospel, and letting any defense of it rest in the simple challenge to men to “taste and see” for themselves?
“Dick” Sheppard once said that the modern minister had largely substituted the flute for the trumpet. That may be why some of us have lost something of our zest and joy. A flute is a charming instrument, but it is a trumpet that thrills.
We are told that there is an old Jewish legend that Satan was once asked what it was that he most missed since he had fallen from the high estate in heaven. “I miss most of all,” said he, “the sounding of the trumpets in the morning.” In days of avowal of service and loyalty, we might well take as our own these words of Cecil Spring-Bice, once the Ambassador of Britain to the United States, I vow to thee, my country all earthly things above Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love, The love that asks no questions: the love that stands the test, That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best; The love that never falters, the love that pays the price, The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice. And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know “We may not count her armies: we may not see her king Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.
We once enlisted as soldiers of that country. Its campaign is not military, but it is militant. And the way to keep our estate, and the trumpets sounding in our hearts, is to vow a new allegiance, and an all-out commitment of ourselves to the Lord of heaven, that we will not fail bim, either in what we do or in what in our heart of hearts we are.
-finis