When Life Tumbles In                                                           9/27/42

 

Scripture: Romans 8: 26b-39

 

I take my subject this morning from Harold W. Roupp, who for the past three years has been pastor of the well-known Central Church of Chicago. He in turn took it from an English preacher, Dr. Arthur John Gossip.  Dr. Gossip wrote a book entitled “The Hero in Thy Soul.”  One chapter in that book is headed, “But When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” 

 

That chapter was the first sermon Dr. Gossip had preached after his wife’s death - an occurrence to him “bewilderingly sudden and undreamed-of.”  The insights of a sermon preached on such a subject, and out of such an experience, would probably have great value for all of us. “But When Life Tumbles In, What Then?”

 

Surely this is no idle question for anyone.  This is no remote academic matter which has no concern for us.  We know people around us for whom life has tumbled in.  If it has never done so for each of us, it might at any time.  When, perhaps without warning, the hopes and accomplishments of a lifetime suddenly fall to ruins, what then?

 

It might come, as it has to many others, in the collapse of a business upon which our livelihood depended.  It might come in the appearance of ill health and disease.  Perhaps circumstances out of our control have ruined plans that were years in struggling to fruition.  Sometimes a sin committed brings the suffering of shame and guilt.  Sometimes life falls in loneliness, in despair, in doubt, in death.

 

A man saves as much of his earnings as he can, month by month, and year by year, in order that he and his wife may live in decency without dependence on others when the time comes that he must retire.  And then one morning he finds that the savings bank has closed its doors for good.  And all of that part of his life’s effort an planning tumbles in.  What then?

 

A young woman dreams of a high school and college education so that she may be equipped to lead people whom she loves and wants to help.  She makes, on her own initiative, arrangements to earn her way in high school and starts the first week of the school year.  And then her ignorant, foreign-born father forbids her to go on with it and commands her to seek some menial job.  I saw it happen.  Some of her life tumbled in for her.  What then?  Well, I can say that she did not leave it in ruins!

 

A man’s wife left their five children at home in the care of someone else while she and her husband went to a nearby city to seek surgical care for her.  The operation was not a serious one, but though relatively simple, something went wrong and she failed to regain her health as had been expected.  After several days had gone by, the husband, and she herself, knew that she would very soon slip away.  I saw that man’s life dreadfully shaken when he came back to his motherless children.

 

A woman whose husband was a minister, who rejoiced in a new field of service for them both, found herself ill sometime after beginning the work, with a rare disease of the spine.  Over a period of months, she actually become several inches shorter while the disease remained unchecked.  Unable to do the work she would like to do, she also became a care upon her husband.  At length, grim reality brought them face to face with the fact that they could not carry on effectively on that field, and they had to move on, not knowing where they should go.  Health gone and opportunity gone, life tumbled. What then, for both of them?

 

These illustrations are not the works of fanciful imagination.  They are the experiences of people whom I have known.  And you have known people who have had similar experiences.  And life has tumbled in for some of you.  What then?

 

Well, just this:  even though life does tumble in now and again, it must go on!  And whether it limps along with a defeated, crippled soul; or forges ahead with joy and courage; depends of course upon the attitude we have toward it.

 

When, following her supposedly simple operation, Alice died leaving her five children and a heart-broken husband, someone said to me, “Why?”  And “where’s the justice in that?”  Probably our minds do grope for answers to these questions.  But far more important than the question, “Why?” is the question, “What shall we do?”  What can we do - for do something we must and will.

 

There are several attitudes we may take when life tumbles in.  1)  One is that of those who say, “This is only an illusion of the mortal mind.  It is not real.  Peace!  Let nothing disturb you.” Perhaps that satisfies some.  It does not satisfy me, and I don’t think it satisfies you who are here this morning.

 

2)  There is the attitude, again, of the cynic who may say, “Well, what do you expect?  Reality is an ugly affair.  God?  There is no God behind this world of ours, or if there is, he is a monstrous tyrant, or else totally indifferent.”  That may satisfy the skeptic.  But certainly it does not satisfy most of us.

 

3)  Perhaps, admitting that life does tumble in, we may say, “Forget it if you can.  Eat, drink and be merry - that will help.”  All of us do this part of the time and some may do it all of the time.  A sailor goes out of Honolulu on a submarine.  For a week, or a month, his vessel seeks a rendezvous with the enemy.  Perhaps they succeed in making contact; launching a torpedo which will blow up or drown other men.  Then hell on earth breaks loose while enemy surface craft try to find the submarine.  The depth charges explode nearer and nearer while the crew, like rats in a hole, wait, hoping that none will come close enough to crush their craft;  perhaps, if they are Christian, some are praying.  They may escape and return to their base at Pearl Harbor, their mission accomplished, enemy shipping having been damaged or sunken by them and enemy men sent to their death.

 

A sailor who knew these experiences says, in a reader’s letter to a newspaper, “I am a father of two boys, one of whom is now in these islands in the army, and I have been in the service for over 30 years, and my advice to them would be that if after a raid or battle they could not get the dirt out of their minds, to get well oiled when and if the chance offered.”

 

That is precisely what some men and women do in answer to this important question.  They try to forget it in a drunken spree or by any other avenue of escape which seems to present itself.

 

4)  Still others of us take it stoically, saying in effect, “This is our fate and what destiny has for us.  Whether we like it or not we must accept it and bear it.”  Perhaps you know the story of William Ernest Henley.  When he was 12 years old, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone, and never escaped its torture the rest of his life.  He finally had to have one foot amputated.  Then he was informed that the other would have to go, too.  But he was stubborn.  When he was 24, he journeyed to Edinburgh to put himself in the care of Professor Lister.  He stayed there for 20 months, enduring endless suffering, undergoing more than a score of painful operations, without the use of anaesthetic.

 

Out of that experience, he wrote his “Invictus.”  It is the song of a Stoic.

 

            Out of that night that covers me,

                        Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

            I thank whatever gods may be

                        For my unconquerable soul.

           

            In the fell clutch of circumstance

                        I have not winced nor cried aloud.

            Under the bludgeonings of chance

                        My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

            Beyond this place of wrath and tears

                        Looms but the horror of the shade,

            And yet the menace of the years

                        Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

 

            It matters not how strait the gate,

                        How charged with punishment the scroll,

            I am the master of my fate;

                        I am the captain of my soul.

 

You’ve read it;  you’ve heard it sung.  I have sung it myself.  It is grand and it is majestic.  But it doesn’t satisfy - at least not me!

 

5)  There is another attitude, an advanced, Christian attitude.  It is an attitude of sheer faith; one that affirms that the ultimate reality of this universe is not ugliness, but loveliness;  not evil, but good.  We will do all in our power to transform our world into the kind of world it ought to be.  But when we can not transform it, we may still transcend it by the faith that, in God’s love, we may master life.

 

Doctor Gossip maintained that “for sheer splendor there is nothing to be compared to a Christian man when the dark falls, and the test comes, and some black rushing water must be crossed.”  The Christian man to whom he refers has the resources which make him equal to life’s opportunities and bludgeonings.  When life tumbles in, he is able to say with the Psalmist, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?”  [Psalm 27: 1].  He can say with Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  [Job 1: 21].  Like an ancient writer in the book of Deuteronomy, he declares, “The eternal God is [my] refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”  [Deuteronomy 33: 27].  And at last he can say with the Master he loves, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  [Luke 23: 46].

 

Do you want to know the ultimate secret of triumphant, Christian living?  There it is in those three words rising above awful agony in marvelous serenity - “Into thy hands.”

 

There is an account of a young Negro preacher whose wife died suddenly.  Shortly afterwards, he heard Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick speak over the radio.  Saying to himself, “There is a man who will help me,” he went to New York and spent more than four hours in consultation with Dr. Fosdick.  As he left the room he said, half to himself and half to the secretary, “God, what a man!  When I went in there all the stars had dropped out of my heavens, and one by one he put them back in.”

 

That is precisely what Jesus does for us:  he puts the fallen stars back into the skies of our lives.  One more thing needs to be said beyond the thought that Christ can put the stars back in our skies.  It is this:  a life grounded in God’s life and love will not tumble in.  It may be terribly shaken - often is.  But when the storm breaks in its fury, the foundations will remain unshaken.

 

Let Dr. Gossip, out of his sorrow, again put into words the conclusion of the matter:   “I don’t think you need be afraid of life.  Our hearts are very frail; and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely.  But we have a wonderful God.  And as Paul puts it, what can separate us from his love?  Not death, he says immediately, pushing that aside at once as the most obvious of all impossibilities.”

 

“No, not death, “writes Dr. Gossip.  “For, standing in the roaring of the Jordan, cold to the heart with its dreadful chill, and very conscious of the terror of its rushing, I too, like Hopeful, can call back to you who one day in your turn will have to cross it, ‘Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound.’”

 

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dates and places delivered:

 

            Wisconsin Rapids, September 27, 1942

            W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, October 2, 1942  (first 6 pages)