Next Best                                                                                           2/11/45

 

Scripture:  Romans 8: 27-39

 

Text:  Romans 8  (selections from) 28, 31, 37

 

Your life is a story.  So is mine.  So is the life of each of these young men sitting up here near me this morning.  If a fairly gifted author were looking for material for a new book, he could find it in the lives of almost any of us.  And it would be interesting reading.

 

Some of our experiences, too deep for ordinary conversation, could be detailed in books by some artist skilled in the use of words.  The way we face life, whether grave or gay, might help others to enlarge their horizons, deepen their insights, escape tedium.  Isn’t it true that you and I learn a great deal about living from the experiences of others?  Why not the reverse?  Shall not others have the chance to learn something positive from your life and mine?

 

There are two fairly recent biographies, neither of which I have read, but upon which I have seen comments to which I would refer.  One is the autobiography of Roy Chapman Andrews, the explorer and adventurer.  He titles it “Under A Lucky Star.”  In his own account of his life, with its adventuring, he tells of doing many things which you and I will never have the luck to do.

 

The other biography is that of the scientist, George Washington Carver.  It is written by Rackham Holt and is titled “Under a Cloud.”  It is the story of a man who did so much, over his difficulties, that the reader feels he also can do more with what has been given him.

 

It seems to be a fact that most of us do not get the best.  Our stars are not too lucky.  We live all right, but we could do with more resources and better breaks.  If we had some magic Aladdin’s lamp, we would rub it for quite a lot more than we now possess, or have any prospect of getting.

 

If we are realistic we face the fact that, in light of what seems the best, we have to get along largely with next best.  And the art of successful living depends on the way we place the accent; whether we say “next best” or “next best.” 

 

Christianity is not merely sentimental, and Christians are not expected to wear rose-colored glasses.  But a good Christian will talk and act as if he can go a long way with what he has - with his next best.  Even the worst, like sorrow, pain, death, anxiety, is not so bad but what God expects us to consider it only “next best.”  Not bitter dregs, but real possibility.

 

1)  Christians say what Paul said: “We know that all thing work together for good for those who love God.”  [Romans 8: 28].  Notice that Paul did not stop with saying “All things work together for good.”  They don’t.  There is nothing of itself good about disease, about famine, about war, about the death of a loved one, about treachery or a betrayal.  That is obvious.

 

But the religion of Christ takes a leap of faith - “All things work together for good to those who love God.”  That means that those who love God have his help.  The good that comes out of the worst, or the next best or even the best depends entirely on what we try to make out of it.  If a man has allowed God to be big in his life, he can be calm and sane; he can keep his chin up; he can be sure of himself because he sees God as his companion in trouble, and his inspiration in trial. 

 

Dr. Carver’s life illustrates this.  His biography in “Who’s who” begins, “Born of slave parents who were killed by northern soldiers.”  It ends: “Fellow of the Royal Society, London.”

 

Through his whole life, Carver knew that God had never failed.   He was certainly not “born under a lucky star.”  No parents that he could remember; not even a name until he took one; colored - only one who has been routed out of a Pullman berth in the night and sent to the Jim Crow car as the train crosses the Mason and Dixon line, can know the bitter oppression of spirit which the color of skin can cause - this man nevertheless took hold of his next best.  He became fascinated with scientific study.  When the boll-weevil began to ruin the cotton crops of the South so that it was harder and harder for people to exist, Dr. Carver - then little known, retired to his laboratory.  He called his laboratory “God’s little workshop.”  He meditated a long time on what the boll-weevil would do to peoples’ living.  Obviously it was getting harder and harder for cotton growers.  He decided that God had allowed the boll-weevil to come in order to develop a new South, a South that would depend on more than a failing cotton crop.

 

He believed that the only foundation for abundant living was in a personal relationship with the creator of all things.  [Deeply religious spirit.]  In a little story, he told of this experience:

 

            “I asked the Creator what the universe was made for.  ‘Ask something more in keeping with that little mind of yours,’ God replied.

            “What was man made for?  ‘Little man, you still want to know too much.’

            “Then I told the Creator I wanted to know all about the peanut.  He replied that my mind was too small to know all about the peanut, but he said he would give me a handful of peanuts and I was to see what I could do.”

 

And as he went about his experiments, Carver found in the storehouse of the peanut such a variety of things as: meal, coffee, salve, cold creams, bleach, tan remover, wood filler, washing powder, soap, metal polish, paper, ink, plastics, shaving cream, rubbing oil, linoleum, shampoo, axle grease, synthetic rubber.  Coffee county, in Alabama, listened to Dr. Carver’s warning and shifted from cotton crops to peanuts.  In 1915 it was a community threatened with economic starvation.  Four years later, it was well on its way to becoming one of the richest communities in the South.  And it erected a memorial with the words, “In profound appreciation of the boll-weevil and what it has done.”

 

Through Dr. Carver, a whole county had proved again that “all things work together for good to those who listen to, and love, God.”

 

2)  There is another step:  “If God be for us, who can be against us?”  You or I can stand on a spectator’s sideline, and curse our lick, or we can get into life’s contest and say, “If God is for me, who can be against me?”

 

The real battle will always be fought in the soul.  It is not in the dropping of bombs or the launching of torpedoes.  It is in standing confident and bold, sure of what we believe.

 

At the beginning of this war I heard a man say that America will win; and the reason we will win the war is that we are right!  To a considerable extent I agree.  And yet I qualify the opinion constantly with the thought that America’s victory lies entirely in the peoples’ soul.  Can we face the increasing hardships, shortages, necessity for vital production; casualties, disappointments, eagerness, with a resolute and generous spirit?  Have we enough soul to control our own black-marketing; to share even a portion of the sufferings of the rest of the world?  Do we know what to do with a victory when it comes?

 

Real success is in character.  Rufus Jones has remarked that “The person who has the largest share of the world is he who can enjoy and appreciate it most fully.”  Living is not to be measured by years, but by height and depth.  And religion is the hero in your soul.

 

A member of our church, now reported killed in action by the War department, was recently cited for bravery.  Three years ago, John Corey was State President of our Congregational young peoples’ “Pilgrim Fellowship.”  A year and a half ago he became a soldier.  Late last November, “on his own initiative,” according to the citation, John crowded forward under enemy fire to a position where he could obtain and relay back information that meant a successful move by his entire company.

 

John was not a lover of warfare.  He hated its evils with the same hatred all others have who know of its wrongs.  Probably his closest friends know relatively little of what the men like him have endured in it.  It is far worse than just “next best” for him and for other millions like him.  But, fighting the battle in his soul, he emerges a hero.  And George Elliot said this; that “The greatest legacy a hero leaves his race is ... to have been a hero.”  And the best type of hero is he who, in some hard place, lives on a higher level than the crowd expects of him.

 

A woman in New York worked 15 years for a steamship company.  When war conditions developed in 1939 that crippled shipping, she was dismissed.  A man in her department said “good-bye” to her, and she said, “I’ll see you Monday morning.”  “See you Monday?  I though you were fired!”  “So I am,” said the woman, “but somebody’s got to help those girls catch on to my filing job.  So I’m coming to help them.”  “Without pay?” asked the man.  “Yes,” said the woman.  “I’m grateful to this company.  I’ve worked with it for 15 years.  It has dismissed me with one month’s pay for every 5 years I’ve worked here.  So I have 3 months to look for another job.”

 

And man said, “Well, now I understand the kind of religion you’ve talked about!”

 

This particular story has a “happy ending.”  A few weeks later the woman got a letter asking her if she would take back her job.  An official was later asked how many people in the company had been discharged because of the war.  “128”  “And how many of that number have you reemployed?”  “One.”

 

The point is not the “happy ending,” which is not always appended to such a story.  The point is the Christian spirit of the “second mile” on a plane where it is understood.  “If God be for us, who can be against us?”  A philosopher once said to the youth of his day, “I charge thee that thou lose not the hero in thy soul.”

 

3)  One more step.  “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”  What shall we do with the next best that has been our luck?  We might just as well accept it.  The past cannot be recalled; what is given cannot be changed; we cannot earmark the future except by our wishes and plans which are always subject to upset.

 

But let us not only accept what we have, but win with it!

 

We can do what is expected of us - and what we get paid for.  Or we can give a lot more than we need to, putting a “plus” into living.

 

Carver could have gone to Edison’s laboratories with marvelous equipment and $100,000 a year! and lived in luxury on what he earned one day a week!  But he chose to live on his $1,500 a year at Tuskegee Institute, studying peanuts, swamp muck -- anything that showed promise of helping needy people.

 

If the way in front of us seems closed, there is always a trail, higher up, that goes on over.  On that trail, through Him that loved us, we are more than conquerors.

 

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delivered at Wisconsin Rapids, February 11, 1945.