6/4/50

Scripture: Psalm 23

Text: Psalm 23: 3;... “He restoreth my soul ...”

What is your most precious possession? Is it a painting? A garden? An excellent book? Your house? A shiny automobile? Is it good health? Is it your education, which so many assume can never be taken away from you? Is it the love of your family? Is it your reputation for good character among all who know you? Doubtless many of these things, and consideration, have great value for all of us. And some of them are very precious indeed.

But is not life itself the most precious thing we have? Life has come to us not of our own choice but in the mysterious providing of God, whose ways we understand only partially, now and then. Life is not something we have earned or seized. It is a gift of the Creator, precious beyond price.

Yet so often we permit it to lose its zest. It is true that sometimes the tang of life is lost through no particular fault of our own. (1) Sometimes one’s vocation seems to take color and flavor from life. But here we must be critically careful. For almost anybody’s job involves regularity of work, the repetition to motions or the recurrence of the same ideas. Home, office, field, factory, store and shop -- all have their confining molds of sameness. A farmer goes to bed at night with muscles aching from the strenuous work of the planting or the harvest, knowing that he must be up early the next morning for another long day of work at the same thing. And every year it must be the same, at that season, if he is to go on being a farmer at all.

The production worker in an automobile factory must go through a certain set of motions all day long, as he adds his part to the completion of an endless string of new cars. And the bank teller must count out, and receive in, with speed and accuracy, the cash entrusted to his care. It is like that, day after day.

The business executive adds to the routine he works out in order to keep his business going in the competitive world, the many problems it falls on him to solve and the responsibility of seeing that many peoples’ work goes well.

Our time in history, with civilization industrialized, mechanized, specialized, geared to the clock and the calendar, condemns all of us to routine that often impresses us with a sameness of existence. We must constantly find new frontiers -- not geographical, but social, cultural and spiritual frontiers -- to lift us beyond the monotony of our jobs to the zest of a life that includes these jobs.

There is a Christian attitude toward commonplace work that makes a great deal of difference. A Canadian YWCA worker spent a considerable portion of her life in Japan working, until her death, among prisoners there. She once wrote: “People often ask me about what they conceive to be my ‘interesting’ work. As a matter of fact nothing in all the world can be more prosaic than spending one’s life among the unfortunates and the failures and the sneaks and the thieves and the what not, day after day and year after year, unless --- unless we believe it is God’s chosen work for us to do, and that we cannot escape from it, nor it from us. Life, however one views it, is commonplace enough unless one’s deepest conviction is that one is a servant of the Most High God, and as such can, to some extent at least, actually enter into the mind of the Master.”

Do not these words form the basis for a Christian attitude toward work? If followed, and made real, they could save many of us from being inwardly destroyed by the monotony of our jobs, whatever our work may be.

(2) Perhaps the color of life fades with the loss of a loved one. We know that, when that happens, life is forever changed. But the experience, however tragic, may, through Christian hope, fashion us into richer souls, more valuable because better able to understand the sufferings of others. Of course a life bereaved is never again quite the same. But that it should lose its zest is quite another thing. For when a door must be closed on one experience it may still live in grateful memory, while doors open on new experiences.

Probably, when life drops to some dead level of monotonous, uninspired existence, it is because we permit it to do so. Not so much because of outside circumstances as because we relinquish our faith, and become “fed up,” is life reduced to gray colorlessness. We take our stand on the values of the world and wonder, at least in odd moments, why life has no “kick.” We attempt all sorts of escape from humdrum existence, seldom facing the fact that it is humdrum because we do not become, nor remain, the complete, healthful personalities we were meant to be. We get over-concerned in the pursuit of happiness; worried as to whether we shall be happy. Happiness is less something to be caught, and secured, than something that just catches up to us and overwhelms us when we have been living life with trust and interest and enthusiasm. It is not an aim; it is an occasional byproduct of living rightly. It comes from within, but it eludes those who spend their energies trying to get it.

The life of our Master was not drab. It was thoroughly illuminated. Yet Jesus seems never to have pursued thrills. He evaded the sensational as a temptation of the devil. What he did with common people is amazing. He made them feel that God was their heavenly father. That God was sovereign, they understood. -- So was the emperor of Rome. That God was to be feared, even that God might be perfectly and awfully just -- this they understood in a distant sort of way. But that God was their heavenly Father was a new, and transforming, assurance for them. Jesus made common folk to realize that they were infinitely more valuable in the sight of God than the sparrows, or sheep, or even than the Sabbath.

Furthermore, Jesus was able to assure his hearers that God’s handiwork, did they but see it in the petals of the wild flowers or in the molding of obedient lives, far surpasses in richness and color anything achieved by Solomon in all his glory.

If we have lost our zest in living, we do not have to stay lost. There is a way out --- not so much by one’s own effort as by placing one’s life at the command of God.

The words which were read this morning as the Scripture lesson are among the most familiar of the whole Bible. Probably you have memorized them, and they are your permanent possession. It may be that no one in this room has ever had the job of caring for sheep. But sheep-herding was a most familiar vocation to a majority of people in that time of Israel in which the Psalms were written. Sheep provided the meat, the clothing and even the nomadic shelter of people; and the care of the sheep was not alone a job but a prime necessity. The good shepherd was skilled in all sorts of outdoor craft and was constantly concerned with his sheep. He understood them well. He led them to still waters, for they feared to drink from moving waters. He led them where the grass was green. He watched for enemies, and often threw himself against any marauding animal that threatened them. When a sheep got over-tired, he might pick it up and carry it to the safety of the fold. There he gave it a brimming cup of water to drink, poured a little soothing oil on its head. And by these attentions it was restored.

So skillful is each allusion to the shepherd made, that the psalm is I near perfect picture of God’s care for his people and of the people’s dependence on God. When life loses its zest - “He restoreth my soul.” The true values of life can be restored to us and God can do it. If we permit it, a change can be wrought in our attitudes which will restore us from jaded existence to the realm of glory.

People sometimes speak of advancing age as if with resignation or dread. Age has it zest, too, in richer experience, matured judgment, wider range of appreciations. It is not to be dead nor dull, but richer, broader, fuller. This is what Robert Browning meant when he wrote:

Grow old along with me;

The best is yet to be;

The last of life, for which the first was made.”

The way by which we transmute existence to life is in the process of wanting and seeking. Even the kingdom of right comes to our experience by seeking. Said Jesus: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these (other) things shall be added unto you.” [Matthew 6: 33].

The illumination of life comes while we seek and pray and strive. Even Jesus had to pray -- not simply “had to” but wanted to pray with all his being. He pleased not himself but strove to please God.

In the 18th century these words were written on the theme we think of today:

Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings;

It is the Lord, who rises with healing in his wings;

When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again

A season of clear shining to cheer if after rain.”

Paul had a word to say about life bogging down when he wrote --- “and let us not grow weary in well-doing.” [Galatians 6: 9]. In another place he said: “...never let your zeal flag.”

We too easily let what a tough old world calls “reality” throttle our idealism. The Christian faith is not absurd, as the so-called “practical” world suspects. It is rather the greater realism. The ideals, by the light of which we strive, are the very stuff of zest-full living.

Albert Schweitzer has an observant word for us at this point. He writes: “The knowledge of life which we grownups have to pass on to the younger generation will not be expressed thus: ‘Reality will soon give way before your ideals,’ but ‘Grow into your ideals, so that life can never rob you of them.’ If all of us could become what we are at fourteen, what a different place the world would be.”

It is strange, come to think of it, that Paul had to warn us not to grow weary in well-doing. He probably knew how prone we people are to grasp at a splendid challenge and then let it go. How prone we are to wonder if our ideals are sensible, after all, and to tone down the high demands of the Kingdom of God.

Life should be enjoyed in fulfillment of our ideals and in the zest of struggle for them. Life’s zest is renewed in believing in the power of goodness.

Though it was a consummately evil thing for people to have done, we remember the crucifixion not because it was evil, but because, so long as history lasts, it disturbs us by proving the power of goodness.

When we look at living a second time, even when weary and jaded for the moment, we see certain and sure evidence of God’s Kingdom and of his presence.

“He restoreth my soul.” Blessed be His name! For surely He intends that we shall enjoy living to the full in June or in January.

------------

Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, June 4, 1950

Wisconsin Rapids, June 21, 1959

Wisconsin Rapids, June 18, 1967

Wood County Infirmary, October 11, 1967