Life needs aerating. It gets heavy; it settles down on us and needs to be lightened up. People should find inspiration and joy in the church, not just new layers of guilt and condemnation. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have joy.” True, Christ came to convict of sin, but the Christian paradox is that in this chaotic, tragic world, we can enjoy a life of adventure and excitement.
Many people come to church with deep troubles. Someone estimated about six out of ten sit there with major hurt in their lives. Therefore, I appreciate those speakers, teachers, and pastors who lift people’s spirits with inspiration and hope. Of course, spiritual aeration must be more than mere humanism. The “blessed hope” is not guilt but grace; we are forgiven, we are free, we have the fellowship of the body, and an inheritance immortal. We have talents and gifts. We count. Each of us can make a difference where we are.
If this is not true, then we are fakes. If it is true, then why not exult in it, breathe it in and inflate our sagging souls?
What a challenge to face the depressed with this message of hope and help. What a responsibility to spread the light and share the lilt. This opportunity makes Sundays come around too slowly, for we have something to say that will help those desperately in need.
Too often, pastors and teachers read and admire only the great sermons of the famous evangelists without realizing these sermons were for the unsaved, not the regular member bearing the heat of the day. A sermon should apply to those listening. Personally, I prepare my talks by starting at the end, by asking myself what I expect the listeners to know, feel, or do when I quit speaking. This makes me conscious of specific needs, not just thinking about some mythical audience.
The Scripture is full of inspiration and joy. To be inspirational, we don’t have to be merely humanistic. Humanism believes in the perfectability of man. I don’t. However, I do believe in his great potential after new birth. We sometimes become so hung up on man’s lack of perfectability we overlook his high potential and great possibilities.
The gospel is a balm, a “lubricant.” So very many are running without enough oil to keep the friction down and the r.p.m. up! A successful business friend called me the other day just to get a psychological break from pressures. After he talked a bit, I asked what he was doing to keep his head together amid all the pressures. He replied, “Work, work, work.” Now, I believe in work. It is one of the best psychological glues for holding life together. Yet it isn’t enough to make a fully meaningful life. Knowing I would be with him soon, I reflected on the things we can do to keep a lilt in our lives.
For me, there are four very important words; each adds its own brand of aeration to my spirits.
Wonderment. This thought came early one morning listening to Carlos Fuentes, the South American novelist, when he described the heart of the novel as “amazement.” This, I realized, is what I have to be open to constantly. I call it wonderment, looking openly at those things that cause awe and worship in me. Someone has said that the true mark of genius is not to create awe in others, but to be awed. Many of us have a tendency to become cynical, closed-minded, disinterested, even bored. Concentrating on our knowledge rather than our ignorance, we lose our sense of awe. My ignorance is my friend, not my enemy. It is my playground of the future. I don’t need to compare what I know to anyone else. I need to compare what I don’t know with the vast amount I can learn. The more we know, the more we realize there’s so much more to stimulate wonder.
I listened to Philip Morrison speak about the termites of Australia. Some are “farmers” that prepare the ground, plant, cultivate, and reap the food for all the other termites. Fascinating! At one time we thought the atom was the smallest unit of the universe, and now we’re finding universes within it. When I see writers drawing pictures with words, or handicapped people with incredibly optimistic spirits overcoming their limitations, it amazes me. When I studied the black holes of space, I met Dr.
Hawkins, one of the outstanding authorities on the subject. He’s severely handicapped and can rarely get out of his wheelchair; yet he’s established himself RS an international authority in this demanding area. I’m not awed only by the black holes, but by the spirit of a man like this.
The more you look for wonder, the more you see. It’s a discipline. It’s easy in life to become jaded and say, “So what?” But that’s not the biblical spirit. Paul said in the Scriptures not “So what?” but rather “So that.” He determined to be all things to all men “so that” he could reach them. He kept his body in submission “so that” he wouldn’t be a stumbling block. Paul had a vision and a sense of wonder in what God was doing.
You don’t need money to fill your life with wonderment. The poorest person in America can borrow books or look at the wonder of an ant carrying a stick. Sometimes I search the Friday newspapers for all the things I could do on the weekends if I had no money-lectures, concerts, walking trips, museums. Some people are so overcome with what they can’t do for lack of money, they’re blind to what they can do. Every human being can open his eyes to the wonder in the world.
Wonder has two great enemies: entertainment and acquisition. Entertainment satisfies our need to be outside ourselves. The fantasy of TV is often just interesting enough to keep us watching, and just not quite bad enough to make us turn it off. It becomes an anesthetic to our mind. In its dullness we lose the excitement of watching real life.
Acquisition-that other enemy of wonderment- gives us synthetic satisfaction in acquiring things. We use our energy and thought planning and shopping for more things, hoping they will restore the sense of satisfaction that our previous purchases failed to do.
The other night I walked around our house to look at the paintings on the walls. One I hadn’t looked at for five years. Yet, I could get excited about saving enough money to buy another painting, and I haven’t looked at the ones we have. We want to go out and buy books when we have books we’ve never read. Acquisition is a tremendous enemy of the sense of wonder because our energy and excitement gets used up in the process. Acquisition fuels our pride, not our sense of wonder.
Urgency. If you have no urgency, then you have nothing important in your life. Someone has said one of the problems of retirement is you lose your urgency because your priority list becomes level; nothing stands out as having to be done. One of the great motivations of life is that things have to be done at a certain time and in a certain way; you become urgent about them. People who have no urgency can lose their zest. Without important things to do, they feel unimportant.
Yet, we must discipline our urgency. Being urgent about everything is actually being panicky, one of the-least desirable traits. All my adult life I’ve tried never to panic. I think one should drill himself so that in crisis “Don’t panic” is the first reaction.
I remember having prepared very intensely for a talk to the Texas Bankers Convention. Sunday night I reached into my briefcase to get my notes for the presentation Monday morning. To my horror, there wasn’t a single piece of paper there. I realized I’d left the file in the trunk of my car, which was at a garage being fixed and was totally unavailable.
There I sat, unable to recall the contents of my talk, and the subject was too specific to use old materials. My first words to myself were “Don’t panic.” I knew if I did, I couldn’t be effective. I spent most of that night recalling, assimilating, and assembling. Thirty minutes before I spoke, I was ready, and the talk was very acceptable. If I had allowed myself to panic, it would have thrown my mind out of gear.
Panic is not part of being urgent. Genuine urgency enables us to focus on the task at hand and enjoy the results of that urgency. I’ve learned to welcome the positive stress of urgency as one of the greatest engines of an energetic life.
Preparing for a TV show with “Mean Joe” Greene and Craig Morton, I asked Craig, of the Denver Broncos, what it took to be a great professional quarterback. His first qualification was the “ability to relax under fire.” Evidently I didn’t react as knowingly as Mean Joe thought I should, so he followed up by explaining, “What a pro means by relaxing is to stay in control.” He knew Craig wouldn’t go to sleep when Mean Joe of the Steelers came at him; he knew Craig had to stay in control or panic. If he panicked, the play was over.
Reverence. The following verse may seem like a strange one for reverence: “How can you say you love God whom you have not seen if you love not your brother whom you have seen?” But this correlation struck me: How can you say you revere the Creator when you don’t revere his creation?
I hear people talking about reverence for God who have no reverence for man or the world God created. One night Norman Cousins and I were talking, and he told me he had recently returned from visiting Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Lambarene. As they walked up the hill, a hen and her little chicks walked in front of them. Dr. Schweitzer took off his hat, bowed, and said, “Congratulations, my dear, I didn’t know it would be so soon.” I admired his spirit of reverence for life!
We can easily say we revere God, yet selfishly use people and even condemn them to hell with a hidden, self-righteous satisfaction-even though God still loves them deeply. We live in a fallen world, but we are still called to have reverence for what God has made. When we look at people as co-inhabitors of our Father’s world instead of competitors, our perspective changes.
I have to remind myself of this every morning on the freeway. Sometimes I take my own advice seriously enough to make a resolution to do one favor for another motorist on the way to the office. I find that when I pause and let somebody in line without blowing my horn, it affects how I feel when I get to the office. Reverence for my fellow human beings aerates my spirit.
It works toward both man and God. Reverence for the created doesn’t seem complete to me unless I reach out and have reverence for the Creator. I noticed on the cover of Harvard magazine a statement about DNA being the most important “invention of nature since we rose from the murky waters.” I felt rather sad that they couldn’t see anything beyond “murky waters.” One of the values of being a Christian is that while I can agree DNA is a magnificent, amazing reality, to believe it is God’s creation lends so much more dignity and reverence for life.
Gratitude. I’ve been constantly surprised at how few people feel grateful for what I think they should be grateful for. Many live by the philosophy portrayed in the remark, “What have you done for me lately?” My son pointed out to me that most people when they say “Thank you” simply prove they have been well raised, not that they’re grateful. I can’t demand that others be grateful for what I’ve done for them, but I can demand of myself that I be grateful for what others have done for me. It puts a lilt in life.
Gratitude is very pragmatic. For example, Hans Selye, in The Stress of Life, points out that according to his research, gratitude is the healthiest of emotions, whereas revenge is the unhealthiest. It’s interesting that the Bible tells us to be grateful for all things, and another verse proclaims, ” ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.” God says not to harbor revenge, but to be constantly grateful. Here is an example of a modern scientist verifying Scripture.
I used to have trouble understanding the phrase in Psalms that God wants our “sacrifice of gratitude.” How can you equate thanksgiving or gratitude with sacrifice? But then it dawned on me that when I truly thank someone, I’m sacrificing my ego. I’m saying, “You did something for me I couldn’t do for myself.” It really is a sacrifice.
Gratitude is the positive interdependence of people, which brings peace; whereas revenge is negative, which produces violence. I have nothing I haven’t received. I am the recipient of health, education, opportunity-everything. Each morning I need to say, “I am part of this marvelous human race which, though fallen, is so greatly loved by God that Jesus Christ died for it.” Talk about gratitude!
Our old nature keeps pushing selfish thoughts and fears into our lives, but if we think of the magnificent work of God on our behalf, and all of his works of wonder, we will be aerated in such a way that we can genuinely glorify our Creator-in wonder, urgency, reverence, and gratitude.
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