INTRODUCTION
Dorotha Bartman was a resident here at
Village Ridge. She was in her 90s when we met her here. She departed to be with
Jesus a couple of years ago at the age of 99.
Dorotha was totally deaf but she never missed
a church service. It was because of her deafness that I began writing out my
messages, so that she could have a copy to follow as I spoke. Although Dorotha
had lost her hearing, she could still speak. She took part in each of our
services by reading an inspirational story or a poem to us at the beginning of
each service. She had a good clear voice and we all enjoyed her contributions.
One Sunday she told us this story:
There was a man
who was 92 and blind. His wife of 70 years had recently died. A friend agreed
to take him to a nursing home.
After waiting some
time in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled brightly as the nurse told his
room was ready. As he maneuvered his walker into the elevator, his friend gave
him a description of his little room.
“I love it!” he
exclaimed, with enthusiasm.
“But you haven’t
seen it yet,” his friend protested.
“That doesn’t have
anything to do with it,” he replied. “Happiness is something you decide on
ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the
furniture is arranged—it’s how I arrange my mind. I have decided to love it.”
He explained that
this was a decision he made every morning when he woke up. Each day, he said,
he could lie in bed, mourning the difficulty he had with the parts of his body
that no longer work—or he could get out of bed and be thankful for the parts
that do.
Dorotha told us this:
Each day is a gift, and we should focus
on the happy memories we have stored away—just for this time of life. She said,
“Life is like a bank account; you withdraw from what you have put in.”
I. St. Paul wrote his letter to the
Christians at Philippi while in prison, chained to a guard. He would have had
reason to be downhearted at the time when he wrote that letter.
A. But this is the letter in which he writes:
“Rejoice always, and again I say,
rejoice” (4:4) And again: “Even if I am to be poured as a libation
upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you
all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me” (2:17-18)
Today I would like to talk a few lines of
advice St. Paul gave his friends in Philippi.
He wrote, “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be
blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a
crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world” (2:14-15).
“Do
all things without grumbling or questioning…”
It’s easy to fall into the habit of majoring
on the things (and people) that disappoint us.
When we complain about each other, we forget
that we irritate other people as much as they irritate us. We’re just much more
aware of the faults of others than we are of our own faults.
It’s like the headlights of an approaching
car. You remember driving down the highway at night and encountering a driver
who neglected to dim his lights. The brightness blinds you.
But if it’s you who forgot to dim your
lights, you are unaware of it until the approaching driver flashes his lights
at you.
Sometimes we complain about things we really
should be thankful for.
We may complain about a disappointing meal.
But we should be thankful that we get enough to eat. Remember how, when you
were a child and were complaining about your turnips (or whatever), your mother
would remind you of the starving children in China who would be thankful just
to have something to eat?
Sometimes we complain about things we can’t
do anything about. What’s the use of complaining about our health, the weather,
the government, or that the younger generation is going to the dogs?
The more we talk about what’s wrong, the
worse we feel, and the worse we feel the worse we make everyone around us feel.
Sometimes we complain about God. We’re
discontented with the way he’s running his world.
We think he should do something about our
troubles. Instead we might ask God to show us the meaning of our
afflictions and disappointments.
B. Complaining has less to do with the
circumstances of our life—how much trouble we are facing—than it has to do with
our attitude toward life.
I remember a friend in a nursing home who
said this to another resident who was expressing her discontent about something
or other. She said, “We just can’t take
that attitude.” Content has more to do with attitude than circumstances.
Remember the man in Dorotha’s story. He said,
“Happiness
is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t
depend on how the furniture is arranged—it’s how I arrange my mind. I have
decided to love it.”
Have you heard this bit of verse?
Some murmur when their sky is clear
And wholly bright to view,
If one small speck of dark appear
In their great heaven of blue:
And some with thankful love are filled,
If but one streak of light,
One ray of God’s good mercy, guild
The darkness of their night.
C. The story is told of a man in Budapest
went to his rabbi and complained. He said, “Life is unbearable. There are nine
of us living in one room. What can I do?”
The rabbi answered, “Take your goat into the
room with you.”
The man was stunned, but the rabbi insisted.
“Do as I say, and come back in a week.”
A week later the man came back looking more
distraught than ever. “We can’t stand it,” he told the rabbi. “The goat is
filthy.”
The rabbi then told him, “Go home and take
the goat out, and come back in a week.”
A week the man came back to the rabbi, his
face alight with pleasure. “Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it—now
that there is no goat.”
When we are feeling sorry for ourselves, it
is good to remember that it could be worse. There are those who are less
fortunate than we are.
Someone said, “I complained about the shoes I
had to wear, until I saw a man with no feet.”
II. Now notice the reason why Paul says we
shouldn’t grumble and question.
A. “…so that “you may be blameless and innocent, children
of God without blemish in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
Children resemble their parents. God’s
children should be like God.
Other people should be able to see the family
resemblance.
As God’s children we should be the nicest,
pleasantest, most considerate people around. Then we are like Jesus. Then we
behave like children of God.
B. “...children
of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine like lights in the
world.”
In most translations, “Lights in the world” is translated “stars in the world.”
The stars are lights in the dark sky.
Christians are the lights in a dark world.
Sailors find their way over the dark seas by
looking at the stars. Christians can show the way to God by shining like stars
in our world of sin and darkness.
Nowadays we are so used to electric lights
shining everywhere that we can hardly remember that in our youth we could look
up at a black sky, in which multitudes of stars shone like diamonds in the sky.
Remember the Big and Little Dippers and the Milky Way?
When I was in the army in Korea, we had no
electric lights. We were warned never to strike a match at night because the
enemy could see that tiny flash that would give our position away—even if he
was miles away.
Or the lights could be thought of as the
little oil lamps people used in their homes. Do you remember these lines that
Portia speaks in Shakespeare’s Merchant
of Venice?
“How far that little candle throws his
beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
I think Shakespeare had been reading his
Bible.
At our last service at Village Ridge we sang
this old Sunday school song:
“Jesus
bids us shine, with a clear, pure light,
Like
a little candle, shining in the night.
In
this world of darkness, we must shine,
You
in your small corner, and I in mine.”
One
way we can shine for Jesus is by our grateful spirit.
If
we have a grateful spirit, we will refuse to grumble and complain.
When
we are grateful, we make ourselves happier, and we make those around us happier
too.
When
we are discontented, grumpy and sour, we spread our misery to those around us.
When
bad things happen, we may not feel cheerful or grateful, but we can still refuse
to grumble and complain.
God
doesn’t require that we be always bubbling over with happiness. Jesus said,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
At
one time Paul was so distressed that he wrote, “We were so utterly, unbearably
crushed that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:9). Another time he
wrote that he was “sorrowful, but always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). So
even Paul, and even Jesus became discouraged. The important thing is to keep
trusting God, and living out our faith.
CONCLUSION
Sometimes
when you go to the doctor, the doctor will ask you to stick out your tongue,
and put that little wooden paddle on your tongue and ask you to say, “Ahhh.”
Evidently a good doctor can tell something about what ails you just by looking
at your tongue.
In
the same way God looks at our tongues. Many of our sins are sins that we
express with our tongues.
We
are particular about what we put into our mouths. But Jesus says that it’s a
lot more important what comes out of our mouths than what goes in. He says, “The good person out of the good treasure
of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure
produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth
speaks.”
If
someone collected my words or your words and sorted them out, what proportion
would be compliments, or words of encouragement, or sympathy, or thankfulness?
And what proportion would be words of criticism,
faultfinding, discontent, self-pity?
One
of the nicest compliments I have ever received was unintended. We were at
breakfast and someone was pointing out the faults of another person. I remarked
that maybe we didn’t understand that person’s problems—maybe there are reasons
why he is so unhappy and disagreeable, reasons that we don’t know.
My
friend said, “Oh, you are always making excuses for people.” I was pleased to
hear that—even though it wasn’t intended as a compliment.
Jesus
even made excuses for the people who drove nails through his hands and hung him
on the cross. He said, “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do.”
A
friend of mine likes to quote this saying from Confucius, the ancient Chinese
sage: “When we see persons of worth, we should think
of equaling them. When we see persons of contrary character, we should turn
inwards and examine ourselves.”
So
when we see people who are filled with kindness, or wisdom, or
thankfulness—let’s try to be like they are.
And
when we see people who are bitter, or cross, or crabby, or ungrateful—let’s look
within and see what sins we need to repent of. And if we look hard enough,
we’ll always find some sin to confess and forsake.
That will help us be humble and helpful and
grateful—and to shine for Jesus in our dark world.
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