Norman Vincent Peale onc e sha red hi s favorite story: One day I was walking down the street, when I saw my friend George approaching. It was evident from his downtrodden look that he wasn’t overfl owing with the ecstasy and exuberance of human existence, which is a high-class way of saying George was dragging bottom. Naturally I asked him, “How are you, George?”
While that was meant to be a routine inquiry, George took me very seriously and for fifteen minutes he enlightened me on how bad he felt. And the more he talked, the worse I felt. Finally, I said to him, “Well, George, I’m sorry to see you in such a depressed state. How did you get this way?” That really set him off.
“It’s my problems!” he said. “Problems - nothing but problems. I’m fed up with problems. If you could get rid of all my problems, I would contribute $5,000 to your favorite charity.”
Well now, I am never one to turn a deaf ear to such an offer, and so I meditated, ruminated and cogitated on the proposition and came up with an answer. I said, “Yesterday I went to a place where thousands of people reside. As far as I could determine, not one of them has any problems. Would you like to go there?”
“When can we leave? That sounds like my kind of place,” answered George.
“ I f that ’s the c ase, George,” I said, “I’ll be happy to take you tomorrow to Woodlawn Cemetery because the only people I know who don’t have any problems are dead.”
One way we may confront life’s problems is by surrendering to and embracing them; for God is surely at work in us during those times, also.
C.S. Lewis provides a fictitious conversation from Satan to his apprentice: “Sooner or later, God withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs— to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.
“It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please him best.
“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived; our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do God’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of God seems to have vanished, asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Before Jesus could be raised from the dead by the power of God, he had to trust his life to God’s keeping: “Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Before we can be born anew, we must commit our lives to God. We must die to so many things: ego, fear, selfishness and greed because death always precedes resurrection.
For followers of Christ, hardship and difficulties always came before victory; but victory is sure because of the resurrection. So Paul would write to Corinth: “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the aff liction we experienced; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
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