ON TROUBLES

My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

—Psalm 73:26

 

The midnight stillness was broken by the strident, insistent ringing of the telephone. A moment before its summons, after putting away my last papers before retiring, I stood at my library window looking out over the moonlit city. At that hour its restlessness yields to a seeming, ineffable peace. The moonlight was tracing a silver pathway across Central Park; and I reflected that, idyllically beautiful though the world was, probably there were hearts and minds in that moon-drenched night heavily burdened and troubled. Then via the long-distance telephone there came a voice calling for help.

It was the voice of an old, old friend; a strong, self-sufficient man—at least it had always seemed so. But now he was saying: “Norman, I am tired. I was never so tired in my life. I am exhausted. It has added up and added up and added up until I can't take it any longer. The heart has absolutely gone out of me.”

There was an interruption in the conversation, and I thought the connection had been broken until I became aware that at the other end of the wire a man whom I had never known to cry was sobbing. I gave him what emergency treatment I could over the telephone and bandaged his wounds as much as possible, pending a more definite treatment.

But after our talk was concluded, I sat reflecting upon the ways of human nature, which have been the same from time immemorial. Again and again in the literature of the world, especially in biblical literature, we read: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax.” There came to me a line from the seventy-third Psalm: “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart.”

There you have the formula of human nature; the heart, the essence of us, the very center of us, fails even as the flesh fails. We become tired, weary, disheartened, without heart. But there is an answer and it is so simple. God is the strength of your heart. God restores the inner life and vitality and courage and joy. God puts heart into you.

How is it done? How do the disheartened get new heart as a result of their faith in God? First, I should say, God gives to the individual that wonderful formula known as a philosophy of difficulty. A philosophy of difficulty means that you must recognize the fact that everybody must have his share of trouble. That is the way the world is made. No matter how well you protect yourself, how well you surround yourself with security, trouble is going to get in and get at you. You can ward a lot of it off by having faith and by being sensible, using your intellect and your powers of the spiritual life. But it will touch you to a certain extent because everybody has his share.

Perhaps it is a good thing for a person to have trouble. I am not in favor of it. I have no enthusiasm for it. But fortunately I did not make the universe. If I had made it, I probably would have been foolish enough to have made everything easy. We even have certain politicians who claim they are going to fix everything so that it will be all sweetness and light, and nobody will have to worry any more because the government will take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave. Of course, that will cost a lot of money, and the government will have to take all your money away from you to pay the bills; but they do not mention that hardship.

I got into a taxicab the other day and the driver was about the maddest man I have ever seen. He had a wizened orange in his hand and shook it at me. “How much do you think that orange cost me?” he yelled. “Thirteen cents! And that isn't all. When I take this car to the garage, they take five percent of all I make away from me. It is some kind of a tax. And the government sent me a bill the other day for taxes on my tips. They don't know what the tips amount to so they guess and send me a bill for sixty-nine dollars. I thought they were going to take care of the poor! That is what they said!”

“That is what they told you,” I agreed. “But they can't, they can't make life easy for you. All they are doing for you is to make it hard.”

Any foolish individual who goes around telling people that things are going to be fixed so they will not have any more troubles is not telling the truth. It does not work that way. You cannot reconstruct human life.

Trouble is part of the universe; it is basic. When they first manufactured golf balls, they were smooth. Then some duffer discovered that after he got a few nicks in his golf ball he got more distance; the nicks seemed to counteract the resisting forces of the air. And so they put dimples in golf balls.

Trouble and difficulty make people; it made the American people. I never went much for Tom Paine's philosophy because he was just a poor kind of agnostic in the days of the American Revolution. He was later hopelessly outmoded and still is. But he said one thing at Valley Forge that seems to me infinitely wise: “Let us thank God for this crisis for it gives us the opportunity to prove that we are men.” Adversity makes men.

A bright child was taken to a psychiatrist in this city. The child was able to develop all sorts of pain to evade any difficulty. The psychiatrist decided the child had not met enough trouble and advised the parents to manufacture adversity. “If you don't, she will grow up too soft to meet the difficulties of human existence.”

This is all part of a philosophy of trouble that may comfort you a bit the next time you encounter difficulty. A continuation of the philosophy emphasizes the fact that when you get the clear-mindedness of God so that you are able to decide how to handle trouble, you just keep right at a problem until you come through to a solution. One of the great things about this world is that it does not make any difference how disheartening circumstances are, they will ultimately change. One of the most comforting facts about human existence is, “Even this shall pass away.” Maybe there is no permanency to happiness; but there is no permanency to trouble either. They both pass away. If you can retain enough stick-to-it-iveness in the midst of disheartenment to keep going, you will come out on the other side of any trouble.

I remember an old friend who told me: “I got my philosophy of trouble. When I see a difficulty in front of me I go around one side of it. If I can't get around that side, I come back and go around to the other side. And if I can't get around it either way, I try to get underneath it. If I can't get underneath it, I try to get up over it. And if I can't get underneath it or above it, I just plow right smack through it. And,” he said triumphantly, “like in a tunnel, you will always come out into the light. You always will if you just take up your belt and pull up your heart and keep on going.”

When I was a boy I used to be in many businesses. I always did believe in free enterprise. I worked hard: I sold aluminum; I sold books; I worked in a drug store; I clerked in a department store and can remember taking down bolts of goods and putting them back. I worked in a candy store, which was a great mistake—it started me on the wrong path. I sold newspapers and had a route delivering a Cincinnati paper in a small Western Ohio town. This went very well until one afternoon my mother met me on the main street of town coming out of a bar.

“Norman,” she asked sharply, “what were you doing in that place?”

“I have all the bars on my paper route.”

I left the newspaper that afternoon under my mother's pressure.

Then I went into the grocery business. I worked for an old-fashioned grocer and I would not have missed that experience for the world. These newfangled stores can't compare with the old-style grocery. Just the smell of that store was wonderful. It was a mixture of pickles and coffee and cheese. The coffee was freshly ground for each customer in an old-fashioned grinder, and I never smelled such coffee. Then there was a great round cheese, and everybody who came into the store would take a big knife and whack himself off a piece and reach down into a barrel and get a handful of crackers and eat them with the cheese.

That is the kind of grocery store I worked in. And the man who owned it made money too. He used to leave me in front when there wasn't much business and go off into a back room. I found out once what he was doing back there. He knelt on an old carpet beside a box and prayed. He had a lot of troubles and he used to tell me about prayer.

One day when it was bitter cold and snowing hard and there were no customers because the streets were piled high with drifts, he came out of that prayer room and stood looking out the window at the storm. “Norman,” he said, “did you ever stop to think that spring always comes? It doesn't make any difference how much winter we have, spring always comes.”

Now, moods settle down and you get discouraged. Everything seems to conspire to defeat you and you complain, “Why does everything go wrong?” Sometimes deep, profound tragedy comes to you and it is very dark, very cold, and there seems to be no hope. How long have you lived? Have you ever seen a year when spring did not come? “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

Well, your heart and your flesh faileth, but there is strength in your heart with God. That is the way God made the world. So take up your belt, pull up your heart and keep going.

The man who knows God knows that there is a deep balance, compensation and philosophy in the universe; that if he has to say, “My flesh and my heart faileth,” he will also say, “God is the strength of my heart.” Because always, if you hold on and keep your feet in a sturdy place and keep your heart substantial, you will come through.

That is one way to get new heart when you are disheartened. The other is a very simple one; it is so simple that you will think when I suggest it that I haven't told you anything. But I have lived long enough to be absolutely sure of this. You can pray your way through any difficulty the world or the devil ever conspired to put in front of you. Prayer is the greatest technique God ever gave us. If you will pray and keep on praying and pray some more, there isn't any difficulty that need dishearten you. You will get your heart back by prayer.

If you are in a difficulty right now, if you are discouraged, disheartened about anything, quit talking about it; quit fuming and fretting about it; quit complaining about it; quit going around and trying to get advice about it. Start praying about it and yield yourself to God in prayer. Ask Him for the answer; ask Him for His answer, not yours. And stay with Him. The Bible has words about “Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly,” about “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force,” about “Prayer was made without ceasing.” Why does it tell you to pray without ceasing? Because if you pray without ceasing, you get your whole mind and your life conditioned so that God can do great things for you as a result of your prayers. He wants to help you before you have ever said a word of prayer. But He has to get you conditioned before the great things can be done. Just pray, that is all. It is very simple. If you are disheartened about anything, just pray and keep on praying.

I have a friend who is forty-one years old and totally blind. He was chairman of a meeting at which I spoke in Savannah, Georgia. He had made all the arrangements for the meeting, and it was one of the best organized that I ever addressed. Everybody in that town loves him. When we checked in at the hotel, we were taken to the eighth floor. As we left the elevator, he said, “Turn to the left.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because I have my wits about me,” he said. “I come to this hotel often. All the even numbers are on the left, the odd numbers on the right.”

I watched him walking down the hall. “I have forgotten the number of my room,” I said. “Do you remember it?”

“It is the next door,” he said.

All day long it was like that. He knew details I didn't know. We were going to the television station for an interview on the air and inquired about directions. We both listened. But on the street I would have walked by the building if he had not stopped me. “Where are you going?” he said. “Here it is. Right here.” “How do you do it?” I asked.

“The Lord took away my sight, but He gave me an attention to detail.”

I remember when, in New York, the specialist he had come North to see gave him the terrible news that he was going blind. The doctor promised him no more than a few months. He went back to the hotel where he was staying, went to his room, walked over and looked out of the window. It was a clear day in Manhattan and the sun was shining. He looked down on the people walking along the street. “Some of them look very poor,” he said to himself, “but they can see. They haven't just been told that they are going blind. I would give everything I have ever had or hope to have; I would be willing to be as poor as the poorest if I could only see for the rest of my life.” And he added, “Why do I want to live if I am going to be a blind man?” He looked at the window. “It would only take a minute. There would be the effort of it; then there would be one wild moment of terror; and then it would be over and I would be at peace.”

He told me how he had gripped that window sill; how, resisting the thought, he went down on his knees instead of going out of the window. He prayed almost continuously for twenty-four hours. He had never prayed like that before in his life. He said, “I got into it and I just agonized with God. Then, all of a sudden, I had a burst of light. It wasn't in my eyes; it was in my brain. I knew God was telling me, ‘Son, I can't give you back your eyesight, but I will give you power greater than you have ever had.' And He has.”

The Bible says: “My flesh and my heart faileth.” But it also says, “God is the strength of my heart.” So just take your trouble, whatever it is, and start praying about it until light comes in your brain and you feel a good old sturdiness in your heart once again. And you will have new heart for all the disheartenment that you will ever face.