What makes a life great? 9/29/40

Scripture: Luke 12: 4-21

Text: Luke 12: 15b "A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

It seems necessary to the health and well-being of any person that he or she have a feeling of some importance. We must have work to do that we believe has some value and we have to feel valued ourselves. How eagerly we focus attention on Jesus’ assurance that even the hairs of our heads are numbered! And that if God remembers every sparrow, how much more surely He shall remember each of His people. It doesn’t take the assurance of a psychologist to acquaint us with the fact that self-respect is of major importance to healthy existence. Any observing person knows it already.

In Zona Gale’s play called "Neighbors," the grandmother, too aged and crippled to do anything else, spends most of her time sewing together strips of rags and winding the sewn strips into a ball from which to make rag rugs. She does this task day after day in order to be useful to the family of her son or daughter (I’ve forgotten which) with whom she lives. The time comes, however, when she no longer feels that it is so useful. I suppose that the monotony of the task has dulled the thrill of helping. In a fit of unbearable impatience she throws the ball of rags across the room and spends her time that afternoon making a rag doll, feeling joyfully certain that the doll will be welcomed by the child who is coming to live with a neighbor.

Often the desire to be useful and valued is enlarged to the desire to be great. We see or hear about other people who are acclaimed great and sometimes we nurse an ambition to become great ourselves. The King of England or the President of the United States seems great in government. The Premier of Russia or the Dictator of Italy seems great. Among preachers, Dwight L. Moody and Phillips Brooks and in our day Harry Emmerson Fosdick and George Buttnik seem great. Scientists like Madame Curie, Louis Pasteur, Michaelson, and Compton are acclaimed great.

Some capability or achievement about the lives of such as these seems worth-while to us. It may be with work that they accomplish or the benefit of that work to many other people beside themselves. It may be the honor accorded them or the respect in which they are held.

Sometimes we are over-impressed by the pomp and circumstance with which people love to surround those who seem great, for example the pageantry of a coronation. One reads with interest that it takes $10,000.00 each month to run the second largest royal residence in England - where the monarch’s mother, Queen Mary lives. That means living in a 200-room residence with a host of servants in a manner befitting a queen. I suppose the British feel that in normal times it is properly so. And doubtless it is. But that fact is of little consequence beside the personal character of the queen who herself superintends each detail of the operation of that establishment in addition to all of her other efforts to inspire confidence in the British people who have been her husband’s, and are now her son’s, subjects.

For certainly a truly great life is in no way described by the abundance of things with which it is surrounded. The greatest figure in India lives so simply that his estate would seem to be one of the most abject poverty. Once a wealthy lawyer, Gandhi lately lives without most of the things which we would think necessities for our existence. The greatest life ever lived in human form existed in a body that often had not where to lay His head.

No life is made great by the things possessed. In fact things do not even guarantee one’s security. At best, things are merely a means to fine living.

Jesus tried to impress this truth deeply in the minds of his hearers when he gave them this parable of the rich fool. A well-to-do landlord, with a large farm and plenty of help to run it, had favorable weather and growing conditions. His crops were so abundant that he could not put away what was harvested. So he decided to build larger barns and warehouses to take the place of those which were now too small.

Having so great an abundance of wealth he looked forward to ease, to eating of much fine food, plenty of drink, much entertainment, and I’m afraid that was all. All in vain! For not all of this wealth could stand between him and death when it called for him on the very night of his decision. ("Shrouds have no pockets"; "You can’t take it with you.")

O how many, many of the sons of man put all of their trust in the goods of the earth and bend their whole energies to get as much of the world’s wealth as possible for themselves! The temptation in this direction assails all of us. This is partly, I suppose, because we must give enough attention to the matter to secure a livelihood for self and family. And we come to feel that we should not be so driven if we only had more. Therein lies the subtle temptation of the devil.

The despair of those who have lost fortunes in time of depression or other adversity should awaken us to the narrow folly of living entirely among our things. I suppose that there were scores, perhaps hundreds, of men in American cities, who had been relatively wealthy, who took their lives in suicide as they faced financial ruin in the recent depression. What a tragedy! How utterly bleak life must seem to those who have invested their whole existence in things only to find things going or gone. (Painter - Gill or his brother.)

For after all, things can not guarantee happiness. They are no insurance against sickness, or the inevitable death of the body. Things never brought love, or mercy or trust or awe into a man’s life. "A man’s life consisteth not in abundance of the things which he possesseth."

A man’s real riches are not with his granaries or his bonds or his lands, but with God! God gave us life and life is more than food. Life is more than clothing or house. "Life with its way before lies. Christ is the path and Christ the Prize."

The need for enough things to sustain life in the flesh is a real human need. But it is a minimum need, because there is so much more to life than that. What about all the "richness toward God" which is implied in the 21st verse of the 12th chapter of Luke?

I have observed the fine vigor and grand strength of character of those who spend much time in the conscious company of God, and I am impressed with it. I think I can see real differences between those who know God and those who ignore Him in the management of things as elsewhere.

In his fascinating "Country Lawyer," Bellamy Partridge tells some of the details of his father’s practice at law. A case that kept the country lawyer busy for a long while was one in which the heirs of a well-to-do distiller fought his will for nearly twenty years. No two of them agreed. Each had his own attorney and fought the matter out in his own way for his own anticipated benefit. They loved neither their father nor each other. And they spent a good deal of their time and the family fortune just fighting.

I know of another case in which a will was handled quite differently. When their father died, two sisters found themselves his sole heirs and set about the tasks of dividing the possessions left to them. The parcels of land and the few modest bonds were divided between them to their entire satisfaction and according to the wishes of the departed father. A few personal possessions of their father and also their mother were likewise satisfactorily divided. All seemed just and fair and friendly. One difficulty remained. One of the sisters had raised a larger family than the other and the larger family had always been the poorer in goods, partly because of unemployment, partly because of the heavy expense of raising and educating more people, partly through errors in judgment. The father had helped this sister somewhat while he lived. When he died, it was found (as they expected) that he had deducted the amount of this financial help from this sister’s share of the inheritance. As a result, she and her husband found that they were not going to have enough cash to preserve the inheritance and might lose it all in taxes, interest and incidental fees and expenses.

In simple justice, that was no affair of the other sister. But theirs was a Christian home. And the God of love was very real in their lives. Before they left the table, that very hour, the other sister turned over enough of her share of the inheritance to make the portion of each equal to the other and they agreed to forget about what the father had spent on the first sister’s family while he lived. "Rights" were adapted to "love." Justice was tempered with mercy. The family feeling between brothers -in-law and cousins as well as the sisters was never finer. Their father and the Heavenly father must have smiled upon them. The whole picture contrasts sharply with that of the brewer’s quarreling family. All because two Christian women chose the real values of life above property, God and sister above things, joyful sharing even above fairness.*

A great life is one that is concerned with God and Man. For it is this concern which breeds the things that are greater than the lusts of power, of wealth, or of advantage. The concerns of man are colored by his temptations, his shortcomings, his willfulness.

But love and mercy grow in the life that trusts in God. For God has a way of sustaining by his Holy Spirit those who seek Him, who trust Him, who serve Him, who will only to live as He would have them live. Whether the world ever really takes notice of you and me or not, we can live a great life with God.

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*In that day’s church calendar:

"Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of God and prayer and the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been scratched. When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has seen in the past four."

Charles P. Steinmetz.

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dates and places delivered:

Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, September 24, 1939 AM

Oahu Evangelical Association, Kokokahi, October 6, 1939

Wisconsin Rapids, September 29, 1940

W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, March 8, 1941

Old Mission, Madeline Island, Wisconsin, August 17, 1941