Archives: Episodes

Sometime

Sometime when all life’s lessons have been learned.
And sun and stars forevermore have set,
The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,
The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet
Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,
As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue;
And we shall see how all God’s plans were right,
And how what seemed reproof was love most true.

And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,
God’s plans go on as best for you and me;
How, when we called, He heeded not our cry,
Because His wisdom to the end could see,
And ev’n as prudent parents disallow
Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,
So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now
Some wanted things because it seemeth good.

And if, sometimes, commingled with life’s wine,
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink,
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink;
And if someone we love is lying low,
Where human kisses cannot reach the face,
O do not blame the loving Father so,
But wear your sorrow with obedient grace!

And you will shortly know that lengthened breath
Is not the sweetest gift God gives His friend;
And that sometimes the sable pall of death
Conceals the fairest boon His love can send.
If we could push ajar the gates of life
And stand within, and all God’s workings see,
We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.

But not today. Then be content, poor heart!
God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold;
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart,
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
And if, through patient toil, we reach the land
Where tired feet with sandals loosed may rest,
When we shall clearly know and understand,
I think that we shall say, “God knew the best.”

—May W. Smith.

Alternate Reading: Acts 14: 8-17.

Making a Home

To make a complete home you need a complete set of human relations, as per the following list prepared by Nature and endorsed by the best traditions: Husband and father, wife and mother, children, including babies and adolescents; sisters and brothers, grandfather, grandmother, guests, and a dash of neighbors and friends.

If you lack any one of these items you miss something—the home is not perfect. If there is one of these relationships you have never known, your life is by so much maimed. It is the fashion to speak disparagingly of relatives, but they art a part of the environment of Nature, and if you get nothing but annoyance from them something ails you. You might as well curse the sun and stars as hate relatives.

Blessed is the man, and thrice blessed the woman, that loves the people that ought to be loved. There are grandmother and grandfather, for example. The child that has them not has missed one of the sweetest elements that make memory happy. They understand children better than parents, for they have learned that so many things that worry parents are not much matter.

And plenty of brothers and sisters. A solitary child in a house is a lame soul. He can never get that sound view of the world that comes to the member of a full family. As for babies, it is only a sort of imitation family where there are none. The very best ingredients of our character come from dealing with babies.

And I love a houseful of young folks, of the courting age. The only wholesome, delightful, and cheering disease in or out of the medicine books is lovesickness. When we grow past its agonizing stages we still ought to see it in others around us.

Most cranks and dried-up folks and pessimists and disagreeable people are victims of small families. They have been deprived of that wholesome flow of humanities that comes from a full set of relations.

—Frank Crane.

Alternate Reading: Acts 13:1-12.

Christ, our Savior

If you take a cluster of flowers just as they are, with the dew upon them, how exquisite they are! But you tarnish them by just so much as you meddle with them. Every one who dissects a flower must make up his mind to lose it.

That sweetest flower of heaven, from which exhales perfume forever and forever; that dearest and noblest conception that the human imagination ever gathered out of father and mother, out of leader and benefactor, out of shepherd and protector, out of companion and brother and friend; all that ever was gracious in government—these various elements rising together, are an interpretation, in a kind of large and vague way, to the imagination, and through the imagination to the heart, that there is, at the center of universal authority toward which we are going, One who cares for us; One who bears our burdens; One who guides our career; One who hears our cry; and One, though He does not interpret Himself to us, who will at last make it plain that all things work together for the good of those that have trusted in Him.

Oh, my brothers, we are not far from the end of our journey. It matters very little what this world and time have for us. The other world is near to us, and it matters everything how we shall land there. We have our burdens, our crosses, our poignant sorrows, sickness, and death, embarrassments, bankruptcy, trials, and if not outward scourgings yet inward scourgings. We are not exempt from the great lot of mankind; and we go crying often with prone heads. Is it a comfort for you to know that there is a God who thinks of you? to know that there is One who is crying out in the silence, if you could only by your spiritual hearing listen, saying, “Come boldly to the throne of grace, and obtain mercy and help in time of need”?

O throne of iron, from which have been launched terrible lightnings and thunders that have daunted men! O throne of crystal, that has coldly thrown out beams upon the intellect of mankind! O throne of mystery, around about which have been clouds and darkness! O throne of Grace, where He sits regnant who was my brother, who has tasted of my lot, who knows my trouble, my sorrow, my yearning and longing for immortality! O Jesus, crowned, not for Thine own glory, but with power of love for the emancipation of all struggling spirits!—Thou are my God—my God!

—Henry Ward Beecher.

Alternate Reading: Acts 10: 23-43.

Prayer

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er:
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And lay my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

—Henry W. Longfellow.

“For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”

—Alfred Tennyson.

Farewell, farewell! I but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things, both great and small:
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

—S. T. Colbridge.

The man that never prays for his home has a heart of stone.

Alternate Reading: Acts 9:1-19.

Jesus Puts Human Need Above Sabbath Law

About the same time Jesus walked through the cornfields one Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and began to pick some ears of wheat and eat them. But, when the Pharisees saw this, they said:

“Look! your disciples are doing what it is not allowable to do on a Sabbath!”

“Have not you read,” replied Jesus, “what David did when he and his companions were hungry—how he went into the House of God, and how they ate the consecrated bread, though it was not allowable for him or his companions to eat it, but only for the priests? And have not you read in the Law that, on the Sabbath, the priests in the Temple break the Sabbath and yet are not guilty? Here, however, I tell you, there is something greater than the Temple! And had you learnt the meaning of the words—

‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’

you would not have condemned those who are not guilty. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Passing on, Jesus went into their Synagogue, and there he saw a man with a withered hand. Some people asked Jesus whether it was allowable to work a cure on the Sabbath—so that they might have a charge to bring against him. But Jesus said to them:

“Which of you, if he had only one sheep, and that sheep fell into a pit on the Sabbath, would not lay hold of it and pull it out? And how much more precious a man is than a sheep! Therefore it is allowable to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man:

“Stretch out your hand.”

The man stretched it out; and it had become as sound as the other. On coming out, the Pharisees plotted against Jesus, to put him to death.

Jesus, however, became aware of it, and went away from that place. A number of people followed him, and he cured them all.

—Matthew.

The Joy of a Pure Life

Happy are the pure in heart, for it is they who will see God.

—Jesus.

The Key to a New Earth and Heaven

O lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live;
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
And would we ought behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd—
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth;
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be,
What and wherein it doth exist.
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power:
Joy, virtuous lady! Joy that ne’er was given
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower—
Joy, lady, is the spirit and power
Which wedding nature to us, gives in dower
A new Earth and Heaven,
Undreamt-of by the sensual and the proud;
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colors a suffusion from that light.

—S. T. Colbridge.

Alternate Reading: Acts 8:14-25.

Live Your Best Today

Be not therefore anxious for the morrow; for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

—Jesus.

Live the Present Hour

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live,—be good! You cannot live the past; you cannot live the future. Your life is compressed into the present. The present is the same to all. It is all that anyone really has. You cannot lose either the past or the future, for you do not possess either. The present hour is your sole possession. Then make the most of what you have. Reverence that which is best in the universe and also reverence that which is best in thyself. Let not future things disturb you; for you will come to them, or will not come to them, as God may appoint. At any rate you cannot carry into the future more than you have in the present.

—Marcus Aurelius Antonius.

For Tomorrow and Its Needs

Lord, for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray;
Keep me, my God, from stain of sin just for to-day.

Help me to labor earnestly, and duly pray;
Let me be kind in word and deed, Father, to-day.

Let me no wrong or idle word unthinking say;
Set Thou a seal upon my lips through all to-day.

Let me in season, Lord, be grave, in season gay;
Let me be faithful to Thy grace, Dear Lord, to-day.

And if, to-day, this life of mine should ebb away,
Give me Thy sacrament divine, Father, to-day.

So for to-morrow and its needs I do not pray;
Still keep me, guide me, love me, Lord, through each to-day.

—E. R. Wilberforce.

Alternate Reading: Acts 5:17-42.

Jesus at Work in the Sabbath

Sometime after this there was a Jewish Festival; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, near the Sheep-gate, a Bath with five colonnades round it. It is called in Hebrew Bethesda. In these colonnades a large number of afflicted people were lying—blind, lame, and crippled. One man who was there had been afflicted for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw the man lying there, and, finding that he had been in this state a long time, said to him:

“Do you wish to be cured?”

“I have no one, Sir,” the afflicted man answered, “to put me into the Bath when there is a troubling of the water, and, while I am getting to it, some one else steps down before me.”

“Stand up,” said Jesus, “take up your mat, and walk about.”

The man was cured immediately, and took up his mat and began to walk about.

Now it was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured:

“This is the Sabbath; you must not carry your mat.”

“The man who cured me,” he answered, “said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk about.’ “

“Who was it,” they asked, “that said to you ‘Take up your mat and walk about’?”

But the man who had been restored did not know who it was; for Jesus had moved away, because there was a crowd there. Afterwards Jesus found the man in the Temple Courts, and said to him:

“You are cured now; do not sin again, for fear that something worse may befall you.”

The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him. And that was why the Jews began to persecute Jesus—because be did things of this kind on the Sabbath. But Jesus replied:

“My Father works to this very hour, and I work also.”

This made the Jews all the more eager to kill him, because not only was he doing away with the Sabbath, but he actually called God his own Father—putting himself on an equality with God.

—John.

The Sultan’s Lesson

A Sultan placed before his throne one day
Three vases—one of gold, one amber, and one clay;
And when his seal was set upon each urn,
His three sons, at his bidding, chose in turn.

Upon the golden vase “Empire” was writ;
Resplendent jewels all around it stood;
The eldest grasped that vase and opened it,
But shrank to find it brimming full of blood.

“Glory” upon the amber vase shone bright;
Fresh wreaths of laurel twined the letters o’er;
The second seized it quick; but ah, sad sight!
‘Twas filled with dust of heroes known no more.

No word was written on the vase of earth;
But still the youngest son advanced his claim;
He oped the urn amid the courtiers’ mirth,
And naught was in it save God’s holy name.

The Sultan to the throng of courtiers turned,
And asked which of the vases weighed the most.
Various the thoughts which in their bosoms burned,
And came to speech among the glittering host.

The warriors said, “The golden vase of Might”;
The poets said, “The amber vase of Fame”;
The sages said, “The vase emblem of Right,—
The globe is lighter than God’s written name.”

Then said the Sultan, “Sons, remember well
The meaning of the lesson read to-day;
When the scales tremble betwixt good and ill.
The name of God will all the rest outweigh.

—W. R. Alger

Alternate Reading: Acts 5:12-16.

An Ethical Creed

No church since the early centuries has had the courage to formulate an ethical creed, for even those bodies of Christians which have no written theological creed, yet have implicit affirmations or denials of doctrine as their basis. Imagine a body of Christians who should take their stand on the Sermon of Jesus, and conceive their creed on its lines. Imagine how it would read, “I believe in the Fatherhood of God; I believe in the words of Jesus; I believe in the clean heart; I believe in the service of love; I believe in the unworldly life; I believe in the Beatitudes; I promise to trust God and follow Christ, to forgive my enemies and to seek after the righteousness of God.” Could any form of words be more elevated, more persuasive, more alluring? Do they not thrill the heart and strengthen the conscience? Liberty of thought is allowed; liberty of sinning is alone denied.

Who would refuse to sign this creed? They would come from the east and the west, and the north and the south, to its call, and even they who would hesitate to bind themselves to a crusade so arduous would admire it, and long to be worthy. Does one say this is too ideal, too impractical, too quixotic? That no church could stand and work on such a basis? For three short, glorious years the church of Christ had none else, and it was by holy living alone, and not by any metaphysical subtleties, the Primitive Church lived, and suffered, and conquered.

—John Watson.

Alternate Reading: Acts 4:1-20.