Volume 29, No.42                                          
October 31, 2004

Some Passing Fancies

   Life holds many lessons.  So does death.  Here are some examples.

   In 1911, English daredevil Bobby Leach survived a 180-foot plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel and proudly told his story every chance he got.  Walking down a street fifteen years after his famous stunt, he stepped on a fruit peel and died of complications from injuries suffered in the fall.

   That reminds me of how we often pride ourselves on emerging unscathed from what most of us consider the “big” sins — such as sexual misconduct or drunkenness — only to do serious damage to our faith by falling victim to things we don’t even see coming. Think of how often we slip up and fall down when it comes to sins we hardly give a second thought to, even though they’re equated with the biggies on God’s most-hated list:  “quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group” and envy. (Gal. 5: 19,20)  Any of those can bring us down, so we need to watch where we’re going.

   Even when things are going well, we must be careful, guarding our hearts against creeping pain and discouragement.  In 1915, British army sergeant Felix Powell wrote the music for Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.  He entered it in a World War One contest for the best morale-building song and won with his tune, described by one commentator as “perhaps the most optimistic song ever written.”  Powell committed suicide in 1942.

   After encouraging so many others, the songwriter succumbed to personal demons and despair. It’s a reminder that, like the soldiers who hummed, whistled and sang Powell’s song, we’re in the trenches, fighting the forces of evil whose most powerful weapon is hopelessness.  Beware the whispered lies of the enemy who says, “You’re not good enough.”  “Things will never change.”   “What’s the use of even trying?”   

   Remember, in the music of life, the Word is more important than the tune.  Let Jesus comfort and protect you, and be vigilant against the other extreme, the sense that you’re invincible.  Powell could’ve listened to the apostle Paul who looked at life as a race and said, “I discipline my body, like an athlete, training it to do what it should.  Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified.” (1 Cor. 9:27)     

     After all, cocky over-confidence can be deadly. That was learned the hard way by Johann Underwald, a Swiss mathematician described by colleagues as “the next Albert Einstein.”  Ironically, he died in 1999 because of a simple mathematical mistake. Underwald made a 250-foot bungee jump — with a 300-foot cord.

   Calculated risks are spiritually fatal, too, when our calculations are off.  We may think we can flirt with sin, convinced we’re smart enough and in control enough to handle the risk or expected results.  But carelessness and contempt for the power of sin can do us in. Paul says run from evil “and follow what’s good and right.” (1 Tim. 6:11)  Better to flee and prosper than fall and perish.

   Just ask the family of German zookeeper Friedrick Riesfeldt who was killed while treating the constipation of his elephant, Stefan.  When he got no results with a bushel-full of figs and prunes — or 22 doses of animal laxative — he tried an olive-oil enema.  That did it.  In the ensuing release, the elephant man was knocked to the ground where he hit his head on a rock and was covered by 200 pounds of manure. “With no one to help him, he lay there under all that dung for at least an hour and suffocated,” said police detective Erik Dern.

   For many of us, that rather indelicate story is a metaphor for life.  We spend our time and energy trying to do the right thing, only to get dumped on, in a big way. If we have no one to help us, we’re soon asphyxiated by the world’s foulness.  That’s why God brings us together in the church, a place of rescue and refuge.

   So let’s remind each other the world is a dangerous place when we underestimate evil and make faulty assumptions.  And learn the lessons of death.  They’ll be the life of you yet.      
 
By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ church family in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To receive these free weekly articles via email, send a note to sgamble@bfree.on.ca