"Two Frogs in a Deep Cream Bowl"
Proverbs 12:25; 15:13; 17:22
I’m not much of a saver, unless it has to do with some nifty sermon illustration. I have a couple of file boxes full of illustrations and articles I’ve saved over the years. One of those saved items is a Time Magazine cover article from 1984. The story was about the upbeat mood of the American people at that time. Rising up out of the ashes of the Vietnam war, and the Iran hostage fiasco, and just a general negativism, was a more positive American personality and outlook--back in 1984.
Rereading the article, I thought it an interesting comparison to where we are today. We seem to be winding down from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are coming through some really negative economic times--and it’s still not clear when it will get better. Political stalemates over national debt and government spending cuts, along with American corporations unwilling to share their amassed wealth, has made our national personality more cynical, angry, pessimistic and fearful.
As I was rereading the long cover story from the 1984 Time Magazine article, I came across the following statement:
Once ignited, a sense of optimism (like pessimism) can be self-fulfilling: the U.S. has cheered up partly because enough Americans willed such a change. It is the power of positive thinking writ large.
The point the writers were making fell along the lines of the old saying that nothing breeds success like success. Likewise, nothing breeds optimism like optimism.
But everything hinges on the first two words of the quote I just read: “Once ignited…” So the question becomes: how does the mood pendulum swing from the side of pessimism and negativity over to optimism and the positive? How can we move, in the words of the Proverbs, from a sad heart, a broken spirit, and anxiety, to a cheerful face and a joyful heart? How does that ignition of optimism happen, in individuals and larger groups of people--maybe a whole nation?
A sidewalk superintendent was watching three men at work on a construction project. All three were doing the same job--brick work. “What are you doing?” the observer asked the first worker.
“I’m working for $60 a day,” he replied.
“What are you doing?” said the spectator to the second worker.
“I’m just laying bricks,” was the reply.
The same question was asked to the third brick layer, but his reply was, “Why, I’m building a grand cathedral.”
Those three attitudes, those three perspectives of the brick workers seems to me to be what’s at issue. How can we motivate ourselves to a larger, more positive vision, moving from the mundane (“just laying bricks, making $60 a day”) to the notable and meaningful (“building a grand cathedral”)? How does our attitude about who we are, or what we are doing, shape how we approach life? That’s the question.
Proverbs 12:25 reads, “Anxiety in the heart weighs a person down…” But it doesn’t stop there does it? It doesn’t just weigh one person down. The anxiety we feel not only affects us. It ripples out to all who are in our circle of relationships. Anxiety ends up weighing lots of people down, even though it started with one person.
Let’s think of anxiety as a major storm. Often, a major storm is the coming together of smaller storms and conditions, that by themselves, aren’t that destructive. But once combined, those minor storms come together to make the major storm of anxiety.
Sorrow, for example. Ongoing, unresolved grief over someone or some thing lost. Grief and sorrow forces a person to live in the past, rather than seeing the possibilities of the now and the future. Sorrow forces a person to focus only on what could have been, or what should have been, but isn’t. For example, in losing a loved one, you not only lose that person, you also lose companionship, a sense of security, dreams and aspirations for the future, a part of your own identity, or a change in other relationships. So many sorrows get compounded upon each other when we suffer a loss.
Grief and sorrow are like those blinders they put on horses that only make them see a small portion of what’s in front of them. When looking at the expanse of the horizon, a person controlled by sorrow only sees a small portion of that horizon. That’s how grief and sorrow contribute the growing size of anxiety in a person’s life. Because, that’s all they think there is. Anxiety grows larger, as your field of view grows smaller. But what happens when you broaden out the view? What happens when you see there’s more? It’s all, always been there. Increasing anxiety, brought on by sorrow, keeps you from seeing the larger picture of the now. In contrast, enlarging your view of things, decreases anxiety.
Another smaller storm that comes into and creates the larger front of anxiety could be fear. It seems there is more fear these days than anything else. Fear of our whole economic outlook, and that we won’t get our deserved piece of the pie. Fear that a nut case can walk anywhere they want and open fire with an automatic weapon. Fear for our children and grandchildren. Fear about education. Fear about ecological disaster and global warming. And on, and on.
The next time you watch or read the news, make a note about how much of what is reported has to do with fear, and generating fear. I couldn’t believe how much of President Obama’s and Speaker of the House Boehner’s speeches this past Monday night were laced with fear tactics. Why do our national leaders in both parties only try to make their points by elevating our anxiety, rather than find creative ways to assuage anxiety?
The main power behind fear is the attitude that something is going to go horribly wrong. Fear causes us to constantly look suspiciously over our shoulder. Fear erodes our trust in each other. Fear freezes a person, and those around them, from enjoying what is. Instead, the focus is on, “What if something bad happens?” Without entertaining the opposite, “What if something really good happens?”
Another storm along the larger front of anxiety is this certain uneasiness, apprehension and worry that turns into depression. Depression is one of the modern cripplers of the individual spirit. If all the anti-depressant medication commercials are an indication, we seem to be in an epidemic of depression in this country. Depression totally takes away a person’s present moments. Nothing looks good, now.
Notice, that at the heart of all the storms that are breaking out along the front of anxiety, the recurring theme is being unable to live in the now. There is a certain restlessness with the present, whether that be the present times, the present state of affairs economically and politically, your present marriage, or present job, your present emotions--what ever. The constantly anxious person does not feel the freedom to enjoy the now, even though it may not be perfect.
Do you remember the Funky Winkerbean comic strip? Is it still going on? I pulled one out of the file that fits in here. It’s a conversation between two leaves out on the end of a branch. The larger leaf says to the smaller one, “Well, the first hint of Fall is in the air! We were born in the gentle warmth of Spring, shared in the glory of the blazing summer sun, and now quietly fall before the cold dark winter.”
The smaller leaf turns to the larger one, fully shaken up. “What!? That’s it!? Four lousy, stinking months?!!”
Anxiety certainly gets ramped up when we look at what we have, and then think we should have something more, better, or different. In that anxious shock, we quickly lose sight of what we do have that is affirming, good, and beneficial.
Think about the events and situations in your life that are anxiety producing; that have potential to break the spirit, dry up your bones and weigh you down. Isn’t it interesting that the same circumstances can produce opposite results in two different people? What makes the difference? These proverbs are telling us that the attitude of the heart tremendously affects our physical well-being.
Norman Cousins, author of the once bestselling book, An Anatomy of an Illness, was told he had cancer. At the time he was a successful author, lecturer, and magazine editor. He didn’t have time to slow down. So he decided to cure himself. How? By laughing. He would spend hours reading joke books, watching old Laurel and Hardy, or W.C. Fields movies. He was convinced that his continual positive and upbeat mood, spurred by laughing, totally effected his cure.
Joy in the heart, and a cheered up spirit leads to health, physically and mentally, and especially spiritually. But sadness and anxiety can lead to physical deterioration. Anxious people, statistically, end up dealing with much more physical illness than do low anxiety people. In the book of Sirach (which is one of those books in the Apocrypha that we don’t recognized in our protestant Bibles), the recurring theme is that one means to preserve health is to hold fast to a cheerful disposition and to avoid those things which make cheerfulness impossible.
Sometimes that kind of avoidance only takes a little change of perspective on our part. For example, there’s the story of the young boy talking to himself as he strutted through the backyard. Baseball cap from his favorite team firmly planted on his head. Bat leaning on his shoulder. Baseball being tossed up and down in his hand. He was saying to himself, “I’m the greatest baseball hitter in the world!” Then he tossed the ball into the air, swung at it and missed. “Strike one!” he shouted like an ump.
Undaunted, he picked up the ball, threw it into the air and said to himself, “I’m the greatest hitter in baseball ever!” He took the swing again, and missed. “Strike two!” he shouted. He paused a moment to examine his bat and ball. Then a third time he threw the ball into the air. “I’m the greatest hitter who ever lived!” He swung the bat hard again, but missed for the third time. He cried out, “Wow! Strike three! What a pitcher! I’m the greatest pitcher in baseball!”
The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, have a lot to do with whether we are positive, upbeat people, or not.
In changing people’s negatives into positives, Jesus used different approaches. In some instances he took care of the immediate need of the person. That way they could be freed up to see new possibilities for living. That’s what he was doing when he healed people.
One example of this is the man who sat beside the pool of Bethesda for 38 years. He was waiting to be healed of his infirmity by the water, which was supposedly inhabited by an angel. Here we have the picture of a man who, for 38 years (and back in those times, that was a whole lifetime), nursed his misery, blinded by the dark cloud he had hung over himself.
In the process he had alienated everyone else. He told Jesus, “I have no one to help me into the pool.” Even the others, each in their own misery, sitting around this supposedly angel stirred water, couldn’t take the man’s negativism. And then Jesus asked him the penetrating question: “Do you want to get well?”
Some people don’t. Their gloom encases them like a puncture proof bubble. No matter how much good news they hear, they are determined to see the sour side of life. These kinds of people remind me of the story I read about the waitress who couldn’t get a smile out of her customer for love nor money. The diner was dour, depressed, and dejected all through her meal. As the lady paid her bill and was leaving, the waitress called out, “Have a nice day!” To which the patron snapped, “I’m sorry, but I’ve made other plans.”
Some people have “made other plans” most of their lives. They have made a choice to live scratchy, caustic lives, and they won’t let anyone deter them from their plan.
To the man at the pool of Bethesda, who had made other plans for 38 years, Jesus said, “Be healed.” All at once, his past has been erased and a new future was opened up. The story he had written for himself was no longer relevant, and a new, empty book had been given him to begin writing anew. Jesus freed the man to live in the now.
To others, like the Pharisees in Matthew 23, Jesus said in so many words, “Wake up! You have a bad attitude, and it’s contagious.”
For Jesus, and for our proverbs, the seat of the cure and the restoration of a positive outlook is in the heart. It’s what’s inside that affects the outward appearance and action. A person’s demeanor reveals much about their interior state. The feelings of sorrow, fear, worry, tension, and inadequacy, that emanate from the heart of a person, is etched on your face, or posture.
The weight of our Proverbs and the dealings of Jesus with people seems to indicate that we are in charge of our own attitudes. We determine what’s in our heart. It’s one of those areas that God has left up to us and our free will. It is one of those pieces of what it means to be human that no one can completely help us with. Like the Time magazine article I quoted at the start, our positive attitude has to be “ignited.” Jesus, to the man at the pool of Bethesda was saying, “I can ignite that spark in your heart if you want; but you have to want it. I’m not going to force it one you. Do you want to be well?”
So, it’s a choice that will not be deterred by outward circumstance. That ignited positivity, that new heart, effects us individually, and then collectively with those around us. We, ourselves, choose whether we want to be a person with a heavy heart, weighing others down. Or, if we will be of positive attitude, a person who infects others with the same optimistic medicine.
I close with a poem I’m sure some of you have already heard, “Two Frogs:”
Two frogs fell in a deep cream bowl,
one was an optimistic soul;
But the other took the gloomy view,
“I shall drown,” he cried, “and so shall you.”
So with a last despairing cry,
He closed his eyes and said, “Goodbye.”
But the other frog, with a merry grin
Said, “I can’t get out, but I won’t give in.”
“I’ll swim around till my strength is spent.
For having tried, I’ll die content.”
Bravely he swam until, it would seem
His struggles began to churn the cream.
On the top of the butter at last he stopped
And out of the bowl he happily hopped.
What is the moral? It’s easily found.
If you can’t get out--keep swimming around.
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