Trouble in River city
You’ve got trouble. Trouble, that’s right, Trouble with a capitol T. You got a pool table right here in your community.
Today our nation has trouble with a capitol T, but those troubles are much greater than a pool table in your community or even your own basement. However, if we think the nation has troubles, we need to take a look at real trouble, our very own personalized River City.
My name is not Harold Hill, and I am not The Music Man. But I do see trouble. I see our nation crumbling spiritually, and I am really concerned about what I see. My concern in particular is that I have many personal friends right here in our own River City that I believe are in dire need of just a little bit of help along their crumbling and broken path.
There was another Harold Hill, who walked in Bible times and bore the name of Jeremiah. In his day, things were not too much different spiritually than they are today. We can blame our politicians; we can blame the economy, the stock market, immigration, or global warming. But the bottom line is, ultimately we are responsible individually for our own plight.
Sometimes when I look around and see all the problems plaguing our society, this hopeless feeling begins to run all through me. But then I stop and pause long enough just to remember that I have already won the battle. At that point, I have a real peace that takes over and replaces that feeling of dread, fear and hopelessness.
Over this past three or four years, I have held a deep settled peace that I have never experienced in my entire life; and especially, since I have gone back to work at the job I probably should have been doing for the past 27 years. That job is helping people move to a higher plane from wherever they may be on their pilgrimage. No greater peace can be felt, than when one has been able to help out a friend who has been stuck in the mire and muck of a broken life, after stumbling and falling while on his journey.
When I started out in life, that was my major goal, and in fact, the only goal that I had. Somewhere along the beaten path, I managed to lose sight of that goal. No, I am not working for money, and I receive no compensation, except for a peace of mind that passes all understanding, and a deep settled satisfaction that comes from seeing someone growing in his or her spiritual walk. With that peace comes the desire to chime out with Harold Hill, and Jeremiah. Yes, we will have trouble, but take heart the victory is already won. But whether from our own bad choices, or caused by circumstances totally out of our control, we still have to learn to live with the consequences and the broken fragments that are left from a seriously scarred life, resulting from walking in a decayed and dying society. But victory is found in the living Word.
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33.
Now lets take a look at the real Trouble that is going on in River city. You are standing in the daze of a misty fog when you realize that your stocks have just taken a huge pummeling. You have debt up to your ears, your home is being foreclosed, and even if you could stay there, the roof is leaking, water is spewing from every faucet and the heating system has broken down in the sub-0 weather. Your boss is demanding 3 more hours weekly (If he hasn’t already let you go) on top of the 50 hours you are already putting in. Your 4 cars, in the garage, and driveway are broken down; breaks worn, engine dead, bald tires and broken fan belts. You have no money for gas, not even enough to purchase a bus or train ticket, let alone for groceries, and the much needed new fur coat or latest style leather jacket. Fiber optics service for your large screen has been shut off, your boat sitting in the barn out back has a rusty hole, and the ski-jet won’t start up any more. Your marriage is falling a part; grandma is dying of cancer and grandpa of heart failure. The children got left out of all the myriads of extra curricular activities at school, because they missed too many days and besides there was no money to buy enough costumes and equipment for all these activities. And yet, down in the basement is a beautiful pool table. My friend, you not only have a pool table, you have a cesspool.
Please believe me when I say, I am not making light of your problems, or the hundreds of legitimate problems that many of our flock as well as people across the nation are going through right at the moment. I for one have been there. I know what a lot of these problems feel like, and by God’s grace, I am not there now. But I can tell you most assuredly; He has brought me through many of these storms, and if He provides me grace, I am never going there again, ever. And that is the purpose for this little story. I am not writing to point out your problems, or enhance the ones you already have by making you feel worse than you already feel. My motive for playing the role of Harold Hill at this juncture is to give my best shot at helping you pull yourself out of the miry clay when life seems so hopeless. You see, I know about slimy, murky, rivers that we get caught up in, whether by some mere accident, or happenstance which was out of our control. Maybe it was the simple circumstances of life that just happen that we did not cause, nor could we prevent. But sometimes we fall into these traps because of our own bad choices that we make along the way. I’m sure we all feel like this at some point in our lives even if we are not there right at the moment. As for me, my calamities are described best by picturing myself drifting down a muddy murky river, through a barren desert headed nowhere. I am floating desperately along this slimy river, with nothing to hold on to, and already gurgling for breath after going under two or three times. And out on the edge of the river is old Harold. He shouts out at me as I float by on my way down this meandering river, desperately grabbing for any little dead branch or twig to hold on to. “Hey Dock, you got a pool table in your basement. “
Wow, he must really know all the troubles I am facing. I just want to cry out, “Hey Harold, take that log out of your own eye before you start preaching at me.” (Matt. 7:3) Harold may have understood Jeremiahs problems, but he sure doesn’t know anything about mine. And then I stop and think maybe Harold means well, maybe I should pause and listen to him for a moment, just to see if he can help me. Sometimes just that one little pause is enough for a quick lesson in humility, and at the very least let me grab hold of a tree stump or a root of a dead tree protruding from the barren desert at the edge of the river.
But all these problems must be brought into perspective. Let me give you an example of one such individual from Biblical times. Jeremiah was preaching to his own people, declaring the truth, but he was placed in stocks and beaten with 40 lashes. How would we hold up under that kind of pressure? His once trusted friends called him "MAGOR-MISSABIB" which means “terror on every side.” Jeremiah spent time trying to figure out why his mother had not had an abortion. He cries out:
Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame? Jeremiah 20:18.
Chuck Swindoll, in his book “Growing Strong in the Seasons of life” quotes the words of a French Nobel Prize winning author Francois Mauriac. The setting is the Nazi death camp at Birkenbau, and Mauriac speaks of a young man by the name of Elie Wiesel.
“On that terrible day, horrible even among those days of horror, when the child watched the hanging of another child, who, he tells us, had the face of a sad angel, he heard someone behind him groan: Where is God? Where is he? Where can he be now?”
This writer has never faced the physical dilemma that Jeremiah faced, nor has he faced the horrors of the Nazi death camps. But he can tell you that emotionally he has had some of those same feelings, of hopelessness and helplessness. The feeling of death has gripped him to the point that he felt there would be no return. I truly believe we have to come to a point of realization of all the TROUBLE, that we are actually in. We have to envision our own pool table in the basement, or the cesspool that we are actually living in. We also have to realize that we cannot depend on Harold Hill, nor any other human being to carry us out of that rubble heap we find ourselves in. We must reach a point of brokenness that we are willing to give up all the worldly things that distract us from His mercy. We have to let go of that rope that we so desperately cling to and with just that one simple stroke of faith; we fall into the hands of a loving, merciful God. Then with that action, we move into a different level of growth, a higher plane than we have ever found before; higher ground, a sure footing for our feet to walk in. That is the real victory many are desperately searching for. For some, this may be a simple first step that leads to salvation. For others, it is a step toward living on a higher plane. But for all, it is the moving of the Holy Spirit for such a time as this, in our time of turmoil and TROUBLE.
There truly is light at the end of the tunnel, and a hope for peace. I know, because I found it through many verses equivalent to the words in John 6:33 shown above. I know because the victory was claimed many years ago when Christ made the promise to me and to the world.
I am going away to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place I am going. John 14 :3, 4.
And how do we know that way?
Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6.
And that my friends is what Harold would say brings real peace.
DC 01/05/10
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