It looks as though some people are just born to be unhappy. There are some people who are going to approach nearly everything with a complaint or a gripe, who are going to make a personal issue out of everything. Nothing is quite good enough, nothing quite satisfies.
There are folks whose unhappiness leads them never to be satisfied, even with the good things that happen to them. These good things are not good enough. Let them receive a birthday gift and well wishes from their friends, and they are unhappy because they are another year older and deeper in debt – unhappy. Let them win first prize in some contest or competition, and they are unhappy because there was no standing ovation to go along with it -- most unhappy. Let them get Ed McMahon's proverbial letter, only this time it says, "You have won one million dollars in the publishers contest," and they are most unhappy because Uncle Sam wants his share -- unhappy, always unhappy. Let them die and go to heaven and they are unhappy because someone else has a better view of the ivory palaces and because the golden streets are bumpy. There are, I say, the chronically unhappy, because nothing sever quite good enough, no good thing is quite what it ought to be, life treats them raw – happy, always unhappy, chronically unhappy.
But what fascinates me about this business of chronic unhappiness is that what looks like a pathology, what looks like a sickness of the soul, can also become the fuel for spiritual creativity. It is possible that those who are chronically unhappy, those for whom nothing is quite satisfactory and never quite good enough -- it is possible that the chronically unhappy can also become those who achieve new spiritual breakthroughs and discover new insights and new truths about God. Chronic unhappiness can be a sickness, yes, and it can certainly irritate the living daylights out of the folks who have to live with the chronic, but it can also be the source of enormous spiritual creativity.
I'd like you this morning to consider the stories of at least two chronically unhappy persons, this special kind of creative chronic unhappiness. I'd like you to hear their stories and perceive how they managed their chronic unhappiness so that it became the engine for spiritual creativity. And maybe in so doing you can tap a source which would help you to take that nagging dissatisfaction, that touch of melancholy, that little grain of irritation that's in you and let it become the beginning of a blessing. After all, the oyster, they tell me, takes a little grain of sand, just the tiniest source of irritation, and around it secretes the substance which eventually becomes a lovely pearl. Maybe that can happen for you too.
First I introduce you to Job. I see Job as one of the chronically unhappy of this earth. You say, well, he had good reason to be unhappy: stricken with the tragic deaths of his family members, slapped with the loss of his wealth, deprived of his health and perched on top of a garbage dump, scraping at his sores with broken scraps of pottery – who wouldn't be unhappy? Not exactly the kind of person you would expect to hear warbling, "Life is just a bowl of cherries!!" But there is another dimension, a depth to Job ‘s unhappiness. Job is unhappy because of the tragedies that have come into his life. He is on his way to becoming the chronically unhappy person; nothing any of his friends can say or do seems to help him. They speak, they advise, they console, but Job will have none of it. He won’t listen, he won't be consoled, and he won' t even pretend to be grateful they have come by to offer counsel. You know how it is, when you go to somebody to console them; you expect to be overwhelmed with gratitude! Not Job; he just seems to want to rot away in his unhappiness.
Listen; I could have selected many passages, but this one will give you the flavor of a profoundly, incurably, chronically unhappy man:
Job 6:8-13
"Cut me off, Lord, let me die .. That would be my consolation, I would even exult in pain unsparing." See? That confirms our worst suspicions, doesn't it? That the chronically unhappy are happy only when they are unhappy! I hope you can make sense out of that. And if Job were here and saying that to you or me this morning, we would schedule him for ten years of analysis with the nearest psychiatrist. Chronically unhappy.
The second person I want you to meet is Martin Luther. Luther the church reformer, Luther the Bible scholar, Martin Luther the spiritual giant. Before he was any of these was an unhappy person, a chronically unhappy man. On this last Sunday in October, when we traditionally celebrate the Protestant Reformation that began in the 16th Century, it's always valuable to remember that the man whose spiritual energies burst forth in such a remarkable way 470 years ago this week started as a dissatisfied, spiritually hungry, emotionally upset, chronically unhappy man. At the age of twenty-one he had been struck by lightning and almost died, and he caught a vision of a terrible, angry God; he decided to become a monk in the church of his day. A few years later, just after his ordination to the priesthood, the young Luther prepared to officiate at the Lord's Table for the first time, was again struck with terror, and in his words, remembers what he felt, "I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken … Who am I, that I should lift up mine eyes to the divine majesty? Shall I, a miserable pygmy, say, 'I want this, I ask for that'? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living eternal God." And the record says that he left the altar that day barely able even to stand on his own feet, an unhappy man, a spiritually wrung out soul, full of sickness. Chronically unhappy.
But you must know today that neither Job or old nor Luther of 16th century Europe was in the end immobilized by this terrible unhappiness. You must see that neither Job nor Martin Luther nor many others who have found themselves in this awesome and continuing anguish of the spirit have allowed themselves to be devastated by it. In fact, the fascinating and curious thing is that chronic unhappiness can become the fuel, the energy, for spiritual discovery. There is a way for the chronically unhappy to bless themselves and to bless the world with new insight and new hope, and that way is the way of prayer, the way of direct and personal encounter with the living God.
You see, prayer will give you that inner strength to go ahead and deal with whatever has been nagging at you for so long, even when the conventional wisdom tells you not to. Sometimes the unhappy are unhappy because they feel all alone, they feel that they must be wrong because nobody else agrees with them. And when you feel an inner conviction about something you ought to do, something you believe should happen, but nobody will support you, nobody will agree with you, then it's tough. It will keep you chronically unhappy. But in prayer you can gain the strength from God to go ahead with what you know to be right.
Here is old Job, out there on the garbage dump, sinking lower and lower into misery and unhappiness, but plagued not only with sores on his skin but also with a dawning conviction in his heart. He believes that he does not deserve this treatment, he is convinced that his sin, if sin it is, does not merit what has come on him. And he believes he is arriving at a new way of understanding God.
But at Job's side are his friends, three friends who represent, each in his own way, the right views, the prevailing beliefs, the common and conventional wisdom. There is Eliphaz, who wants Job to admit that he is guilty and is getting what he paid for; there is Bildad, who wants Job to affirm and accept shopworn traditional theology -- just accept, Job, just give in, who are you to have a new idea? And there is Zophar, who with has cash-register mind tells Job, "Do what you have to do to get peace." Three friends, three wailing willies, three good old boys who tell poor Job, "What do you know? You aren’t anybody. You could not have an original thought. Give it up, Job."
But the beauty of Job is that in the midst of his plight, in the agonies of his anguish, Job cries out to a living God. Not a submissive prayer, either, not a poor little me prayer but an angry, demanding prayer, a prayer that says to his God, "Lord, you owe me this much." And Job will not let go of God until he gets his answer. Job's prayer, the prayer of the chronically unhappy, is a prayer that finally strengthens his conviction, even though everybody, everybody that mattered, is arrayed against him. And of being chronically unhappy, Job found new spiritual energy.
As Luther’s life wore on, he found that nothing he did in accordance with the prescriptions of the monastery and the church alleviated his unhappiness. He prayed according to the formulas of his order incessantly; if they called for an hour of prayer at such and such a time of day, he prayed two hours. If they prescribed a pilgrimage to Rome, he not only went to Rome but he dragged himself on his knees up the Spanish Steps, praying and confessing as he went. But none of this brought him satisfaction, none of it relieved his unhappiness. He remained chronically unhappy.
I do not have time for the details, but as the convictions, born out of the study of the Scriptures, took root in his soul … as he began to tilt and fight against the abuses he saw in the church of his day … as he engaged in long and learned debates with the theologians and scholars of his time, Luther struggled with the question, "Am I alone right?" "Am I alone right?" Not an easy one, is it? Maybe you've been in a group where everybody else seemed to have one opinion and you were the only one, the absolutely only one, who had a different view. Well, then, imagine yourself in Luther's shoes, apparently the only person in Europe who questioned the right of the Pope to govern the church; apparently the only man in Germany who doubted the church's ability to deliver salvation. Am I alone right? You understand that struggle.
But I tell you, out of Luther’s life in prayer, a prayer life that became intimate and honest, and, like Job’s sometimes angry – nothing in the Bible says you dare not be angry with God, for God is after all big enough to take it – out of Luther’s life in prayer there came that inner strength, that energy, and that fuel to do what he knew he must do, though emperor and church and friends and family stood against him.
The chronically unhappy, you see, become the spiritually creative, though it seems no one supports them, if they take it to the Lord in prayer and find there the only friend they need in the last analysis. Here is William Carey, burdened to begin a movement of missions, but told by his peers, "Sit down, young man; when God wants to save the heathen, he'll do it without your help or mine." But Carey sat in his little cobbler shop and pounded and prayed, prayed and pounded, until the conviction grew strong, and off he sailed to India, for Christ, with an inner conviction that only the chronically dissatisfied can comprehend.
Here is Martin Luther King, burdened by the plight of his people, and, maybe more to the point, Mrs. Rosa Parks, too tired, too unhappy, too dissatisfied with things as they are to go on, but enriched by a life of prayer, able to shrug off the slings and arrows of Montgomery in the 1950's and be what God wanted them to be.
The chronically unhappy become the spiritually creative because prayer strengthens their inward convictions.
In the end, it happens because in prayer we discover that God is on our side, that God is for us, and that we can experience Him, we can perceive Him for ourselves. In prayer we like Job perceive that God is our redeemer, not our enemy; that God is our redeemer and our friend, not one who plagues us with disasters and with fears … and that He is on our side, He stands with us. Job and Luther both grew up with a vision of an angry God, but now see that He is our redeemer, who transforms even our spiritual sickness, that sow’s ear, and makes it a silk purse of spiritual energy and creativity.
And so if your prayers are insistent, if your prayers are honest, if like Job you can virtually shake your fist in the face of Almighty God and out of your continuing and chronic unhappiness you can plead with him to hear your case, the day will come when you with Job can say, "I know that my redeemer lives … and from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another." Do you see? Job’s nagging dissatisfaction could never be healed with a hearsay God, but only a personal encounter.
And if your prayers are insistent, if your prayers are honest, if like Luther you can storm the very battlements of heaven and out of your spiritual dissatisfaction can see what it is to live by faith, then you will come to the day when you will be able to declare with Luther, "My conscience is captive to the word of God … God help me, here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," and you might be empowered to sing with him, "Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing; were not the right one on side, the one of God’s own choosing." Again, Luther’s nagging unhappiness led him to discard priests and all intermediaries and go to God Himself. That’s prayer!
I tell you again, if your prayers are insistent, if your prayers are honest, if you can reach deep down into your chronic unhappiness, your profound dissatisfaction with things as they are ••• if you can see your God as your redeemer, who would take even the frustrations and the fears, the disappointments and the doubts, the hatreds and the half-hearted hopes, the pains and the passions, and of these would make something worthy …well then, if God be for us, if God be on our side, who can be against us?
"Are we weak and heavy laden, Cumbered with a load of care? Precious savior, still our refuge, Take it to the Lord in prayer. Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms he'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there."
