“The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.”

(Proverbs 20:27)

 

Life can lose its luster. The glow and shine can be knocked off. We know, don’t we? The daily round can become a grind. The old experiences which once thrilled, the old comrades whose companionship in days gone by was stimulating, the old responsibilities which once were a challenge — can become just so much more of the very stuff with which we are fed-up. When life’s radiance has been lost, what can restore it?

Our first inclination when we begin to feel fed-up and become aware that life’s luster has gone, is to seek a new situation. And this is not too crazy a hunch to follow. Instinctively we know the importance of rhythm in life. (All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and vise versa.) Fatigue not only takes the shine off things — it can almost make us color blind and tone deaf. We never do justice to ourselves, our employees, our clients, our parishioners or patients when we keep our noses too close to the grindstone.

Often a change in activity or surroundings will help restore life’s lost radiance — that’s what vacation trips are for — but sometimes we let this instinct to seek new situations push us to the point of folly. For instance: if business is not so good at the old stand anymore. What to do? Why, move. Get a new location, the neighborhood is deteriorating anyway and the old customers never were very loyal and little appreciated our excellent services. A new location will surely restore life’s luster.

Or, if dissatisfaction mounts with our present job — what to do? Working conditions have always worsened here rather than improved. Difficulties with our associates multiply. The old challenge is somehow missing. What to do to recapture the lost radiance? Why, get out and get another connection.

Or, perhaps our friends are not as attentive and sympathetic and understanding as they used to be. They don’t call or come by as they once did. Of course, we have been busy and have neglected them somewhat, but there were always good reasons, family obligations, and our health hasn’t been too good the last year or so. Yet, friendship means so much and the luster of life is just not there without rewarding friendships. What to do? Seek a new home in another city or neighborhood and make a fresh start with a new set of friends.

Or, it may be that life’s lost luster can be traced to a more radical difficulty — the petering out of a close family relationship. My, how that strips off the shine! Instead of getting up with a song in your heart, you rise to the sound of a nagging whine.

Sometimes when life loses its luster because an intimate relationship is going sour, one or both parties come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to scuttle the relationship — throw each other overboard and seek a new marriage situation, and that will surely recapture the lost radiance. A minister wrote me about a man who has been married and divorced three times. And the minister commented: “Obviously there is something very wrong, but I do not know what it is and he does not seem to know either. He states that the only reason for his marital tragedies is that each girl simply said that she did not love him anymore.” Well, certainly that man’s bitter experience indicates that the solution to the problem of restoring life’s lost radiance is not always in seeking a new partner and a new situation.

Most of us finally learn that it is not new situations and changed relationships which we need to restore the lost radiance of life so much as it is new attitudes and changed dispositions for ourselves. In nine cases out of ten when the luster is gone from life, it is because of inside conditions rather than outside situations. ““The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” The same Shakespearean sagacity goes for most of our maladjustments and malcontentments.

We might even manage to stay on in the old surroundings and glimpse a new halo of glory over the commonplace, if we could only latch on to some new reasons for our existence. Rufus Jones once wrote: “I am eager to find out what lights up the luster and restores the radiance of life. A great cause does it, a great purpose does it, a great faith does it, a great love does it.”

Yes, if we can get a new bearing for life; gather up everything that has been running fitfully now in this direction and now in that direction and set the whole of life on a single track and start moving the whole train toward a new great purpose. My, how that will set a shine upon our days!

Professor W. H. Sheldon has said that: “Happiness is essentially the state of going somewhere wholeheartedly.” It is equally true of this radiance of life which is deeper than happiness, that it comes of going somewhere wholeheartedly.

Now why is this? Why must man’s search for the lost radiance ultimately turn inward, rather than outward? The reason lies deep in the nature and destiny of man.

A text from the Proverbs points up this matter for us: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” That is to say, man is by nature essentially a spiritual being and destined to be employed in such a way as to reveal his Creator, the supreme spirit of the universe. And so, at every given moment the radiance of life for man and woman is more dependent on their spiritual orientation than on their physical condition. And always it is not so much geographical location as it is theological outlook which is responsible for life’s luster or lack of it.

Who could say it better than St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our weary souls are restless till we find our rest in Thee.”

Or, as the Westminster Divines put it: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

Or, as Richard Baxter wrote: “What do we have our strength and our time for, but to pour them out unto God? What is a candle for, but to be burnt?

“The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,” and always the light has gone out of any life when its emotional glow, and the fire of its genius has been offered on a strange altar. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, to be burned for Him and when the light of a man’s life is darkness, how great is that darkness.

So we see that the basic reason for life’s lost luster is human sin. Christian theology traces the loss of the radiance not to just an individual tragedy and a personal wrong turn, but to a catastrophe of the whole human race and sees the dimensions of the tragic human situation described in story form in the early chapters of Genesis, of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and of man’s fall. Sin has entered the picture and sin has taken away the radiance. That is the reason it is lost. And there is no hope of restoring the lost radiance without dealing with sin.

This is the theme of Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is the theme which is basic to St. Paul’s letters, when he comes to grips with is own personal problem and the problems of all mankind. Sometimes we hear it said: “The poor fellow has a bad disposition. You must be patient with him.” Or, it may be said: “She is temperamental and requires special handling.” What is really wrong? The truth should be told. It is just that the man or the woman is mean.

The Christian solution to the human situation which includes the restoration of life’s lost radiance includes the redeeming work of Christ on the cross and man’s admission of his moral and spiritual bankruptcy. Man has run out of gas and is hopeless for arriving at his appointed destination on his own power. He must humbly stand by the deserted roadside and make known his lonely, impotent, and under-serving condition. He must rely on the unmerited mercy of God who runs all the risks, even of crucifixion, in picking up the hopeless hitchhiker.

But, quite tragically, so many men and women have not found in their religion the power to restore and replenish life’s lost radiance, because they have made of religion too much of a “thou-shalt-not” business.

“There is a tale told of a missionary in a dark corner of Africa where the natives had the habit of filing their teeth to sharp points. The missionary was hard at work trying to convert the native chieftain. Now the chief was very old, and the missionary was very Old Testament in approach to religion — his version of Christianity leaned heavily on the “thou-shalt-nots.” The savage listened patiently.

“’I do not understand,’ said the cannibal chief at last. ‘You tell me that I must not take my neighbor’s wife.’

“‘That is right,’ said the missionary.

“‘Or his ivory or his oxen.’

“‘Quite right,’ said the missionary.

“‘And I must not dance the war dance and then ambush my enemy on the trail and kill him.’

“‘Absolutely right,’ said the missionary.

“‘But I cannot do any of these things,’ said the savage regretfully. ‘I am too old. To be old and to be a Christian, they are the same thing.’” (Joy Davidman — Smoke on the Mountain — p. 13 — Westminster Press, 1953)

Many a contemporary American churchman is finding little in his religion to restore the lost radiance to life because he has been nurtured on a religion of thou-shalt-nots, a series of prohibitions to keep him from doing what he enjoys. His religion has been a burden to be carried rather than a power to lift him to new heights. So he has missed the very genius of our holy faith. He has not been taught that the rules and the commandments are not bars in a prison cell to shut him from the paradise of man’s desiring, but that they are rungs on the ladder by which he may rise out of the dungeon and into the sunlight.

Phillips Brooks believed that the true meaning of the text: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,” is that “there is something in man’s innermost being that can be kindled and struck into flame by God, and as we feed the flame of our lives we can become revealing places for God, a flame of God’s life.” This is man’s true nature, this is his appointed destiny and he feels the glory of it and thrills to the brightness of it as he could in no other possible experience. And when his life is not so used, of course, the radiance departs.

When Rufus Jones went to see Baron Frederick Von Hugel, the celebrated Roman Catholic philosopher in London, as he rose to leave, Von Hugel said: “Before you go I want to tell you of the four conditions of life which must be fulfilled before anyone can be canonized a saint in my church. He, or as is more often the case, she, must have been throughout life loyal to the faith of the church. In the second place, the person must have been heroic. He or she must have faced danger and difficulty in a magnanimous and unconquerable spirit, and have done what seemed impossible for a person to do. In the third place, the person who is to rank as a saint must have been the recipient of powers beyond ordinary human capacities. He must have been the organ of higher forces than those which appear to belong to human nature as such, so that an element of the miraculous gets expressed through his life and deeds. And finally, in the fourth place, through good report and evil report, through prosperity and the loss of it, in the mountaintop moments and in the dull round of everyday life, he must, she must, have been radiant.” Then Von Hugel paused, and after a moment thoughtfully added: ‘They may be possibly wrong about those first three conditions, but they are gloriously right about that fourth condition. A saint must be radiant.’” (The Radiant Life — by Rufus Jones — quoted in The Best of Rufus Jones, H. E. Fosdick — p. 238)

And though there is little likelihood that any of us will ever be canonized as saints, and though we do not customarily think of ourselves as possessing any of the qualities of saintliness, oh, how we would like to recapture life’s lost radiance and how much it might mean for others if they should see us, as the mother in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush prayed for her son that “if the Lord called him into the ministry, she might see him coming to his people with the beauty of the Lord upon him.”

And the plain facts are that we can have the beauty of the Lord our God upon us, and the grace of Christ with us, and the sunlight and joy of His presence in our hearts, if we will let Him fulfill for us our appointed destiny and careless of all other commitments and attractions allow Him to take and make the spirit of this man, this woman, the candle of the Lord.